‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Episode 6 Surprise Cameo Reveals Daemon

Warning: This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, episode 6.

Harrenhal has so many uninvited guests that it’s a miracle Daemon Targaryen hasn’t left yet.

Until now House of the Dragon season 2, Matt SmithThe Rebel Prince of ‘suffered ghostly apparitions’ A young Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock), his young niece who was named heir to the throne in his place; Lady Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell), his first wife who chose to commit suicide by dragonfire rather than die helplessly in childbirth; and the mother he never knew, Alyssa Targaryen (Emeline Lambert), with whom Daemon decided to have an Oedipal fight between the sheets in that particular vision.

Episode 6 introduces another figure from Season 1 that we thought had disappeared from this world: Rice considineKing Viserys I Targaryen.

Daemon first sees his late brother sitting on the Iron Throne in full health, holding the Valyrian steel sword Blackfyre and wearing his crown, not the decaying husk of a man he eventually became as a result of an illness late in his life.

Viserys berates Daemon for calling his son, who died as a newborn in Season 1, Episode 1, “heir for a day” and for not staying by his side during his rule of Westeros. Viserys appears to Daemon a second time, weeping over the body of his wife, Queen Aemma Targaryen (Sian Brooke). He once again expresses his rage that his brother was not there to support him after Aemma died in childbirth.

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“In Season 1, Daemon Targaryen is an iconic character from the book: He’s kind of a crazy, arrogant, impulsive character and you never know what he’s going to do, but he also feels a little bit closed off,” said Sara Hess, head writer for House of the Dragon with co-creator Ryan Condalsays Entertainment Weekly In an interview earlier this year, she said: “It’s not like he sits there and tells people what he thinks or what he feels about certain things. So in season two, sending him to Harrenhal felt like an opportunity to unstick him a little bit. We could use that to destabilise him enough or externalise things, even symbolically, or to show what’s going on in his heart and mind.”

Alys Rios (Gayle Rankin)The witch-woman of Harrenhal who likes to say he’s an owl cursed to live as a human, becomes Daemon’s pseudo-therapist. In front of the Harrenhal weirwood, the very place where she forebodingly declared Daemon would die, she explains how Viserys never wanted to be king, but did the best he could. She says that Daemon, who actively plots to steal his wife’s crown, is unfit for the job. The crown, she points out, is not a prize to be won, but a burden to bear.

“Daemon is not going to go to therapy,” Hess jokes. “He’s not going to sit there and say, ‘I feel like I lost my mother when I was two. ’ It just seemed like a really cool, interesting way to get into Daemon’s psyche, almost against his will.”

Speaking previously to EW On the surprise return of Alcock’s Rhaenyra, Condal said of Daemon’s appearances: “Rather than wars or dragons or images of horror, it was actually more like he was being tormented by these people he had treated badly in his past, particularly young Rhaenyra. That’s the girl who took up his claim, not the older Rhaenyra, played by Emma D’Arcy“It’s that version of Rhaenyra that removed him as heir to the throne, and then was named heir and took her right. As you’ll see her story play out at Harrenhal, there’s an element of Daemon having to deal with his past and the choices he’s made and the things he’s done.”

The penultimate episode of House of the Dragon Season 2 premieres Sunday, July 28, followed by the season finale on Sunday, August 4.