Game of Thrones (TV Program)

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      ‘House of the Dragon’: Elliott and Luke Tittensor on That Brutal Duel

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      Episode 2 pit brother against brother, in more ways than one. The two actors, identical twins, talked about the intensity of that climactic fight scene.This interview contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 2 of “House of the Dragon.”“One soul in two bodies.” That’s how Ser Arryk Cargyll (Luke Tittensor), sworn member of the Kingsguard of Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), refers to himself and his identical twin, Erryk (Elliott Tittensor). But Ser Erryk is now a member of the Queensguard, knights dedicated to the service of Aegon’s half sister and rival for the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy). With this week’s episode, their lifelong unity comes to a bloody end.In Episode 2 of “House of the Dragon” Season 2, Arryk is dispatched by his vindictive commander, Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), to infiltrate Rhaenyra’s stronghold, Dragonstone, and assassinate her while posing as his own twin, one of her personal protectors. The ruse is exposed in horrific fashion when brother attacks brother; Erryk triumphs and saves his queen but kills himself rather than live with the pain of the act. As an allegory for the senseless squandering of human life in Rhaenyra and Aegon’s so-called Dance of the Dragons, it is a hard one to miss.Yet, when it comes time to thank the actors for a chance to pick their brains about their brutal final duel for the fate of Queen Rhaenyra, I catch myself referring to their brain, singular. It speaks to the effectiveness of the Tittensor twins’ work as the doomed knights that their “one soul in two bodies” mentality is catching.The brothers are self-effacing about having landed these pivotal roles, though. “I’m not sure how big the pool of identical twins that they had to look in was, but when our agents came knocking about the job, we already had the long hair and the beards,” Elliott said in a joint video call on Thursday. “In their eyes, we were pretty much ready to step into it.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.I’m never quite sure whether to offer my congratulations or my condolences in interviews like these.LUKE TITTENSOR We’re happy about it! To be involved with a project of this kind, and then to be able to portray a twins relationship in such an amazing world, a world that we’re fans of … These sorts of jobs in this industry are few and far between.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap: Sleep With One Eye Open

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      Aemond knows those assassins got the wrong prince. He says he feels flattered. He had also better watch his back.Season 2, Episode 2Not even Rhaenyra Targaryen can believe what she’s seeing.This woman has flown through the sky on the back of a dragon. She has seen lords kneel at her feet, only to rise against her years later. She has lost a child in her fight for the Iron Throne and recoiled to learn that another was killed in her child’s name. But watching Erryk and Arryk Cargyll (Elliott and Luke Tittensor), two identical twin knights, locked in a battle to the death in her own bedroom, with the outcome to decide whether she lives or dies? You can see it on the face of the actor Emma D’Arcy: Not even in Rhaenyra’s wildest dreams did she see this one coming.This ability to shock — not in the gross-out sense, although this is often the case as well, but rather in the sense of a sudden, severe surprise — is the greatest strength “House of the Dragon” possesses. Civil wars are often said to be battles of brother against brother; fantasy can make the metaphorical literal. What better way to illustrate the senseless brutality of warfare than by having two men who look and sound exactly alike, who love each other, who say they are one soul in two bodies, perish in a brutal murder-suicide that achieves exactly nothing?The entire affair is a sordid one, something Ser Arryk never should have been asked by Ser Criston, his lord commander, to carry out. Indeed, Criston did so only as a maladaptive way of venting his sexual frustrations during a moment when his on-again-off-again relationship with Queen Alicent was dialed to off-again. By episode’s end they’re back together and having rough sex — an altogether healthier way of channeling these frustrations, if still an ill-advised coupling overall.Despite the clandestine nature of their relationship, Alicent and Criston are still faring better romantically than Rhaenyra and Daemon. When the Black Queen learns that the young Prince Jaehaerys was murdered and beheaded in his bed, she is outraged that anyone could think she had anything to do with it. She is even angrier when she finds out that she did have something to do with it, despite herself: It was Daemon who, in a reckless attempt to make good on her request for vengeance against Prince Aemond, claimed another child’s life instead.You can’t trust someone like that, Rhaenyra determines — accurately. She dismisses him as “pathetic”; he dismisses himself from her company.Back in King’s Landing, Daemon’s deeds continue to pay gruesome dividends. Both of the men involved in the murder of Jaehaerys are captured and killed, along with a score of innocent men whose only crime was to serve as palace rat catchers alongside one of the assassins. When his grandfather Otto upbraids him for this public-relations blunder, King Aegon — who for all his faults is genuinely devastated by the death of his young son — fires him as the king’s hand and replaces him with Ser Criston — a man of action compared with the scheming but restrained Otto but also the most tightly wound man in Westeros. There are literal dragons who would make better hands.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Premiere: What Was That Ending About?

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      Fans of the George R.R. Martin books know there are two words for that tense and slightly ambiguous ending to the Season 2 premiere: “Blood and Cheese.”This article contains major spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of HBO’s “House of the Dragon.”It may not be the Red Wedding. But “Blood and Cheese” — as fans of the George R.R. Martin books call the closing event in Sunday’s episode of “House of the Dragon” — is likely to be a major Westeros water cooler moment. It’s shocking. It’s brutal. And it has a cool nickname (though viewers who haven’t read the books might wonder what the heck it means).The Season 2 premiere served up Blood and Cheese on a platter, but for those just catching up, it may be hard to be certain of what just happened. So what just happened?Who are Blood and Cheese?Blood (played by Sam C. Wilson) is a member of the City Watch, the security force that Daemon once headed up in King’s Landing. (Blood’s counterpart in the books is a former member who lost his post for killing a prostitute.) Cheese (Mark Stobbart) is a Red Keep rat catcher who enjoys snacking on dairy products as much as his quarry does. Blood and Cheese aren’t referred to as such in the Season 2 premiere. Anyway their true names are lost, according to the historians of “Fire and Blood,” the Martin book on which “House of the Dragon” is (mostly) based. In their spare time, these two like long walks through tunnels, loyal dogs, and murder-for-hire.Were there signs this was coming?Yes, plenty. Did you smell a rat in Season 1? The Red Keep wasn’t infested only with rodents. It was thick with clues, too. Each time a rat scurried around the Red Keep — visiting King Viserys (Paddy Considine), crashing a wedding, nibbling a dragon skull — it served as foreshadowing. The creatures give us a guided tour of the castle’s hidden passageways (as do, therefore, their exterminators) and a means of sneaking up on the royal family at its most vulnerable. See the rat lapping up blood at the wedding of young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and Laenor (Theo Nate), one of the most heavy-handed bits of rodent symbolism since the end of “The Departed.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘House of the Dragon’: a Guide to all the Key Characters in Season 2

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      They all have blond hair and the same name. Not really, but close. Behold, a rundown of the key players ahead of the Season 2 premiere.It has been nearly two years since the shadow of dragons’ wings last darkened our screens. When “House of the Dragon,” HBO’s hit “Game of Thrones” prequel based on the book “Fire and Blood” by George R.R. Martin, returns this weekend, its sprawling cast of characters will be prepping for war, the sides distinguished by the color of the banners they fly.The Blacks are led by Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy). Named heir by her father, King Viserys, years earlier, she has seen her claim to the Iron Throne of Westeros usurped by her younger half brother Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney); he and his backers, including his mother, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), are known as the Greens. Now these two women will determine the fate of what remains very much a patriarchal world.Whether you want to pick a team or simply brush up ahead of the Season 2 premiere, airing Sunday on HBO, here is a primer on the major players from both sides of the great dragon divide.Team BlackQueen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy)Long the only child of the late King Viserys Targaryen, Rhaenyra was proclaimed heir by the king in defiance of centuries of tradition that held that only males could rule. She was fine with this, having little use for tradition herself. But Viserys’s marriage to Rhaenyra’s childhood friend Alicent Hightower and the subsequent birth of Aegon created a rift within the royal family. After learning of her father’s death and Aegon’s crowning in the capital city, King’s Landing, Rhaenyra launched her rival reign from House Targaryen’s ancestral island home, Dragonstone.Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith)Daemon (Matt Smith) crowned his wife-niece queen. But not without some trepidation. Ollie Upton/HBOThe mercurial Daemon is Rhaenyra’s uncle, second husband and king-consort. He is also the reason she was named heir in the first place: Viserys feared what he might do with the power of the crown if he inherited it. Bonded with the sinuous red dragon Caraxes, he is the most experienced and dangerous dragon-riding warrior in the realm. His devotion to Rhaenyra’s cause, however, can give way to insubordination and abusive behavior.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Review: It’s a Waiting Game

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      The second season of HBO’s very successful “Game of Thrones” prequel gets off to an earthbound start.Diplomacy versus violence. Dignity versus unbridled passion. Duty versus the selfish desire for revenge.Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be about dragons?HBO sent critics four of the eight episodes of the second season of “House of the Dragon,” its “Game of Thrones” spinoff. For three and three-quarters of those four hours, we are in one of this highly rated fantasy franchise’s less interesting regions: the land of the medieval civics lesson. Small Councils meet. Allies are recruited. Rivals for the throne strut and fret. When battles do start to break out, they take place offscreen.The two shows (based on the novels of George R.R. Martin) have traditionally used palace intrigue leavened with sex to fill the gaps between expensive scenes of mass violence and close-up dragon action. But nearly half a season is a long time to wait for the flames to fly.“Thrones,” which ended in 2019 after eight blockbuster seasons, compensated with the epic scale and sadistic frisson of its treachery and debauchery. It also had one great performance, by Peter Dinklage as the noble dwarf Tyrion Lannister, and big characters stylishly played by actors like Lena Headey, Charles Dance and Jonathan Pryce. And its dragons were truly terrifying beasts.“Dragon,” for all the money HBO has reportedly spent on it, is a more buttoned down and drab affair, a condition that carries into the second season. Besides Eve Best as the dragon-riding matriarch, Princess Rhaenys, and Ewan Mitchell as the fearsome Aemond, no one in the cast rises far enough above the show’s general level of dogged professionalism to make a significant impression. And when they do appear, its dragons look and sound more domesticated.The new season begins with the truculent alpha Targaryens, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), plotting in their respective castles. Rhaenyra, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne — it’s just easier to use the jargon — is in exile with her uncle-husband, Daemon (Matt Smith). Her half brother Aegon sits on the throne and governs like a petulant child, to the consternation of his mother, Alicent (Olivia Cooke), who was Rhaenyra’s best friend until she married Rhaenyra’s father, the previous king.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ian Gelder, ‘Game of Thrones’ Actor, Dies at 74

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      He played Kevan Lannister, the brother of feared patriarch Tywin, and was diagnosed with bile duct cancer five months ago.Ian Gelder, the British actor who capped his half-century career by appearing in the hit series “Game of Thrones” as Kevan Lannister, brother of feared patriarch Tywin Lannister, died on Monday. He was 74.His death was announced by his husband, fellow actor Ben Daniels, who said in a social media post that Mr. Gelder had been diagnosed with bile duct cancer in December. Mr. Gelder’s agent, Daniel Albert, also confirmed his death.Over a 50-year career in television, film and theater, Mr. Gelder appeared in the beloved British sci-fi show “Doctor Who” and its spinoff “Torchwood,” as well as in a television adaptation of “His Dark Materials,” the trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman.He appeared in 12 episodes of “Game of Thrones” as Kevan Lannister, starting in the first season when his character was a military adviser for his older brother, Tywin, as the House Lannister battled House Stark.He reprised the role in the fifth season as a player in the power struggle that resulted from Tywin’s death. Kevan Lannister was killed off at the end of the sixth season alongside many other characters when Cersei Lannister blew up the Sept of Baelor.Born June 3, 1949, Mr. Gelder began appearing in television shows in the 1970s, including “New Scotland Yard” and “Edward the King.” He also starred in theater productions such as “Gods and Monsters” and “Titus Andronicus” at London’s Globe Theater.He and Mr. Daniels started dating in 1993, when they were both cast in the play “Entertaining Mr. Sloane,” according to IMDb. Mr. Daniels appeared in “The Crown” and a 2016 television adaptation of “The Exorcist.”Information about Mr. Gelder’s survivors was not immediately available.His final TV appearance was this year, on an episode of “Father Brown.” More

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      Why Are People Obsessed With TV Finales ‘Sticking the Landing’?

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      As “Curb Your Enthusiasm” gets ready to exit, it’s time to let go of the idea that a story’s ending determines its final score.Larry David is just fine with how “Seinfeld” ended. OK, I can’t read his mind — but “Larry David,” the version of himself he plays on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is cool with that much-maligned finale. He insisted on it, vehemently, during a season of “Curb” that was almost entirely about a fictional do-over of the landmark sitcom he created with Jerry Seinfeld.“We didn’t screw up a finale!” he insisted. “That was a good finale!”The actual Larry David may be sanguine about repeating the experience of “Seinfeld.” The 12th and final season of “Curb” has even been steering toward a similar scenario, with TV Larry facing a trial, much as his earlier series ended.But the rest of the viewership is more likely to look at the final episode the way we have become conditioned to view a series finale: as a high-stakes, legacy-defining challenge. Will we laugh with it or at it? Will it cement the series’s place in history or tarnish it? Will it — say it with me now — stick the landing?Ugh. There are plenty of clichés in TV criticism, and I am not immune to using them. But “stick the landing” is one that awakens my cantankerous inner Larry David — not just because it is an overused phrase, but because of what it says about art and endings and what matters in both.The term, of course, comes from gymnastics, part of a creeping sportsification of pop-culture criticism that has also given us assorted TV power rankings and myriad March Madness-style brackets. (Didn’t arts nerds spend enough time getting stuffed into lockers by jocks without having to live inside their language, too?)Applied to TV, sticking the landing suggests that a finale is the equivalent of a vaulter’s dismount. The concentrated force of narrative momentum is channeled into a moment of impact, and the series either hits the mat firmly or shatters a leg. It’s the difference between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Game of Thrones’ Star Liam Cunningham Is Now in ‘3 Body Problem’

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      Born and raised in Dublin, Liam Cunningham speaks in Joycean streams of consciousness that often have no discernible beginning, middle or end. He talks with his hands and taps his feet, salting his anecdotes with friendly F-bombs, catching his breath only long enough to take a puff of his distinctively scented e-cigarettes. They aren’t very popular on the set.“They smell like if you took the cardboard that comes with a dry cleaned shirt and held it over a burner,” said D.B. Weiss, who, with his production partner David Benioff, has given Cunningham choice roles in “Game of Thrones” and now “3 Body Problem.” A heady new science-fiction series, based on a trilogy of novels by the Chinese author Liu Cixin, “3 Body Problem” premieres Thursday on Netflix.In it, Cunningham plays Thomas Wade, the no-nonsense spy master who leads a team of physicists chosen to save the world from a very slow-moving but ominous alien invasion. Unlike Davos Seaworth, the emotionally vulnerable knight Cunningham played in “Thrones,” Wade is gruff, bellicose and secretive, an enigmatic authority figure whose back story left even Cunningham with questions.With Benedict Wong, right, on “3 Body Problem,” Cunningham plays a no-nonsense spy master who leads a team of physicists.Ed Miller/Netflix“So little about him is known, and everybody you talk to that’s seen this thing is like, ‘What’s his story?’” Cunningham said on an Austin hotel patio during the South by Southwest Film Festival, where the series had its world premiere. “He’s got the U.N. Secretary General on the end of the phone, and people do what he tells them to, and you go, ‘Who’s giving him this authority?’ And the funny thing is, I never felt the need to talk to the boys” — Weiss and Benioff, that is — “they never offered, and I never asked, which probably is not a good thing to say, I should probably say to everybody, ‘Oh, I know everything about him, but I’m not telling you.’”Breath. Puff.Cunningham, 62 with salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes, came to acting relatively late in life. He worked as an electrician until he was 29, spending a chunk of his 20s in Zimbabwe bringing electricity to rural communities. “You know the song ‘Wichita Lineman’?” he asks, referring to the ’60s country hit by Glen Campbell. “That was me, except I was the Zimbabwe lineman. For an Irish, pale-skinned elf from Dublin, it was mind-blowing.” For a time he worked in a national park, “the size of Belgium and with 16,000 elephants.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More