‘He Is An Island On His Own:’ Matt Smith Talks About Daemon’s Choices In Season 2 Of House Of The Dragon, And The New Fracture Between The Prince And Rhaenyra
Spoilers for the first three episodes of House of the Dragon Season 2 ahead! If you're not caught up, you can watch with a Max subscription, and make sure to catch new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET as part of the 2024 TV schedule.
We may all love Daemon Targaryen from House of the Dragon, but it's clear that the tone of this war within Team Black is starting to shift – including the partnership between Rhaenyra and Daemon. The actor behind Daemon, Matt Smith, made some comments about the future of Daemon and how his mind might be his worst enemy right now.
When it comes to House of the Dragon, there are plenty of things that you have to keep track of. It could be who rides which dragon, or perhaps just the Targaryen family tree in general, but the two consistent things have been Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen.
The two of them married in Season 1 of House of the Dragon. Plenty has happened between them, including the gruesome House of the Dragon Season 2 premiere, where Daemon hires two assassins to take out Aemond Targaryen, but they kill the king's son instead when they can't find Aemond.
This moment leads to a heated fight between Rhaenyra and Daemon, where she reveals she no longer trusts him. There's a lot going on for the Rogue Prince, and when I had the chance to speak to Matt Smith about Daemon, he believes that this fight between him and Rhaenyra has left him on "an island on his own," saying it's a complex situation he has gotten himself into:
It's very complicated for them, because I think Rhaenyra feels a great sense of betrayal, a sense of injustice that is being directed at her, and ultimately, it's at the hands of Daemon with his sort of impetuous behavior. And I think it is coupled with the grief of his brother dying. I think perhaps the fracture of that relationship with Rhaenyra means that he literally is a sort of island on his own in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go and no one to talk to.
Within the book Fire and Blood, Daemon plays a substantial part in this war, but the moment he makes Blood and Cheese happen, that's when things really begin to take a turn for the royal. Now, as Smith comments, he's left to his thoughts – and they're not necessarily pretty:
He's let his own devices and his own thoughts get the better of him, and he becomes submerged in his own deep, dark psychology.
As we saw in House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 3, Daemon arrives at the spooky Harrenhal to recruit allies. While he's there, he begins to have visions, signaling an internal conflict in his mind and having his death foreshadowed. That's pretty much as deep as you can get into "dark psychology" and shows just how much we're going to experience as this season progresses.
A lot is going on in House of the Dragon Season 2, from Alicent and Ser Criston Cole's relationship shift to the ever-evolving landscape of this war. But I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of Daemon as it progresses – and how dark his psychology truly gets.
