'House of the Dragon' Season 2 premiere includes one of the most shocking — and long-dreaded — scenes (2024)

🚨 Warning: This story has spoilers for the Season Two premiere of "House of the Dragon."

The kids are not all right in “House of the Dragon.”

The Season One finale episode from 2022 ended with the death of a child. Now, in the Season Two premiere of the HBO series —a prequel to “Game of Thrones” — concluded with another jarring murder done in the spirit of an eye for an eye. Or, as Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) puts it, “A son for a son.”

This storyline — nicknamed “Blood and Cheese” after the two assassins who carried out the murder — is one of the most brutal in George R. R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones” books, and was long-dreaded by those familiar.

“House of the Dragon” is set nearly 200 years before the events of “Game of Thrones” and follows a civil war over succession that shaped the landscape HBO viewers knew and loved from the original show.

On one side are supporters of Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), known as the Blacks, who believe her father, the late King Viserys, intended his firstborn to be his successor, as he commanded when she was a child. On the other are the Greens, those who believe Viserys’ son with Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), is the rightful heir.

The murder of Rhaenyra’s second son, Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault), carried out by Viserys and Alicent’s second son, Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), in the Season One finale is widely considered the start of the Dance of the Dragons, or the civil war. It’s the culmination of a yearslong rivalry that began when Lucerys blinded Aemond in one eye in a fight.

So here’s how one child murder sets the show up for another.

What happens to Jaehaerys Targaryen? Explaining 'Blood and Cheese'

In this Season Two premiere episode, which picks up shortly after Aemond killed Lucerys, the Greens are aware that an attack could be coming. Alicent says she wants Vhagar, Aemond’s dragon, home to deter Rhaenyra from attacking in retribution from the death of her son.

Alicent’s instincts are right. Daemon, Rhaenyra’s husband (and uncle — if you know, you know), is initially targeting Aemond. Plus, Rhaenyra, after discovering the remains of her son, declares, “I want Aemond Targaryen.”

So how does Aemond wind up alive and young Jaehaerys Targaryen brutally murdered?

It starts when Daemon recruits assassins to carry out the slaying of Aemond.

First, a spy named Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), who goes by the White Worm and is also Daemon’s former lover, connects him to a former butcher-turned guard, nicknamed Blood. Then he recruits a rat catcher, nicknamed Cheese, who has a knowledge of the palace’s tunnels. In exchange, Daemon promises Mysaria a way out of King’s Landing and the rat catcher enough money to pay off his debts.

Cheese asks Daemon, “What if we can’t find (Aemond)?”

The answer becomes clear when Blood and Cheese enter the Red Keep, and neither knows where to find a royal.

They head upstairs to where the royal family lives, and as Blood goes from empty room to empty room, he encounters a handmaid and pretends to be a rat catcher. Meanwhile, Cheese finds Helaena (Phia Saban), Aegon’s wife (and sister), in a room with her two children.

Their target suddenly changes from Aemond to Jaehaerys, Aegon and Helaena’s oldest son who’s only 6.

As Aegon’s heir, Jaehaerys had attended a Small Council meeting earlier in the episode. Aegon makes the environment decidedly uncomfortable when he nearly forces the Master of Coin to let Jaehaerys ride him “like a steed” before Alicent stops him. Jaehaerys is dismissed. The next time we see the 6-year-old, he’s sleeping in bed, not knowing his fate.

At knifepoint, Blood and Cheese force Helaena to indicate which of her children is the oldest son and heir. She tries to give them a necklace instead but is rejected.

Finally, she points to one of her children. Blood doubts she’s truthfully pointing to the heir, but Cheese believes her. They cover the young boy’s mouth to muffle his screaming.

As the assassins murder her son, Helaena flees with her other child. The scene may be less bloody than the famous slaughter of the Red Wedding in “Game of Thrones,” but the sound of knives at work is just as gruesome.

The episode ends with Helaena at Alicent’s bed, telling her what has just happened: “They killed the boy.”

Differences between 'Blood and Cheese' in the book and the show

The “Blood and Cheese” scene in George R. R. Martin’s 2018 novel “Fire & Blood”has a few details the show leaves out.

Daemon, as in the show, puts his vengeance into motion by hiring Blood and Cheese to do his bidding. But in the book, Helaena and her children are the target from the start. Blood and Cheese wait for Helaena and her three children to appear (in the show, she’s with two). This means the children are awake for the ordeal, whereas in the show they are asleep.

Blood and Cheese tell Helaena they want just one son and demand her to choose. At first, she asks them to take her.

“Cheese warned the queen to make a choice soon, before Blood grew bored and raped her little girl,” Martin writes.

Helaena ultimately picks Maelor, her youngest son. The book tries to give insight into her decision.

“Perhaps she thought the boy was too young to understand, or perhaps it was because the older boy, Jaehaerys, was King Aegon’s firstborn son and heir, next in line to the Iron Throne,” the book reads.

Cheese then whispers to Maelor, “You hear that, little boy? Your momma wants you dead.” But he ultimately kills Jaehaerys with a “single blow.”

The book describes Helaena’s descent after the death of her son. She’s unable to care for herself, nor look after Maelor, the son she condemned to death. Alicent raises Maelor while Helaena sinks “deeper and deeper into madness.” Meanwhile, the king “raged, and drank, and raged.”

Blood, in the book, is found, tortured and “allowed to die” after 13 days. Cheese was never found.

Helaena saw this coming with her prophecy

From Season One, Helaena seems to know something bad is coming. Like other Targaryens, Helaena has prophetic sight.

In the eighth episode of Season One, Helaena fears the “beast beneath the boards,” which could describe a rat.

She echoes a fear of rats in the Season Two premiere. “I’m afraid,” she tells Aegon, who replies that the dragons won’t harm her. She’s not afraid of the dragons, she says, but “the rats.”