Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Fire & Blood, the book on which House of the Dragon is based.
House of the Dragon season 2 will have one moment far worse than anything in Game of Thrones, and what’s more it’ll likely happen incredibly early on. House of the Dragon season 1 had plenty of epic and shocking moments, but nothing quite on the level of Game of Thrones’ most Internet-breaking scenes. Think Ned Stark being beheaded, the Red Wedding, and Shireen Baratheon being burned alive, and the prequel hasn’t matched it… yet.
House of the Dragon season 2 will up the ante in that regard. Season 1 dropped a lot of clues to Blood & Cheese, which sees Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen killed at the hands of two men named Blood (a butcher) and Cheese (a ratcatcher), on the orders of Daemon Targaryen. Claimed to be “a son for a son,” in revenge for Aemond Targaryen killing Lucerys Velaryon in House of the Dragon season 1’s ending, it promises to be not only the show’s most horrific moment yet, but also outdo Game of Thrones.
Blood & Cheese Will Be Even More Horrifying Than Game Of Thrones’ Worst Deaths
Even just on its most base level, Blood and Cheese takes Game of Thrones’ “anyone can die” mantra to an extreme: the beheading of a small child. But then add in everything around it, and it becomes so much worse. Blood and Cheese bound and gag Alicent Hightower, and kill her bedmaid, while waiting for Helaena to bring her kids in to see their grandmother. They then force Helaena Targaryen to choose between her two sons (Maelor being the other, younger son), while making threats of sexual assault against her daughter, Jaehaera. When Helaena eventually breaks and chooses Maelor, they kill Jaehaerys instead.
Blood and Cheese is effectively a combination of the two most shocking moments in Game of Thrones: there’s a building tension and gradually unfolding horror of the Red Wedding, and the unspeakable evil of a child being murdered like with Shireen. As if that weren’t brutal enough, it won’t just end there: Stannis may have (briefly) continued on his self-righteous path after ordering the death of his daughter, but audiences will have to watch Helaena sink into madness before eventually taking her own life. The events are chilling alone, and combined with the aftermath it becomes something truly traumatic.
Blood & Cheese Will Likely Happen In House Of The Dragon Season 2’s First Two Episodes
In George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, Blood and Cheese happens just a few pages after Lucerys’ death. It’s reasonable to assume the TV show will flesh things out considerably, adding greater context and previously unknown details, but it should still happen very early. House of the Dragon season 2 has fewer episodes (eight instead of 10), so needs to hit the ground running. That would likely mean Daemon immediately setting up his “son for a son” revenge plan in episode 1, and the actual act happening either later in that same episode or, perhaps more plausibly (to allow for greater build-up) episode 2.
That will give Blood and Cheese another advantage over Game of Thrones’ most shocking scenes. Most of them happened later in the season, after a lengthy period of table setting. House of the Dragon season 2 won’t even give viewers time to settle in before the chaos and bloodshed begins, akin to Joffrey Baratheon’s death in Game of Thrones season 4, episode 2, except without any of the joy that accompanied that moment.
