House of the Dragon - “Tumbleton” Review
In only a handful of scenes since joining the series, actor James Norton has transformed Ormund Hightower into one of the show’s most alarming new presences. He is the kind of villain who is most disturbing not when he explodes but when he doesn’t – when he moves seamlessly from a sudden fit of violence back to composed deliberation, as though the explosion were simply a minor irregularity in an otherwise orderly mind. Alicent’s psychological profile of the man, delivered with the precision of someone who has spent a lifetime studying powerful men, is one of the episode’s most effectively written scenes. But what she cannot answer – and what the episode wisely recognizes as the most important question – is what Ormund actually wants.
The episode’s central dramatic irony is that Rhaenyra finds herself exactly where she always finds herself: opposed by a new headcase while struggling to formulate a proportional response from a position of structural weakness. A Queen, now sitting on the Iron Throne has no Hand, with a small council that is clumsily coalescing at best, a treasury that remains depleted, and dragonriders whose loyalty is increasingly conditional on gratifications she cannot provide: Hugh Hammer, sent to watch over Tumbleton where his family is being victimized, and Ulf, denied permission to drink at his local tavern and offered little in return for his allegiance.
The Daemon subplot gives the episode its most emotionally unexpected scene. When Caraxes sniffs out Rhaena – hiding in a cave in the Mountains of the Moon, cold and guilty and utterly alone since Jace’s death – Daemon’s response is the most parental we have ever seen him be. He offers to charter her a ship, to keep her secret, and to protect her from consequences she cannot face. That she refuses, unwilling to leave Sheepstealer, is consistent with everything the show has established about her character. That he lets her stay, sorrowful and outnumbered by her own stubbornness, is consistent with everything it has established about his.
We are now halfway through this season, and Ormund Hightower is coming, Ser Criston Cole is riding directly toward the Rivermen, and it would seem that the powder keg, as this franchise has always understood, is most frightening in the moment before it ignites.