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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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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Slave Play’ and ‘Orphan Black: Echoes’

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      HBO airs a documentary about the playwright Jeremy O. Harris. A new show starring Krysten Ritter premieres on AMC.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, June 17-23. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). “The Great British Bake Off” has taught us about jaffa cakes, brandy snaps and sachertorte, but this reality show focuses on all things American. Eight contestants from different regions around the U.S. compete for the title by preparing their prized signature dishes that represent them and where they are from.TuesdayMarilyn Monroe, left, and Jane Russell in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”20th Century FoxGENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953) 9 p.m. on TCM. Marilyn Monroe stars as Lorelei, a showgirl engaged to Gus, much to the disapproval of Gus’s father. When Lorelei goes on a cruise with her best friend Dorothy (Jane Russell), her future father-in-law hires a private investigator to follow her and make sure she doesn’t do anything unbecoming. Though Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times that the “direction is uncomfortably cloddish and slow,” he noted that “subtle backlash of burlesque banter not only tags the brand of wit that flows with old-fashioned charm through the picture, but pointedly explains the buoyancy and survival of the young ladies in this bumptious film.”HERE TO CLIMB 9 p.m. on HBO. Sasha DiGiulian’s climbing career began at the age of 7, and over the years, she has scaled Big Wall in Brazil and the Misty Wall in Yosemite National Park. This documentary follows her ascent, literal and figurative.WednesdayTOP CHEF 9 p.m. on Bravo. While this season has mostly taken place in Wisconsin, the three finalists are setting sail on a cruise ship from Curacao, with Caribbean themed challenges on deck. For the finale, Dan, Danny and Savannah are going to compete with six eliminated contestants joining them to act as sous chefs. There are tons of fish in the sea, but only one can take home the title.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 Recap: Killing in the Name Of

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      The second season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel opens with an illicit affair and a misguided act of revenge.Season 2, Episode 1: ‘A Son for a Son’King Viserys is dead. Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) is deposed. Aegon Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), the Second of His Name, sits the Iron Throne. Well, not so much sits as slouches — drunkenly, at that.With his frat-bro buddies lounging around him, equally in their cups, the newly crowned King of Westeros brags about his baby brother’s loyalty and complains about the flowery nickname bestowed upon him by the heralds, Aegon the Magnanimous. “No one knows what ‘magnanimous’ means,” he complains. A buddy suggests “Aegon the Generous” as an alternative, to general acclaim.But all around the wastrel king and his inebriated mates, the still-sharp swords of the sprawling Iron Throne bristle with danger. And the men are too busy making merry to notice the pair of child killers skulking across the throne room at that very moment, hiding in plain sight.This blend of comedy and cruelty, human foibles and inhuman violence, sums up the “House of the Dragon” project pretty neatly.This season, the very popular prequel to HBO’s world-bestriding fantasy colossus “Game of Thrones” — both shows are based on books set within the imagined world of Westeros by the author and co-creator George R.R. Martin — is shepherded by the sole showrunner, Ryan Condal, who also writes the premiere. (Condal’s former co-showrunner, the director Miguel Sapochnik, departed the show after its first season; Alan Taylor, who like Sapochnik is a “Thrones” alumnus, is behind the camera for this episode.)The improvements begin right away, with new opening titles that whisk us through the history of the ruling House Targaryen via the sewing of a grand tapestry. This replaces last season’s frankly impenetrable attempt to evoke “Thrones”’s clockwork credits with a stone-and-metal sluice of blood that not even I, a person with a quote from Martin’s novels tattooed on his right forearm, could follow.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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      As N.B.A. TV Deal Nears, Warner Bros. Discovery Is on the Outside

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      The company’s TNT channel and the N.B.A. have long been inextricably linked, but that may end after next season. Plus, Charles Barkley is retiring.Warner Bros. Discovery executives thought they had given the National Basketball Association a proposal it would accept.In April, after months of negotiations, the company made an offer to pay billions of dollars to the league for the rights to continue showing its games on TNT, as well as its Max streaming service. TNT has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, and its “Inside the NBA” is widely considered one of the best-ever sports studio shows.But with the end of Warner Bros. Discovery’s exclusive negotiating window looming, the N.B.A. insisted on changing the package of games the company would receive, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private dealings. Warner Bros. Discovery balked, and while the two sides have continued negotiating, the company now finds itself on the verge of losing the rights to televise the sport with which it has become inextricably linked. And on Friday night, the beating heart of “Inside the NBA,” the Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, said he would be retiring from TV after next season.“The first thing anybody thinks about when you say TNT is the N.B.A.,” said John Skipper, the former president of ESPN.Media companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery, were prepared for bruising negotiations with the N.B.A. Sports rights remain an extremely valuable commodity for traditional TV networks, and companies increasingly also see them as a way to attract more subscribers to their streaming services.The league made clear it wanted a sizable increase on the roughly $2.66 billion in total it receives annually, on average, from Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN under its current rights agreements, which went into effect in 2016. Executives at those companies knew if they wanted to retain N.B.A. rights they would have to pay more for fewer games so that the N.B.A. could create a third package of games to sell.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’ Is Back on Sunday. Here Are Season 1’s Biggest Moments.

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      Need a reminder of all the events that went down in Season 1 between the Greens and the Blacks? We’ve got you.The civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons is almost here after an explosive Season 1 of “House of the Dragon.” Now, nearly two years later, HBO’s other popular show about succession returns this weekend as the (mostly) white-blond Targaryens from across the family tree harness alliances, resources and dragons toward an ever-escalating cycle of vengeance and cruelty.Based on the George R.R. Martin book “Fire & Blood,” “House of the Dragon” is a “Game of Thrones” prequel occurring roughly 200 years before the events in the original series. The new season will cover some of the many plotlines of the Dance within only eight episodes, compared to the first season’s 10. (Martin, who serves as the show’s co-creator and co-writer, stated on his blog in 2022 that it would “take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons.” Are the writers getting enough runway to do it right? Time will tell.)With Season 2, the Blacks and the Greens — opposing factions led by their matriarchs, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) — have reached a point of no return. Rhaenyra is the firstborn child and chosen heir of the newly dead King Viserys (Paddy Considine); Alicent was Viserys’s second wife and is the mother of the freshly anointed King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney). Both factions have legitimate claims. Neither wants to share.“War is coming, and neither of us may win,” Rhaenyra says in a trailer. Here’s a look back at Season 1’s pivotal moments that turned childhood best friends into mortal enemies hurtling toward mutual destruction.This article discusses the plot details of “House of the Dragon,” Season 1.A tragic childbirthViserys (Paddy Considine) and Aemma (Sian Brooke) in happier times, before he had her killed in attempts to save his son (who also died).Ollie Upton/HBOBattle scenes, dragons and beheadings are par for the course in the “Thrones” universe. But “House of the Dragon” is also a story about women and mothers, and how they contort themselves to survive in a patriarchal society. Primogeniture, in which inheritance goes to the eldest son, urges women of the highest station to secure an heir, and depictions of childbirth prove to be among the season’s most harrowing scenes. Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke) is the first casualty during a breech birth, with her husband secretly making the call to cut the infant from her womb. Their one and only son becomes the “heir for a day.”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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      James Phoon, a New Face on ‘Bridgerton,’ Is Team Ariana Grande

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      “She seems to approach the world with kindness and understanding,” said the actor, who has joined the Netflix series for its latest season.James Phoon couldn’t quite imagine himself cavorting among the 19th-century bon tons of “Bridgerton.” Then he read that the first Chinese person gained British citizenship in 1805.“As someone who’s mixed East Asian — I’m part Chinese, part English — up until very recently I never thought that I would be working on a period piece,” he said.Phoon joined the hit series in Season 3, whose second half began streaming on Netflix on Thursday, playing Harry Dankworth, the new husband of Prudence Featherington.“To be able to take up that space and represent people who are watching at home, it really means a lot,” he said.In a video call from London, where he was finishing the run of “Underdog: The Other Brontë” at the National Theater before moving with the show to Newcastle, Phoon, 30, discussed why his iPad and Apple Pencil, X-Men comics and Ariana Grande are among his cultural must-haves. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1My JournalEvery year I buy a blank scrapbook and turn it into this wellness journal. I decorate it with watercolors, and each month has a different aesthetic theme. At the beginning of the month, I write my goals, and at the end of the month I write a list of happy moments. And then I have This Month’s Win, which is one thing — work-related or personal, or just something that made you smile — that you want to hold onto.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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      Ncuti Gatwa Brings Millennial Emotion to ‘Doctor Who’

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      “Give-ING! That dress is giving!” said Ncuti Gatwa with a burst of unbridled laughter. The newest Doctor Who had been shooting the same scene for several hours in Cardiff, Wales, where hangar-like spaces were teeming with crew and filled with sets and equipment for the show. (Yes, Whovians, the TARDIS was parked nearby.) Now, at the director’s request, the new Doctor was improvising.Gatwa (whose first name is pronounced “Shoo-ti”) laughs a lot, often at himself. “Why do I keep moving this footstool?” he asked a few minutes later as he tried to get into position for yet another take. “Because the art department isn’t here to do it for you,” teased Varada Sethu, who joins the Doctor and his current companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) for some adventures in Gatwa’s second season. “I have to do everything myself!” cried Gatwa in a mock-tragic tone, before another eruption of mirth.Born in Rwanda and raised in Scotland, Gatwa, 31, made his name playing the effervescent Eric in Netflix’s “Sex Education.” But the lead role in “Doctor Who,” a British institution about a time-traveling alien and his human companion that has been a BBC stalwart for 60 years, has taken him to another level of fame.(Conveniently, the doctor periodically dies and is regenerated in a different physical form; Gatwa is the 15th Doctor, following Matt Smith, David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker.)Gatwa stepped into the role of the 15th Doctor in the most recent season of “Doctor Who.”Bad Wolf/BBC StudiosThe show — which first ran between 1963 and 1989 — was revived in 2005 and today has an exceptionally diverse, intergenerational fan base. But the current season, which ends on June 21, has ushered in a new era for the show, with Disney+ now a co-producer alongside the BBC and Gatwa the show’s first Black lead actor, with a distinctly fabulous vibe.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