Warning: SPOILERS ahead for House of the Dragon season 2, episode 2!

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal has unpacked the tragic ending of season 2, episode 2, explaining the decision behind making the scene play out like it did. During the last major sequence of the episode, Arryk Cargyll sails to Dragonstone, pretending to be his brother Erryk in order to get close to Rhaenyra Targaryen and kill her. However, the end of House of the Dragon‘s latest episode sees Erryk intervene, leading to a fight where one brother kills the other. The survivor then falls on his sword out of guilt for what he’s done.

Speaking with Variety, Condal unpacked House of the Dragon season 2, episode 2’s tragic ending, explaining how planning for the fight came about. The showrunner explained how real-world conflicts influenced the way they portrayed the fight between brothers, while also explaining the importance of their battle ending in such a horrific way. Check out what Condal had to say below:

We obviously spent a lot of time debating how that fight would play out. It’s very different the way all the disagreeing narrators lay out that particular historical event in the book. So we’re just trying to find one that felt true to the two characters. These are two guys that have sworn an oath and their lives over to protect the royal family. And as Erryk says to Daemon in the first episode of the season, “We don’t know what to do with this oath, because we swore to protect the royal family, and now they’ve turned against each other, and what were we to do?” It’s this tragic story of two brothers finding themselves on different sides of a conflict, in a way, a great archetype that goes back to the American Civil War and Westerns and Arthurian tales. To try to see out his oath, Arryk sails to Dragonstone to try to masquerade as his brother and infiltrates the castle and gets very close to the queen, but thankfully, Erryk intervenes. We wanted this really emotional conflict between these two brothers that deeply love each other but have found themselves as mortal enemies because of the nature of the political system they’ve committed themselves to. It was shot over multiple days, wonderfully choreographed, and Luke and Elliott Tittensor performed that and were in every shot of that sequence. They learned the fight and they executed the hell out of it.

How The Cargyll Twins’ Fight Scene Symbolizes The Looming War

The Cargyll twins both dying in battle with one another is a tragedy, encapsulating how the brothers were torn apart by their own interpretations of the oath they swore to House Targaryen. When one brother stabs the other, it’s unclear who the one that takes his own life is, the series never being direct about which one of them was killed and which fell on his sword. While Rhaenyra assumes the living brother is Erryk, there’s no way to know for sure, with the outcome ultimately being the same for both of them, no matter who it was.

The death of the twins is symbolic of the forthcoming civil war itself, as the Dance of the Dragons is a larger fight between family, much like theirs. It’s possible the horrific way their final fight is portrayed will play out on a larger scale during the war, with major deaths and tragedies happening throughout. Their deaths, then, are foreshadowing how the larger conflict will play out, indicative of just how much loss both sides will face before this battle is over.

House of the Dragon season 2, episode 2 has set the stage for a major response from Rhaenyra and the Blacks for the attempt on her life. However, because of how the scene between the Cargyll twins played out, the event could be the key moment that will spark direct conflict between both factions of the Targaryen family. With more death sure to follow in the coming weeks, it seems the twins’ demise is just the start of destructive actions that will end with dire consequences.

Source: Variety