REVIEW: ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Episode 4 — “The Red Dragon And The Gold”

Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) claim to the throne has come under compounding threat. The lords she amassed to accept her claim are beginning to leave, thanks to Otto Hightower’s (Rhys Ifans) last act as Hand of the King. Daemon (Matt Smith) is now the ruler of the dilapidated and clearly haunted Harenhall. But the only saving grace is that Rhaenyra has found something larger to fight for beyond the crown, which means the dragons are loosed. In House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4, the war finally begins. Or at the very least, in the magnitude that has been teased since the series’s opening.

In Rhaenyra and Daemon’s absence, Rhaenys (Eve Best) tries to steady the Black Council as Cole mounts a campaign into the Crownlands. And then, it all falls apart. The most important element of the episode is that it is something that no one, the Blacks or the Greens, can return from without devastating results.

House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 gives audiences a look at Alicent (Olivia Cooke), tortured by the truth. She reads, and when she speaks with Larys, we see the guilt she feels for misinterpreting Viserys’s last words. Alicent is simultaneously at her most resolved as she aborts Criston Cole’s child and then at her most vulnerable as she learns more about The Song of Ice and Fire. This is a war waged around a mistake, leaving the moral ground that Alicent believed she stood on in ruin.

If one thing is shown in this episode, Aegon (Ty Tennant) was never fit to be king. With the temper of a petulant child, he isn’t even calling the shots for his armies. Instead, his brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) coordinates with Ser Criston’s (Fabien Frankel) land campaign. Aemond is more reserved when using his dragon Vhagar, aiming to lead from behind instead of from the front. Like Rhaenyra, he is the only one of the Small Court in King’s Landing who understands the devastating power of dragons. All of this works to stir the reality that Alicent was wrong.

But the core of this episode isn’t on Alicent or Daemon, as he becomes even more bewitched in the halls of Harenhall. It’s about war. Criston Cole, the inept Hand of the King, has felled castles across the Crownlands, and now the Greens are on Rook’s Rest’s doorstep. A significant pinch point, Rook’s Rest, is also what marks the first time that dragons have been sent to war. It’s a battle, unlike the Burning Mill. It is a fight that can’t be undone, with a brutality that is epic in scale and spectacle yet somber in the future foreshadows.

In the build-up to the battle at Rook’s Rest, the narrative is viewed through different focal points. For the Greens, it’s through Aemond, Aegon, and their tense relationship. For the Blacks, Princess Rhaenys settles her affairs and rides into battle because she is the only one who can. In a stellar closing episode for the most iconic character of the series, Rhaenys asks her husband, Lord Corlys (Steve Toussaint), to lift up the son he had out of wedlock, steadies the men of the small table and ensures that the Greens will feel just as much devastation as the Blacks will when she successfully fells Aegon.

As Rhaenys enters the battle, she does so with a heavy heart. She is attacking family, and on the back of Meleys, she directs her to combat with a solemn expression—one that runs counter to Aegon’s cry of Dracarys as the fight begins. Aemond meets the battle with a steeled temperament that solidifies him as both the better choice for king than his brother and a true menace for the Blacks. Rhaenys, however, is the victor when it comes to emotional impact in this episode. She runs toward death without any cowardice or hesitation.

The battle of Rook’s Rest is excruciatingly detailed. The series’ production design has been substantial, to say the least. However, no battlefield has been as intricately imagined and executed as the one seen at the close of House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4. The battlefield is scorched, the ashen bodies of soldiers on both sides fading in the wind.

This is not a battle that people can win. It’s one that will be fought in the sky. Even though Aemond mentions that dragons will fight behind the men who lead the way, the fallout of his battle with his brother and Rhaenys shows how small all men are. This isn’t a civil war so much as it is a war of a family with petty lords caught under their wings.

Simply put, House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 is an astonishing feat. The narrative payoff of the series is captured in Rhaenys’s battle in the sky. This is the most we have seen of dragons, and their screeching collisions have solidified “The Red Dragon and the Gold” as one of the best battles in the franchise. More importantly, it’s a moment that captures the fantasy and awe promised by looking to the time before the events of Game of Thrones. This is everything I have been waiting for from House of the Dragon. 

But the Dance of the Dragons isn’t just gorgeous special effects—the best the franchise has had up to this point—it’s also deeply emotional. In a franchise where death comes for every character sooner or later, one can only hope it comes for your favorite character on the back of a dragon after a fierce battle. But Rhaenys’ death is a cavernous one. Her steady hand had held Rhaenyra still when in the throws of anger, and more importantly, she was the most experienced in both battles on the backs of dragons. Her death will be felt across the rest of the season.

As Sunfyre, Meleys, and Vhagar fight each other, the screeching of dragons is absolutely painful. It’s a tense sequence scored by music that rises and falls like the dragons. Their pained cries add to the atmosphere, and the impending doom following Vhagar‘s tail is showstopping.

Twice as large as any of the dragons we’ve seen, the scale we see is unlike anything in the franchise, let alone the series so far. It is epic, with the soldiers running beneath them, hoping to escape their shadow. The soldier’s minuscule size compared to Vhagar is shot in a way that elicits the best of Kaiju sequences. To show proportion and to build dread, you must do so by showing absolute scale.

House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 is a perfect episode. It’s one where big events don’t just happen but are felt, rippling across the story forward and backward, pulling everything into focus. Painful in parts, the gravity of the horrors Rhaenyra has loosed upon the world by choosing violence to match Aegon’s is brutally captured, setting the stage for the season’s future without exposition lighting the way. Rhaenyra’s loss at Rook’s Rest is a massive setback in her plan for the war, but if there were ever to be a martyr to unite people, it is Princess Rhaenys.

House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 is streaming now on MAX (formerly HBO Max), with new episodes every Sunday.