House of the Dragon
Well this is sort of a weird one. On this week’s House of the Dragon, we saw Aemond make a power play against his brother Aegon in the midst of a thrilling aerial dragon battle over Rook’s Rest. He blasted him with Rhagar’s fire, which sent the injured Sunfyre spiraling down and either killing or crippling Aegon, from the looks of it.
But…Aemond’s actor, Ewan Mitchell, said in an interview with EW that he thinks this was actually ambiguous. That we’re not supposed to know if Aemond did it on purpose or not:
“I think that maybe Aemond would never have intended to burn Aegon, but it just so happened that Aegon was there tangled with Rhaenys and Meleys when he was on top of Sunfyre. It raises the question of whether or not he would've done that or if Aegon was just collateral damage. I think that's compelling. Maybe it was when Aegon brought in the Pink Dread [as children] when Aemond was like, ‘I'm going to burn him one day for this.’ Who knows?”
Who knows? I mean, I thought we were very much supposed to know, and I’m confused by his statement. In the book, it does appear that Aemond burning Aegon was collateral damage, but it felt like a significant change they were making it pretty explicit that it was on purpose here. So why is Mitchell saying this?
House of the Dragon
My original theory was that perhaps Mitchell did not actually watch the episode, rather he’s just remembering his time filming it. I wondered if he did a few different takes of this scene, perhaps one where the intent is clearly there, another where it’s more ambiguous, and maybe he was told that’s how it was supposed to be. But then director Alan Taylor echoes the same thought:
“We wanted to sustain multiple motivations that might have happened there. It's a battle move, but he did deliberately join the battle late, and he is being a little bit indiscriminate with how he's blasting fire. So I think you can believe whatever you want to believe about his motivations there.”
Again, this makes no sense. Everyone who watched this episode very much thought it was clear that Aemond did this on purpose. I think he took advantage of the moment and realized he could make it look like an accident, as only the dragonriders were witnesses. But then things get weirder when it looks like he’s either going to execute Aegon, his dragon or both with his sword, before Criston Cole gets there and stops him. So I’m not sure how they’re explaining that away.
This is just very weird. I don’t get why both the actor and director are trying to say this is ambiguous when we saw what we saw in that moment. But either way, the end result is the same, I suppose, and Aemond’s power is now surging, no matter the fate of his brother.
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