This will be my House of the Dragon Episode 7 Trailer Breakdown. There’s a whole bunch of Easter eggs here so we’ll break it all down. Careful from spoilers from the last episode, House of the Dragon episode 6, if you haven’t seen it yet.
House Of The Dragon Episode 7 Trailer had a lot of important things going on. It starts with Laena Velaryon’s funeral at Driftmark, then we see someone stealing her dragon Vhagar at night. Otto Hightower will be returning as the Hand of the King. We also see a scene that is going to trigger the events of Dance of the Dragon. There isn’t any significant time jump shown in the trailer because the children are of the same age as they were in the previous episode.
Daemon is back in his for and we see him killing someone in the Trailer. We also see him by Rhaenyra’s side. Lord Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys are back and might also be siding with Rhaenyra. Let’s just get into the breakdown.
Here is House Of The Dragon Episode 7 Trailer Breakdown:
Laena Velaryon’s Funeral
But just starting at the beginning of the trailer footage, it seems like the main part of the episode covers Laena Velaryon’s funeral on Driftmark. Like they’re having the funeral ceremony here bearing her according to the customs of House Velaryon. That’s why they’re giving her a sea burial like they push the body in the casket into the sea. Technically she died by cremation like she asked Vegar to give her a sad Dracarys and burn her. But it didn’t completely incinerate her body like there is a body inside that casket.
It seems like for the most part the people who are here are the Small Council in the Targaryen and the Velaryon families. I don’t know if there will be many other great Houses there, but it seems like it’s just them because you see most of them inside the High Tide throne room. Like that big main room that we got a teaser for in the previous episode, we’ll just spend more time in there.
The unfortunate easter egg they’re paying off with this is that Laena Velaryon literally told Daemon in the previous episode she wanted to go back to Driftmark. And she’s getting her towish just not quite what she expected. She also told him that she wanted to die a Dragon Rider’s death but she didn’t know, she didn’t realize that her death was going to be coming so swiftly.
Corlys Velaryon And Rhaenys
The voiceover is from her father Corlys Velaryon talking about the pursuit of legacy and that’s just the whole idea of the battle lines being drawn and them really going at each other. Like who is going to win the Iron Throne, like how hard are we going to fight each other for this one? And if you weren’t sure what was going on in the hallway here, like all the monuments around Driftmark are meant to be from the sea snake’s nine voyages. These actual helmeted skulls seem like they belong to the Yogo Snai, which is like another race in Essos.
You could spend all day, talking about all the different Easter eggs, from all of his different nine voyages and all the different places in the world. Most of the places that these are from are places that we haven’t visited on the show yet. They might be saving some of this to pay off and other spin-off and other prequel series.
I’m not totally sure which ring Rhaenys is dropping on the table here, but I think that’s the idea that they’re slowly drawing battle lines. Like which side will each great house take, who will the Velaryon side with. The ring could be hers, like it could be a Targaryen ring that she got from her family or it could be Laena Velaryon’s ring.
Another Time Jump
Of the other thing you notice here in the funeral scene is that they’re using the same young versions of the actors, so I don’t know if they’re going to age them up later in the timeline, later episodes, or during season two or something like that. Because between this and the actual Dance of the Dragons there is a bit of a time jump. So like some of these younger actors would be much bigger and would have aged way up.
Also if you look in the behind-the-scenes for episode 6, most of the childer were the younger versions of the actors are talking about playing their characters, like how excited they are to join the show. It says younger version of Aegon, younger version of Jacaerys. So it’s like okay maybe they’ll have older versions in later episodes.
Vhagar
They show more scenes of Vhagar and obviously a big thing during this episode seems like somebody coming along to steal Vhagar and it seems like it’s going to be Aemond Targaryen. He writes him in the books, you see him on the beach, you see him staring up in the dark. The whole thing they were teasing in episode 6 was him not being able to get a dragon, like him trying to claim dreamfyre and it going terribly.
And then the dragon dream that Helena Targaryen had, “he’ll have to shut one eye in order to claim a dragon” basically. Saying that he’s gonna have to lose an eye to get a dragon, but that he would get a dragon. So it does sound like Aemond winds up claiming Vhagar during this episode. Because Baela and Rhaena say somebody stole Vhagar like they’re trying to wake up Jacaerys here in his bed.
There is one another scene of Vhagar opening her math getting ready to breathe fire, there’s probably just a moment where Vhagar almost seems like she’s about to roast him completely. Sort of like a twist on his attempt to try and claim Dreamfyre, like he almost got roasted that time, almost gets roasted this time, but this time he’s successful. So it sounds like he’s successful, but there’s this huge brawl that you see happening inside Driftmark with like all the families, all the children and you see in the background like Aegon looks really sad, he’s kind of downcast.
Being The Maegor
When you see Alicent on the Targaryen ship coming to Driftmark, there’s a voiceover telling someone about becoming a strong leader and the people fearing them. That actually could be voice over to Rhaenyra. Even though they’ve already said that the Fire and Blood book that this is based on was written by Maesters and it’s meant to be a slightly inaccurate account of History.
Like the show is meant to be the truest version because you’re actually seeing it play out in front of you. The Maesters actually refer to Rhaenyra as Maegor with teats. Also in previous episodes I believe it was Otto Hightower talking about Daemon potentially being another Maegor. Like that was the big fear in the early episodes if he were to take the Iron Throne, like “we’d have another Maegor on our hands”.
Black and Green
You see Rhaenyra wearing the black like we’re talking about the Dance of the Dragons, the sides are the greens and the blacks. But in the previous episode, Rhaenyra wasn’t wearing black. They said they tried to make her look as close to the young version of Rhaenyra as possible to kind of ease the time transition, even though it was 10 years.
So she was meant to look a little bit like the way that Millie Alcock looked like their outfits were very similar, their hair was very similar. You also probably noticed when they show some views of the back of her hair, her hairdo looks a little bit like Daenerys’s hairdo, the special braids that they had in it. They also did that with a young version of Rhaenyra too, I think it was even in episode one when her father was having the Realms were fealty to her. They wanted her to look very much like Daenerys.
As Rhaenyra talks about the history of their family, the role of fire and dragon fire in the success of the history of their family, and how they were able to use dragons to conquer Westeros.
Daemon Killing For The Throne
Then they actually cut a bunch of different scenes here with Laenor Velaryon and his lover Qarl Correy. So it seems like they get into a sword fight. But there’s a separate overhead scene in that hallway where the figures are kind of small, so you can’t see perfectly but the white hairdo that’s strangling Qarl Correy here, looking like they’re killing them, doesn’t seem like it’s meant to be Laenor Velaryon. Like it looks like Daemon is actually killing him.
It is not totally clear why Daemon would be killing Qarl Correy, but what he might be doing is clearing the path to actually marry Rhaenyra. But she’s married to Laenor Velaryon right now, so we talk about all the crazy stuff that Damon does to try and get the iron throne. And in the previous episode, the whole theme was he wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be doing with his life like he was kind of languishing over in Pentos.
It sounds like he’s inspired by the death of his wife and what she told him to actually continue his pursuit of the Iron Throne. So what he might be doing is just getting rid of Rhaenyra’s current husband, Laenor velaryon, and his lover to clear a path so that he can marry her legally. Then we see this hooded figure in the bay with the white long hair might just be a version of Daemon.
Larys Strong’s Plan
But the whole thing during House of the Dragon episode 6 as they actually explained after the episode is that Larys Strong was using Alicent’s circumstances as an excuse to get rid of his family, that’s why he did it. Like he wanted to get rid of his family and he was looking for an opportunity to do it and he just used this when Alicent said “I wish my father were here”.
There was a lot of confusion about why he would do that after episode six, like why would he kill his family, but the way they talk about it they just make it sound like he wanted the title like he wanted to become a Lord of Harrenhall because he’s way more powerful now he has way more money. The whole thing with blackmailing Alicent to “I’m sure you’ll reward me when the time comes”.
I believe it is meant to be when he thinks that Aegon II eventually takes the Iron Throne like he’s backing the greens assuming they’ll win in trying to put himself in a favorable position. So he probably wants Alicent to put him on her small council like we’ll call them the green council because this other council of Rhaenyra’s is called the black council is sort of like the different sides, we’ll talk about that in later episodes too.
Alicent Attacks Rhaenyra
Then we get the big scene of Alicent attacking Rhaenyra with the Valyrian dagger, you notice that she just pulls it right off of her husband Viserys and because his illness has left him so in feebled he can’t stop her from yanking the dagger off of him. And it looks like she means to attack Rhaenyra, but I don’t think that she’s trying to kill her. That probably winds up happening because you see Rhaenyra bleeding later and saying “ah you finally shown them who you really are”, basically like trying to out her as being this terrible person in front of everybody.
I think the idea is that she was just trying to scare her and it’s like an accident like she didn’t actually mean to stab her with the Valyrian dagger and just winds up cutting her a little bit. And it’s one of those situations where things just go a little too far, like Aemond losing his eye is probably a situation. Like that like the children fight and he probably accidentally loses his eye and then Rhaenyra responds in kind and things escalate to the Dance of the Dragons.
Because later you get the voiceover from Alicent’s father saying “we’re playing a dangerous game, are you sure you have the grit to try and win it”. Like are you sure you’re ready to play this to the logical end, because a lot of people are probably gonna die? And she seems pretty crestfallen, so I think that she’s probably upset about what happened.
The same is what happened with Larys at the end of last week’s episode, she was kind of horrified when she found out what he’d actually done, like “I didn’t tell you to kill them, why would you do that”. The whole reason is that he was playing her like he’s trying to blackmail her. So what they’re trying to show you is the circumstances that led to the Dance of the Dragon, so like neither one of them Alicent or Rhaenyra, like really wanted to go at each other.
You can see how the circumstances around them and the people around them too are influencing that decision. Like over on Rhaenyra’s side you also have Daemon being this force of chaos killing all these people. So the whole idea is that both of these different size the blacks and the greens wind up doing terrible… terrible things. But a lot of it winds up being kind of on accident.
Viserys Ticking Clock
I think one of the other big hanging plot threads is what’s going to happen to Viserys because there’s other footage of him from the previous trailers from forward in the timeline. So if we think of him as like the Ned Stark of the Season, like the Sean Bean of the season, when is he going to die.
Right now I’m assuming that he probably winds up passing away in episode 9, because they can’t really start the actual Dance of the Dragons, like the actual conflict until he actually passes away. But it could always be before that like we have episode 8 who knows what happens in that?
Also Read: House Of The Dragon Episode 6 Recap: Important Characters Die A Firey Death
