House of the Dragon season 2 episode 1 spoilers follow.
You'd be hard pressed to find a House of the Dragon fan who doesn't remember Queen Aemma's (Sian Brooke) brutal death in the first episode of the show's debut season.
The scene was masterfully devastating with showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik using gore and heartbreak in equal measures to illustrate the brutality of this new Thrones world that had just opened up to us.
Unfortunately for Aemma, they painted that world using her brutalised body as the canvas – pools of blood flowing from her freshly-sliced, gutted uterus – the work of a botched caesarean on the order of King Viserys (Paddy Considine).
While it's true that Viserys' betrayal of their love and intimacy is what made Aemma's death all the more impactful, there's no denying that the graphic nature of seeing her fresh corpse splayed out on bloody sheets was shocking.
Now House of the Dragon means to rival its debut with a season-two opening that was equally as chilling.
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However there's no need to watch with your fingers over your eyes this time. Despite the fantasy's drama's skill at churning our stomachs with the goriest scenes, HotD season two has managed to achieve just that without spilling even a drop of blood. (Or rather we were spared from seeing it.)
The 'Blood and Cheese' storyline, much anticipated by fans of the book, finally made its way to screen and saw the death of Jaehaerys, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Helaena's (Phia Saban) son, at the hands of Daemon's (Matt Smith) assassins.
In George RR Martin's Fire and Blood, the events involving the young prince's death were decidedly more graphic and ended with Jaehaerys being decapitated with one swift swing of the sword.
Ryan Condal alluded to just how grisly things unfolded on page while explaining why he decided to go in a different direction.
"It was not really possible, given the age of those characters, to play realistically what is in the [book]," Condal told The Wrap.
"I mean, there are things that you actually cannot do with children on set, and rightfully so, sort of from a decency standpoint, and also from a legal standpoint, what children are allowed to see and do on a set would have made shooting it very difficult."
Instead Condal played into the show's superb use of cinematography to deliver something that feels just as (if not more) unsettling than what was written on the page.
The moment preceding Jaehaerys' death opens with the assassin Cheese (Mark Stobbart) holding Helaena at knife point – and already you can sense the rising pressure.
The low lighting and the absence of any other sound but the pouring rain tee-up the senses so that the danger feels more heightened.
Even the simple sound of the chain of Helaena's necklace ringing in the otherwise soundless void as Blood (the second assassin, played by Sam C Wilson) snatches it from her neck coats the scene in dread.
Related: How to watch House of the Dragon season 2
Eventually Helaena must decide which of her children to sentence to death. It is already an agonising predicament, made more so by Saban's arresting performance.
When Helaena's small, staggered gasps and wild eyes – which flit from fretful to devastatingly resolved – amount in no tangible change to her circumstances, the scene presses on with the inevitable: Jaehaerys' murder.
Only then does the music begin, building as the events unfolds, mirroring Helaena's rising panic.
Her deer-caught-in-headlights eyes feel as though they lock onto Jaehaerys' own startled wide-eyed stare as he wakes to the feel of Blood's brute hand covering his mouth, muffling cries of distress.
We don't see it but the sound of the blade ripping through flesh and the wet gush of blood that stems his screams is unbearable.
This gruesome mental image is worsened by the sound of the murderous instrument struggling to saw against flesh and muscle and bone, its resistance made known by the slight creaking noise.
The scene tracks Helaena as she rushes to pick up her daughter. Clutching Jaehaera against her chest, she flees to safety, but if you think House of the Dragon lets up on the anguish, think again.
Helaena holding her breath and then snatching at air as she scurries around the castle builds the tension further in the most excruciating way.
Finally she bursts into Alicent's (Olivia Cooke) bedchamber to find her mother having sex with Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), which in some ways makes the shock of grief worse.
The seemingly never-ending moment of torture does indeed end with Helaena sinking to the floor uttering the words, "They killed the boy."
As she pointedly clutches the (still attached) head of her safe child, the previously pounding music, now reduced to violins, abruptly ends with the scene cutting to black.
With nothing but the screen staring back at us, we're forced to digest what we have just seen and in the absence of the show spoon-feeding us the violence we do something much worse: we fill in the blanks with our own imaginings and intersperse them with Saban's face, her ordeal replaying in tandem.
"The hope is that you kind of follow these two goons on a mission," Condal explained to The Wrap. "You go into their point of view, and then the third-act twist is that the POV passes over to Helaena… then you experience the awful things that come through her eyes."
It is through those eyes that House of the Dragon was able to deliver one of the most chilling scenes in its history. No mean feat from a show where top violent moments include watching Laenor Velaryon's (Theo Nate) love interest being savagely bludgeoned to death.
House of the Dragon season two will debut on June 16 in the US on HBO and Max, and on June 17 in UK on Sky Atlantic and NOW. Season one is available to stream now on HBO, Sky Atlantic and NOW.
Game of Thrones seasons 1-8 are also available on DVD and Blu-ray.
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TV writer, Digital Spy Janet completed her Masters degree in Magazine Journalism in 2013 and has continued to grow professionally within the industry ever since. For six years she honed her analytical reviewing skills at the Good Housekeeping institute eventually becoming Acting Head of Food testing. She also freelanced in the field of film and TV journalism from 2013-2020, when she interviewed A-List stars such as Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. In 2021 she joined Digital Spy as TV writer where she gets to delve into more of what she loves, watching copious amounts of telly all in the name of work. Since taking on the role she has conducted red carpet interviews with the cast of Bridgerton, covered the BAFTAs and been interviewed by BBC Radio and London Live. In her spare time she also moonlights as a published author, the book Gothic Angel.
