Warning: Contains SPOILERS for House of the Dragon season 2, episode 5.

As the dust and ash from the Battle at Rook’s Rest settles, House of the Dragon season 2, episode 5 is a quieter installment, but also an important one. The Dance of the Dragons has fully started now after the events of episode 4, but this is a chance for both sides of the civil war to assess their wounds and regroup. While they’re doing that, Daemon sinks further into his Harrenhal nightmare, with some very surprising narrative choices along the way.

Matt Smith Is Great In One Of The Biggest Episodes For Daemon Yet

Season 2, Episode 5 Is Very Daemon-Centric

Daemon’s visions at Harrenhal get weirder than ever, as episode 5’s installment includes… having sex with his (long dead) mother. Alyssa Targaryen, Daemon’s mother, died when he was around three-years-old, so there’s perhaps a sense of Daemon wanting to feel the motherly love he missed out on, while also searching for a woman who will take care of him and feed his own ego and desires. It’s certainly an, erm, interesting scene, although even a bit much incest-wise, even for the Targaryens.

That vision drives the rest of Daemon’s arc, really, as he goes on to declare that he wants to be king – and not king consort. Matt Smith is superb here, and clearly having a great time. He gets to be utterly despicable and arrogant and rude and all of Daemon’s other charming qualities, and yet also manages to find the character’s vulnerability (not to mention confusion), which is important to making this story work.

I don’t think everything here works perfectly, in part because there’s so much happening to Daemon within a single episode. He goes from threatening the Brackens to coming up with a plan with the Blackwoods, which is then executed, and then the Riverlords angrily come upon him, without a real sense of the passage of time. It also makes some key changes to the book in him wanting to be king rather than seeing Rhaenyra rule and, while that’s not inherently a bad thing, the jury is out on how that will work for the story going forward.

The Fallout From Rook’s Rest Sets Up Intriguing King’s Landing Storylines

Aemond Is In Charge – So Now What Happens?

In terms of the fallout from the Battle at Rook’s Rest, I think the scenes in King’s Landing are where the show really nails it. There’s plenty of drama given King Aegon could still die, and Aemond gets to go even more full throttle into villain mode as he gets to take control like he’s always wanted. Ewan Mitchell and Olivia Cooke, once again, do great work in their scenes, and it begins to show the cracks in Alicent. Despite the bad she’s done, Cooke does make you feel for her.

The scenes with the smallfolk were particularly good, because it’d be so easy to overlook them. It’s always great to get a sense of the “real” people who are living and dying underneath the rule of the nobles, those who cannot find food while their rulers squabble over a big chair. It does a nice job showing the escalating struggles and tensions among the residents of King’s Landing, and I look forward to seeing when that eventually boils over. Plus, as visuals go, a dragon’s head being carted through the streets is a very striking and powerful one, ill omen or not.

House Of The Dragon Struggles To Balance Its Characters

Corlys Velaryon, In Particular, Deserved Even More Screen Time Here

House of the Dragon‘s cast is a large one and no episode can do everyone justice, so you just have to hope that it balances out across the course of the season. In terms of Team Black, it works out well for Jacaerys this episode, who comes to the fore more, and we get a much greater sense of who he is as a character. Rhaenyra herself isn’t given quite as much focus, given the amount of Daemon, but gets a few solid two-handers and the kind of conversations that so often drive the show, which Emma D’Arcy obviously nails.

The one character I would have liked more of is Corlys Velaryon. Steve Toussaint has done an excellent job with the character, and his scene with Baela here is very good, but following on from Rhaenys Targaryen’s death, I think even more focus on him would’ve been great. This was really the time to put a spotlight on his character, which would’ve been worth sacrificing or delaying some other scenes for if necessary, as I think his grief could have been more powerful and allowed for an even greater sense of loss.

Nonetheless, this was another intriguing installment of House of the Dragon, with plenty of strong character work within. The haunting of Harrenhal continues to be brilliantly atmospheric and strange, and it makes sense to have a few slightly smaller episodes (in terms of scale) after the battle the previous week, but there are plenty of potentially explosive storylines building nicely.

New episodes of House of the Dragon release Sundays at 9pm ET on HBO and Max.