The Dragon Demands

We think Blood and Cheese actually happens in episode 2, so it might be the title of episode 2. Episode 1 will have Daemon say “a son for a son” as he seeks out blood and cheese.

A new thought: it's possible that Jace & Cregan don't, necessarily, see White Walkers or wights or EVEN GO TO THE WALL... ....but that it's a "flashback"...to JAEHAERYS shutting down the Nightfort. Ending the secret baby sacrifices. Stopping First Night (in a season with the Dragonseeds, there's a strong chance they'll introduce First Night in Season 2). Then the camera turns and we see White Walkers and their zombies snarling from the tree-line at night when they realize their sacrifice isn't coming. THEN Cregan just has to TELL Jace, in Winterfell, "yeah the wildlings are getting restless, as if they're spooked by some danger rising beyond the Wall again". We HAVE heard rumors of Jaehaerys flashbacks in Season 2, we just don't have any idea what they are.

Whatever they're doing with the Wall/Night's Watch/White Walkers, it's not a minor thing. ...I can't rule out if it's a flashback, but if it is, it's a HUGE flashback - the amount of resources they're pouring into this, building a physical Wall set and filming on-location with mounted rangers when they could have just done it on the virtual set. Some have suggested it could be a really long flashback to the Night's King, 13th Lord Commander of the Watch. That is intriguing and I can't rule it out. We haven't seen any actors tied to these scenes yet to establish it's happening in the present day. Still....for myself, I won't believe it's a flashback until something suggests that.

EXTERIOR on-location filming wrapped at Bourne Wood on September 1st, but INTERIOR filming at Leavesden Studios will continue through the last week of September. We won't get nearly as many spy photos from interior filming, though.

Intriguing new info from IMDB: we already knew that Maddie Evans, who played the handmaid Dyana that Aegon II assaulted, is returning in Season 2. But she's in maybe 4 out of 8 episodes - that surprised me. It lists that she's in episodes 1, 3, 5, and 6 - "episode 1" might be in error as that's often a placeholder on IMDB corrected later. The only through-line I can think of is that episodes 3 and 5 will feature those extensive street processions through King's Landing, that we saw filmed in Caceres. My running guess was already that she just left to work at a tavern or something in Flea Bottom. Some theorize she's actually in episode 1 and will tell Blood & Cheese the schedule inside the Red Keep. Others, that she's working on the "Cock's Inn" tavern where Aegon will celebrate Aemond's "victory" over Luke in episode 1. Uncertain.

It depends on what exactly the show is going to say I mean...purely as a hypothetical...what if they have someone outright say in Season 2, "We used to use the Nighfort's secret gate to sacrifice First Night babies to the White Walkers to placate them, but Jaehaerys & Alysanne shut that down, and they've been increasingly active and restless ever since"??? Even this COULD be pure fanfiction, based on theories circulating online or even just Condal's own theories....but...it's a pretty well-crafted one that would align with book info. Yes we need to be vigilant to avoid the assumptions we made in early Game of Thrones that "surely, D&D are only doing things GRRM approved of" (dear god, how hyped we got when we first saw the Night King however briefly in Season 4, that this must by definition be a book revelation). We...shall see.... Best case scenario of course is that GRRM outright admits in interviews during Season 2, "this is true in the books", just as he did with Aegon the Conqueror's prophetic dream.

I made a thread on this that didn’t get approved yet but the short version…maybe they never left. Remember the Black Gate at the Nightfort. At first it seemed that Craster's sacrifices to the Others were tolerated because the Watch was in decline and needed a friendly outpost...but then at the Nighfort we saw there's a secret magical gate through the Wall that will only open for members of the Watch. First Night was very strong in lands close to the Wall and produced a lot of excess bastards. The theory is that this was in fact used to produce a surplus to give as sacrifices to the Others...conducted in secret through the Nighfort's secret gate. Now from HotD, we get the revelation that the Targaryens came to Westeros in the first place to stop the White Walkers...and ended up provoking them. Motivated by a prophetic dream in a closed time loop of Greek tragedy (Hodor). Thus the White Walkers never went FULLY dormant, but at least some scouts were around to accept the sacrifices. The Targaryens put an end to First Night AND the sacrifices (the real reason Nighfort was closed) which angered the White Walkers (the scouts roused all of them) Why didn't they attack immediately after 58 AC when Alysanne banned those? Well....it's possible that their scouts return cyclically, like for a generation every hundred years. When you look at the list of 8 legends Old Nan told Bran about the Night Fort, they all seem to imply that the White Walkers were still active ever since (particularly "the Thing That Came In The Night" heavily implies that child sacrifice happened every 100 years, and lines up with that the Night King allegedly ruled 100 years after the Wall was founded). Thus it's possible that they were simply in a "dormant" phase when the Nightfort was shut down, so their reaction wasn't immediate....combined with the fact that the Targaryens were then at the height of their power, with a large number of dragons, and they're particularly vulnerable to dragon-fire. So why didn't they come back as soon as the last dragon died? Well, the Targaryens still had EGGS, and could potentially hatch them. Several kings since then thought it was entirely possible to restore the dragons....culminating in the Tragedy at Summerhall, when Aegon V's last big attempt to hatch the remaining dragon eggs ended in disaster. That was a mere 40 years ago....and Craster's been sacrificing baby sons to the Others for around that long (though he might have started before Summerhall). Consider that the White Walkers' return wasn't just flipping a switch but took time: the wildlings "stirring" beyond the Wall in reaction to their gradual return took a couple of years prior to AGoT itself, it took time for Mance to unite them all in reaction to that. Hard to say but if the Children of the Forest with greensight are any indication, it's possible the White Walkers know a decent amount of what's going on south of the Wall (if the theory they can touch Bran's and Euron's dreams is true). So Summerhall might have roused them...and PARTICULARLY the fall of the Targaryens in Robert's Rebellion. With no Targaryens or known eggs left IN WESTEROS, they'd have thought the time was right to come back with no dragons, dragon eggs, or even people who knew how to hatch dragon eggs in Westeros anymore....not realizing that the last Targaryen, Daenerys, would survive on a different continent and end up hatching preserved eggs there.

Actually, your grace, there’s spy photos of a big invented subplot at the Wall and a column of mounted Night’s Watch rangers and everything. ***The mere fact that they're putting so much effort into this - building real full sets and location shooting with mounted rangers - when they COULD have just green-screened it on the virtual set....heavily implies that this isn't a short sequence. If it was a cameo in a dream or flashback they'd have used the virtual set. And they can't flash back to both Wights and the Wall with Night's Watch men...like a flashback to the War for the Dawn....because the Wall was only really built AFTER the fighting had ended. ...I wouldn't rule out a flashback to the 13th Lord Commander at the Nightfort, but I doubt it. But no, I'm seeing the glass as half full: maybe GRRM wanted to show the first stirring of the White Walkers back to full activity beyond the Wall?

SPY PHOTOS CONFIRM ON-SCREEN RETURN OF WHITE WALKERS IN HOTD SEASON 2 https://redanianintelligence.com/2023/09/08/house-of-the-dragon-season-2-may-include-the-undead/

The Night's Watch returns This isn't too shocking since we already saw a set for the top of the Wall at Leavesden Studios, but the past few days we saw set dressers filling part of Bourne Wood with fake snow, so we suspected it was either Winterfell or the Wall itself, part of Jace's storyline. But now it looks like we've got amazingly clear footage for a ranging company of the Night's Watch, riding by tourists.

Spy photos indicate we’ll physically see Tyrosh in season 2

FAKE SNOW DRESSING TEAMS HAVE BEEN SPOTTED IN BOURNE WOOD. Probably woods in the North around Winterfell.

Not much earth-shattering news came out in the past week, though we got nice spy photos of scenes we already know are in Season 2 from the filming down at Bourne Wood in Surrey: https://redanianintelligence.com/2023/08/16/criston-cole-gwayne-hightower-filming-house-of-the-dragon-season-2/ VERY good spy photos of the Lannister army arriving at Golden Tooth and being greeted by riders from House Lefford. Leads to the question of whether the Battle of Red Fork will happen this season, or more probably, they'll end the season on the cliffhanger that "oh no, the main Westerlands army just invaded the Riverlands, the war is entering a bigger phase now, not just consolidating local vassals" but leave it for Season 3? Increasingly good spy photos of the Battle of Rook's Rest, showing what's blatantly a dragon crash site, director Alan Taylor himself (confirming what we already heard from other leaks that he's directing episode 4, which this is in), and very clear shots of heraldry - from Crownlands Houses that bent the knee to the Hightowers and joined their army such as Rosby and Darklyn. Also one or two not very revealing spy photos of Fabien Frankel (Criston Cole), Freddie Fox (Gwayne Hightower), and...Eddie Eyrie? Eyre played Gerold Hightower in Game of Thrones and we suspect he's Ormund Hightower in HotD (but can't confirm that).....this leans against the hypothesis that he's Ormund. What would he do, fight Rook's Rest only to race back to Oldtown? Maybe he's a different Hightower, though.

According to Redanian Intelligence, HotD Season 2 just cast actress Abigail Thorn in an unknown role. While she is an actor, Thorn also runs the YouTube channel "Philosophy Tube Live". Abigal Thorn came out two years ago as a Transgender Woman: Moreover, just two days ago she made a post on Twitter showing off extensive weight-training she'd been doing for months for an upcoming TV role....so apparently, this is a physically intensive role: My suspicion is that Abigail Thorn has been cast as a Jogos Nhai mercenary from the Triarchy. This has actually been a suggestion floating around for years: "how would a Trans character ever be included?" Well, without breaking the lore, yeah, the Jogos Nhai simply have different concepts of gender, like many real life cultures: Basically, Dragon Age already did something similar. .....ON THE OTHER HAND, some are theorizing that Thorn has been cast as Sabitha Vypren. On the basis that last year Thorn actually played a lesbian warrior in another project. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/sep/22/the-prince-review-southwark-playhouse ON YET THE OTHER HAND, others have pointed out to be on Reddit that Thorn might be weight training for her upcoming role in Star Wars: Acolyte, so that might be irrelevant to her role on HotD.

I wouldn't mind hyping up the Wall and the Starks in the trailers; I mean, we didn't really get to see the Starks in Season 1, this is their big introduction in this prequel era. Who else would people really get hyped for who hasn't appeared yet? We know the Arryns and Tullys are in Season 2 but they're not as much of a draw...

...I've been thinking on this a lot: Dare we hope that House of the Dragon will try to explain why the White Walkers are returning specifically now, after 8,000 years of dormancy? Or maybe not specifically "why", but that you'd JUST start seeing them becoming active again....I didn't think of this, but the theory is, what if they quickly introduced some sort of "proto-Craster" wildlings? I doubt Craster was the only wildling to supply them with infant sons, or even the first. Who knows how far back they started slowly stirring in the farthest north? ....I'd be okay with it so long as GRRM is okay with it. I mean....I think we can tell the difference between "gratuitous fanservice" and "an honest attempt to tie the lore together". I.e. If Season 1 just showed "hey, that Valyrian steel dagger Arya killed the Night King with used to belong to the Targaryen kings", that would be fanservice on its own, but "revelation that Aegon the Conqueror actually forged the Iron Throne after a prophetic dream of the White Walkers' return"...is actually "adding to the lore". ....If they DO briefly appear or cameo or something, it can't just be... "checking off a box" but "adding to the lore".

Ah, new spy photos from Redanian Intelligence from filming in Bourne Wood, Surrey, of the LANNISTER army: https://redanianintelligence.com/2023/08/07/house-of-the-dragon-films-lannister-scenes-for-season-2/ Nothing very specific, just that you see a column of Lannister cavalry riding up to meet two riders bearing Lefford heraldry. They must be massing to enter the Riverlands - I think we'll see the opening Battle of Red Fork by the end of the season. But on a general level it's interesting how they're handling Lannister armor: it's actually trying to look like an earlier version of the Lannister armor seen in Game of Thrones (and they're made by the SAME armorer, Simon Brindle!)....but more...realistic? Less fancy. Because if you think about it season one barely featured Houses with familiar distinctive designs for soldiers like Starks and Lannisters, the Hightower and Velaryon armor is very different.

Oh that would be pretty cool. There's no other behind the scenes leaks about this. Just that one day the spy drone guys noticed "wow, this is obviously the Wall"

Because I was specifically told not to share them, but they’re circulating in private. I’ve seen photos taken of the pages. I won’t repeat anything they didn’t say in public other than “I believe them”. in other news, Redanian just identified one of the other two lords along with “Martin Reyne”, the black actor, as “Eddard Waters”. So he’s not a Hightower bastard. I’ve speculated before…is he Marston Waters? Renamed? Or have the silent dove Velaryons been condensed to Vaemond’s bastard? or perhaps is their take that Marston WAS a Velaryon bastard? Book mentions in passing he’s from Driftmark

Basically....for lack of a better term, there's a "heraldry porn" scene, when Daemon is surveying the Riverlord armies assembling at Harrenhal. The actual script page describes all of their heraldry in loving detail, like a dozen minor lords.

I increasingly doubt it. Unless they do something weird.

Ah, multiple leaks have pretty much confirmed the director schedule now: Episode 1 - Alan Taylor Episode 2 - Clare Kilner (Blood & Cheese) Episode 3 - Geeta Patel Episode 4 - Alan Taylor (Rook's Rest) Episode 5 - Clare Kilner Episode 6 - Andrij Parekh Episode 7 - Loni Peristere (Sowing of the Dragonseeds) Episode 8 - Geeta Patel This made more sense after it was pointed out that Loni Peristere has a lot of experience working with VFX scenes, which will be prominent in the Sowing (he was seen in spy photos of the Sowing). As of yet, even the spy community isn't really sure what the end point of Season 2 is supposed to be at episode 8. But I will say, I haven't heard any rumors I didn't like as a book fan. Not yet anyway.

...it looks more like, rather than introduce multiple new locations, we won't actually see Riverrun - something like that Oscar Tully will come as an ENVOY to Daemon at HARRENHAL, to explain "look our grandfather is a Green supporter but he's on his deathbed, we'll have to wait for him to die to openly declare for Rhaenyra". Why build two sets? Why Oscar but not Elmo or Kermit? I don't know. It's possible that Elmo and Kermit are there AS WELL but just weren't on the sheet we saw.

Maybe they're going for name recognition with a general audience

Some brave beautiful bastard got their hands on some casting sheets. Jeyne Arryn confirmed. also Oscar Tully. background Riverlands soldiers identified by heraldry will introduce even more from books like Darry, Piper, VANCE