House Of The Dragon Episode 6 Felt Like A Second Premiere

thegamer.com:

This article contains spoilers for all released episodes of House of the Dragon.

House of the Dragon's sixth episode, The Princess and the Queen, marked such a fundamental change from the episodes that came before it that it felt like the show started a second season halfway through its first.

The biggest change was obvious from the first shot, in which an older Rhaenyra gave birth to her third son, Joffrey. Immediately after the baby's birth, the child is summoned by Alicent, and Rhaenyra stubbornly and still-bleeding, marches up the stairs to show the infant to the queen herself. With most of this opening scene playing out in extended long takes, House of the Dragon is giving us plenty of time to get accustomed to the fact that Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke have replaced Milly Alcock and Emily Carey as Rhaenyra and Alicent.

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Laenor, now played by John Macmillan, is at Rhaenyra's side and later in the episode we see Laena, now played by Nanna Blondell, with Daemon and their children. We first saw these characters as children, so seeing them now portrayed by actors in their late twenties and thirties brings home the time jump in a striking way.

The older actors grabbing the baton from their younger counterparts was just one of several ways The Princess and the Queen unmoored us from the season's first half. Viserys is still with us — despite the ominous blood loss and portentous collapse of last week's episode — but looks a bit worse for wear. He's missing an arm, his face has gotten wrinkly, his scalp is dotted with liver spots, and his hair looks less like the telltale locks of the Targaryen bloodline and more like Sméagol’s greasy stragglers.

The actor