It wasn’t a second Red Wedding, and it didn’t have to be.

Daemon, as we learned in the first season, is not one to sit idly by. In secret and under the cover of night, he bribes two hired assassins, nicknamed Blood and Cheese, to kill Aemond with the phrase “a son for a son.”

The two assassins enter the castle easily, but when they see the king surrounded by his retinue, the mercenaries, who desperately need the promised money to pay off their debts, change their plan.

They find themselves in the chambers of Helaena, Aegon’s sister and wife, and see the king’s two children – twins, a boy and a girl. Under threat of reprisal, the mercenaries extract from Helaena which of them is a boy and kill the child. The murder remains off-screen, but the expressive sound design of the scene will return to you in nightmares.

Blood & Cheese Was a Disappointment for Many Viewers

Many viewers who knew what Blood and Cheese was were disappointed – they were expecting a second Red Wedding. However, Blood and Cheese turned out to be shocking, but not as bloody and brutal as the death of the Starks. But was it necessary in this case?

“What we wanted was the same level of emotional impact that Red Wedding brought. We didn’t see the actual beheading of Ned Stark, but the emotional pain it brought was immense. […] The point is, the scene doesn’t have to be gory/bloody to touch audience emotionally and psychologically,” Reddit user Extra-Value-9448 wrote.

The main factor in the disappointment of many viewers was that they expected Blood and Cheese to be a second Red Wedding, despite the fact that none of the cast or creators of House of the Dragon compared the two episodes as equal.

Blood & Cheese Scene Served Its Purpose Perfectly

Indeed, Blood and Cheese may have been less emotional than many expected, but Helaena’s reaction to such a shocking event did not break her character – slow and dreamy in ordinary life, she fell into a stupor from shock, and then completely withdrew into herself on the way to Alicent’s chambers.

Moreover, the main advantage of the on-screen version of this episode is that the writers actually upped the stakes. In the books, Aegon had three children, and Helaena had to choose between the youngest and the oldest boy.

Here, the writers decided to up the drama by depriving Aegon of a direct heir, which will be the catalyst for the warring parties to move toward open military conflict in future episodes.