House of Dragons

In the upcoming episode, the Targaryens reckon with fire, uncertainty, and the highest of treason.

[How to watch the John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise documentary for free](https://www.oregonlive.com/tv/2021/03/john-wayne-gacy-devil-in-disguise-documentary-out-now-free-live-stream-info-how-to-watch-online-with-peacock.html) [Dr. [stream House of the Dragon season 1 for FREE with DirecTV Stream](https://www.directv.com/stream/) at 9 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max](https://www.hbomax.com/). Set over 200 years before the start of Game of Thrones (2011) and based on the hit books by George R.R. For a sneak peek at the new episode, check out the trailer video provided below. Martin, House of the Dragon explores the civil war of House Targaryen and the events that led up to the story audiences know and love.

Episode 6 took us 10 years into the future. We find out what episode 7 of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel brings on Sunday.

[faded in the final two seasons](/culture/entertainment/game-of-thrones-season-8-george-r-r-martin-calls-out-toxic-backlash/), however, as the HBO show was created at a faster pace than Martin could crank out new books. The show is based on Fire and Blood, a book Martin wrote in 2018. Some of the show's shine 3. PT/ET, but hits HBO Max at 9 p.m. [Game of Thrones](/culture/entertainment/every-game-of-thrones-season-ranked-best-to-worst/) before it, House of the Dragon will air one episode at a time. The show will hit streaming services around the world at the same time, including [HBO Max](/tags/hbo-max/) in the US. [narrows its focus to the Targaryens](/culture/entertainment/house-of-the-dragon-every-targaryen-you-need-to-know/). While Game of Thrones focused on families from all across Westeros and beyond, House of the Dragon Martin's Fire and Look book, it chronicles the peak and subsequent fall of House Targaryen. Episode 6 laid the groundwork for these offspring to feud with each other. [took us forward 10 years in time](/culture/entertainment/house-of-the-dragon-episode-6-explained-the-princess-and-the-queen/), transporting us to a more tense King's Landing than the one we were initially introduced to.

“House of the Dragon,” episode seven drops Sunday, Oct. 2 at 9 p.m. Eastern on HBO Max. The new series takes place nearly 200 years before “Game of Thrones.

Both “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon” are based on the “A Song of Ice and Fire” books by George R. “House of the Dragon” centers on the ancestors of just one house or family from “Game of Thrones.” By episode seven Queen Alicent and Princess Rhaenyra are adults with their own children. The new series takes place nearly 200 years before “Game of Thrones.” It follows the lives and internal battles of House Targaryen and its dragons.

The Game of Thrones prequel continues this Sunday with House of the Dragon Episode 7, "Driftmark." Here's how and when to tune in!

[Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels](“https://www.amazon.com/b/?rh=i:instant-video,n:2858778011&ie=UTF8&filterId=OFFER_FILTER=SUBSCRIPTIONS&node=2858778011&ref_=assoc_tag_ph_1465430649312&_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=pf4&tag=fs-livedrops1-20&linkId=90b2815fb79ba0e403137c68e139db16”) [Game of Thrones](https://winteriscoming.net/game-of-thrones/) prequel when new episodes premiere each Sunday. We also go live every Wednesday afternoon to talk about the latest news in sci-fi and fantasy. Here’s how you can tune in for the new episode this Sunday night. Remember, Alicent (Olivia Cooke) is determined to expose her ex-friend for having children with someone who’s not her husband. This means you won’t want to miss a second of the

There's nothing the modest Mancunian actor likes more than a chat in her local café. But now she's starring in the new Game of Thrones prequel, ...

When she and Abbott broke up just before the pandemic, it was “another reason to come home”, she says. “I’ve always been quite protective of myself and known my limits,” she says, “and known if someone was taking the piss. “I feel like I’m reliving my early 20s.” Except this time, she adds, “I just feel so solid in who I am… (It was her idea to bleach her character’s eyebrows in Sound of Metal.) “Just to do all the work before is so freeing,” she says. “She had the role in her bones,” Cooke says, with awe. “It was a big old lovely cocktail: being homesick and not knowing it, having not stopped since I was 18, being on my own for large swathes of time.” “I’m so grateful for that job, but I had a really tough time on it,” she says. “I could natter and natter for hours.” “I find it really zapping of my energy,” she says, apologetically. She is friendly and familiar, greeting me with a hug and full of apology for being a few minutes late and “slightly sweaty”. “I resist things that are popular,” she says, “but to my own detriment, because it’s really fucking good.” “We’re going out more, we’re drinking more,” she says.

House of the Dragon episode 7 debuts on HBO and HBO Max this week. What time can audiences anticipate the next episode where they live?

Those watching on HBO Max can stream it right away, while those in other countries (such as the UK) can watch a simulcast of the premiere on a TV network in their region. The show releases brand new episodes on Sunday nights in the US at 9:00 p.m. And that has set the stage for the second half of the season, with more focus on the adult versions of Rhaenyra and Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke, who stepped in to replace the younger Emily Carey after the time jump). The full tale of the Targaryens has remained somewhat untold until now, with Game of Thrones often referencing “The Mad King” in the beginning and throughout Daenerys Targaryen’s journey to Westeros. [House of the Dragon](https://bamsmackpow.com/tv/) left. What time can audiences anticipate the next episode where they live?

The British actress, who plays Alicent Hightower, says she had a "tough time" while filming "Bates Motel."

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The seventh episode of the series debuts tonight (October 2) at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max. An encore presentation airs at 10:02p.m. ET on HBO.

ET on HBO and HBO Max. If you’re already an HBO subscriber, [you most likely have access to HBO Max](https://www.hbomax.com/do-i-already-have-access), which is available to stream on Amazon devices, Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Roku, Android devices, and more. [Johnny Loftus’ recaps of the series on Decider](https://decider.com/2022/09/25/house-of-the-dragon-episode-6-recap/). ET on HBO. But let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming, shall we? The popular Game of Thrones prequel has turned into a must-see Sunday night staple, riveting fans and creating copious amounts of water-cooler moments.

Rhaenyra Targaryen was getting married to Ser Laenor Velaryon, last we saw her. In this episode, the first thing we see is Rhaenyra giving birth. It's a boy!

"In all of King's Landing is there no one to take my side?" Lord Strong says a shadow is being cast over his house, and that it's damaging both his reputation and that of his house. "My father cannot give unbiased council to the king." Alicent is cooler on the offer, thanking Rhaenyra and promising to consider it. "This is the stuff, Lyonel," the grandfatherly king says in an avuncular tone. It's evident the Small Council has become a political battleground, as its two loudest voices are that of Queen Alicent and Princess Rhaenyra. Queen Alicent's silver-haired children are pummeling a strawman when Ser Criston, who as Kingsguard knight is in charge of training the royal boys, suggests they try to fence with him. "Do not speak of this again," he adds, with a kiss on the cheek. Rhaenyra and Laenor have apparently struck a bargain: As long as he pretends to be father of her children, Laenor is free to love as he pleases. She reprimands Aegon for taunting his little brother with the pig gag, and says they need to be a unified front in public. The queen is also a new woman. Tensions are much worse between Rhaenyra and the queen, who both have a squad of children running about.

On the 7th episode of HBO's Game of Thrones spin-off, guests at a funeral express their grief through sex and violence. Fantasy royals: they're just like ...

In a surprising departure from the book, Laenor and Qarl catch a break! - This show has a nagging tendency to kill off characters it introduces in the same episode: Lady Rhea, Ser Joffrey, Ser Harwin, Lady Laena. The voiceover we get is Daemon and Rhaenyra. The show doesn't want to give away that Laenor is in on the ruse quite yet, so what it shows us instead is Daemon killing the page. Rhaenyra pivots by calling the king's attention to the fact that Aemond treasonously questioned the parentage of Jayce, the heir to the throne. (Reader, watching this the first time, I really thought that she signed his death warrant with those words; "RIP LAENOR," I wrote in my notes.) They share a moment of sincere mutual affection; he resolves to let Ser Qarl go and re-dedicate himself to her as a true companion, if nothing else. She takes off and tests his dragonriding skillz, but he's up to the task. Corlys and Rhaenys get a nice scene in which the show re-establishes something it's already established — namely, that Rhaenys has her head on straight, and would have made a great queen. Which makes for a nice moment to step back and note how differently the show is presenting its two sets of royal twerps. There is a fireworks factory in our future, reader, and our bus is just now pulling out of the school parking lot. The king, the queen and their kids Aegon, Aemond and Helaena. That said, this episode kicks off by giving every freaking character listed above a long moment to gaze meaningfully at another character, and with a cast this huge, this process takes a hell of a long time.

The various dispersed Targaryens descend on Driftmark, and bring with them their genetically endowed abilities to be uniquely awful. A recap of episode 7 of ...

Alicent is ignorant of the larger implications, but it’s not hard to draw a connection between Rhaenyra’s glimpse of the dagger and her hasty proposal to Daemon. The Daemon-Rhaenyra-Will-They-Or-Won’t-They saga comes to an end, with the gentlest of sex scenes in the dunes, and the bloodiest of ceremonies on the rocks. The scene is also a clever mirror of how the adults handle the same accusations and slights. Imagine if House of the Dragon would slow down, just a bit, and let us live in uncertainty. And the scuffle-turned-slashing in the bowels of High Tide is decidedly instigated by Aemond, despite the fact that he is outnumbered and doesn’t have a weapon. • Speaking of, when Daemon and Rhaenyra walk down the Driftmark beach, she confesses her frustration at how he left her. For all the obvious reasons, House of the Dragon had to go big with its dragons, and Vhagar, the biggest prize of all, had to be shown off in all her glory in order for us to understand the stakes of Aemond’s gain. When Viserys insists that Rhaenyra repeat the “vile insult” Aemond hurled at her son, Alicent assumes she will have Rhaenyra cornered, that once the princess says out loud that the lineage of her children has been questioned, Viserys will have to publicly reckon with this crisis of legitimacy. For all its contrivance (why would the sickly king make this journey to attend the funeral of his estranged brother’s wife?) this episode gets one thing right that we’ve missed out on until now: It slows the tempo down to a conversational crawl and digs into the little slights and shared looks. The formerly tame Targaryen is now an asshole of the highest rank, joining his big brother Aegon in the pantheon of Terrible TV Tots. (Aegon is also a pre-teen lush.) Viserys’s mind is wearing down like his degrading body — at one point he calls Alicent “Aemma.” And whoever planned this event didn’t think to offer victuals to the mourners — or to throw it in a sensible, indoors location. A standard television-episode plotting method: Use the first act to create chaos between characters, the second act to heighten it, and the third to bring all the major players together at a party/event/function, where different pairs can mingle and stew, and the tension can finally come to a boil.

The in-fights between Alicent and Rhaenyra have just become their children's war.

That unfortunately means that Rhaenyra’s fateful decision at the end of the episode, which she makes in order to strengthen her own ties to the throne, is destined to backfire. The plan allows Rhaenyra to get rid of her husband, Laenor Velaryon (John Macmillan), and wed her uncle Daemon (Matt Smith), so that she can consolidate their side of House Targaryen and combine their resources. Alicent has warned her children for years, as her father has warned her for years, that they won’t be safe if Rhaenyra takes power, and that the only way to prevent the encroaching threat to their well-being is to prepare for war themselves. In both cases the immoral offender happens to be standing directly in the way of a Hightower’s path to power. That is, in the books, the Hightowers have long had a strict moral code which they’ve wielded as their primary weapon in the game of thrones. But because of the aesthetic cover that their religious views provide, they’re adept at finding ways to frame Rhaenyra as their spiritual enemy as well as an existential threat. After she grabs a knife and tries to take one of Luke’s eyes in retaliation for her son’s, impulsively slashing Rhaenyra’s arm in the process, the king rebukes her so strongly that she’s chastened. It’s the first and only time in the episode that anyone acknowledges that Jace and Luke have a reason to grieve. In the middle of a tense and awkward funeral gathering, the twins, emerging from their own grief over the loss of their mother, recognize that Jace and Luke are also mourning their own father. Lest we think he’s just power-hungry and paranoid, however, he brings it back around to what is, at least ostensibly, the material point: Because of the fight, everyone at court now knows what kind of woman Rhaenyra really is — an adulterer. Although Aemond seems to be willing to let the hostility go for now, the rivalry this fight has created, between Aemond and Lucerys especially, will go on to fuel open hostility and violence for decades. While Laena’s daughters are still in mourning for their mother, he sneaks down to the beach and bonds with Laena’s dragon Vhagar, one of the oldest, largest, and mightiest dragons in the realm.

This week's episode wove an enormous amount of objectively bonkers goings-on into a mostly credible hour of drama, with one big exception.

I wonder how many royal genealogists the Targaryens have driven to early retirement and/or madness. As Viserys fades, his desperation to keep his family somewhat intact is both pitiable — any semblance of unity will surely die with him — and poignant, a kind of raging against the dying of the light for a ruler who senses that his efforts will be futile and his legacy a wash, at best. As for where that intensity came from, I guess we’re supposed to take it on faith that the 10 years we didn’t see instilled a murderous rage within her. I rarely bring up things from the book because I assume most people who watch “Dragon” haven’t read it, so the show needs to stand on its own. Speaking of Aemond, Leo Ashton, the young actor who plays him, deserves credit for making him so convincingly unnerving from the beginning, with his disquieting dead-eyed stare. I suppose the confrontation was designed to once again foreshadow the conflict to come between these women. So I’m slightly concerned about what “Dragon” becomes when he and Viserys inevitably shuffle off the stage. Most of us, I suspect, have been party to family secrets or some other inconvenient truth that people close to us have held at bay by the sheer force of their own denial. But “he’s got a strange moral compass of his own,” the actor said. Alicent was apoplectic about her husband’s continued indulgence of Rhaenyra and understandably undone by Aemond’s injury. Along the way, we saw the dropping of several narrative shoes. Make your apologies and show good will to one another.”

Princess Rhaenyra and Queen Alicent's conflict spills first blood in the 'Game of Thrones' prequel's most tense episode yet.

And not just any real one, but the realest one: Vhagar, the biggest and oldest living dragon in all of the known world, the last survivor of Aegon’s Conquest, and the only creature still alive who was around to see Valyria at its height. Sight unseen from the rest of their family, Rhaenyra and Daemon sleep together on the beach, drawing comfort from one another in ways only Targaryens (and a certain pair of Lannister twins) know. Now, the Sea Snake’s pursuit of the crown has left their surviving child Laenor (John Macmillan) in great danger, even more imminent than they realize. Set entirely on the titular island House Velaryon calls home, the extended Targaryen royal family comes together in “Driftmark” for the funeral of one of their own: Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell), killed during last week’s episode, having selected a fiery demise at the maw of her dragon Vhagar over dying in childbirth. Despite urging from his brother the king, ready to put their troubled past behind them, Daemon blisters at the prospect of returning to the Seven Kingdoms. If Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys came of age during the time of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke), she would know the truth: not only can fire kill a dragon, the mere scent of dragon smoke could threaten the entire species altogether.

Westeros is full of dragons during the Targaryens' early rule, and House of the Dragon is finally starting to use them, so here are all the dragons and ...

This means that the dragon is quite small at this point, but will grow larger in time. Caraxes has red scales and was ridden by Daemon Targaryen during the Prince’s many battles around the world, most notably in the Stepstones. Vermax hatched from the egg that was given to Jacaerys when he was an infant in a stunt partially designed to show his status as a true-born Targaryen. Despite Vhagar’s age, she remains one of the most fearsome and dangerous dragons in Westeros, and is now ridden by one of the Greens’ most ardent supporters. The oldest and biggest of the Targaryen dragons in Westeros, and the only living remnant of Aegon’s conquest, Vhagar was once ridden by Visenya Targaryen when she, her brother, and her sister united the seven kingdoms. With [Laena dead](https://www.polygon.com/23372641/house-of-the-dragon-laena-velaryon-death-dragon-child), her dragon Vhagar was without a rider, and while everyone else was grieving during her funeral, it became the perfect time for a new rider to claim the oldest remaining dragon in Westeros.

Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) in “House of the Dragon.” (Ollie Upton / HBO).

According to the Faith of the Seven, incest between siblings and between a parent and child is an abomination. The leader of the Faith, the High Septon, denounced King Aenys as an abomination for this marriage. Books such as “The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones” and “Fire & Blood” detail how the Targaryen tradition of incestuous marriages can be traced back to their time in Old Valyria. In short, to keep the blood of the dragon as pure as possible. Aegon the Conqueror, the first king to sit on the Iron Throne and rule over the Seven Kingdoms, was married to both of his sisters who helped him in his conquest — Queens Visenya and Rhaenys. The pair have danced around each other since before they each wed a Velaryon, so it’s almost poetic that their relationship is consummated in Driftmark (the seat of [House Velaryon](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-08-21/house-of-the-dragon-game-of-thrones-key-characters-guide)).