Episode 5 of “House Of The Dragon” ends with the image of a rat drinking from a pool of blood. This doesn’t have to mean anything – but it could. Because a strong theory is that a brutal event in the future of the series is hinted at here…
At the end of episode 5, a rushed and unglamorous wedding between Rhaenyra Targayren (Milly Alcock) and Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate) occurs in “Game Of Thrones: House Of The Dragon”. Only the closest family members are present as the two say “I do” in the ballroom where Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) has just brutally murdered Laenor’s lover Ser Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod).
The hall is devastated after the brawl, there are still pools of blood on the floor – and a rat drinks from one of them in the last shot of the episode. The most harmless explanation is a metaphor: where blood is spilled, i.e. there is a fight, the “rats”, i.e. the beneficiaries, are soon there to take advantage of it. But the image can also be read as a foreshadowing of a gruesome event that will only occur to those who know the book “Fire and Blood”. Warning, a huge spoiler follows!
SHOCK À LA “RED WEDDING “
If you want to get surprises à la “Red Wedding” or “Ned Stark gets decapitated”, then by all means do not read on after the embedded screenshot. For the curious: The blood and the rat can be understood as teasers for the characters “Blood” and “Cheese”, who will play a dramatic role in the future of the Targaryen family.
Blood & Cheese…
While Blood is a butcher, Cheese is a pied piper (!) – and they both hire themselves out as assassins. With the civil war called the Dance of Dragons in full swing between Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and her now-grown half-brother Aegon (then Tom Glynn-Carney), who is married to his sister Helaena, Daemon (Matt Smith) and Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) hire the duo to assassinate Aegon’s family.
Blood and Cheese sneak through the secret passages of the royal palace, which we already saw in episode 4 when Rhaenyra snuck outside for her nightly outing with Daemon, to the chambers of Helaena (played as an adult by Phia Saban). There they present the mother with a cruel choice as to which of her two sons should be killed.
HELAENA MAKES A CHOICE…
Aegon and his sister-wife Helaena have three children in the book: the twins Jaehaerys and Jaehaera and Maelor. The twins are six years old when Blood & Cheese appear, Maelor is two. Helaena, devastated, decides to kill the younger Maelor – whereupon the assassins kill Jaehaerys, Aegon’s heir to the throne.
This cruel moment is one of the central moments in the conflict between Aegon and his half-sister Rhaenyra, who at the time of Helaena’s assassination is married to her uncle Daemon, who through the assassination wants to avenge the murder of his stepson Lucerys by Aegon’s son Aemond. It can be assumed that we will see the scene in “House Of The Dragon” in a later season – and it may very well be that the blood and the rat at the end of episode 5 were placed as an Easter Egg for all those who already know this disturbing event from the book.
Episode 6 of House Of The Dragon comes to Sky and WOW (formerly Sky Ticket) on 26 September 2022. Find out what happens in the new episode after the big time jump of ten years here:
