HBO’s New ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Trailer Teases the First Major Atrocity in the Dance of the Dragons: Blood and Cheese

HBO unveiled the first trailer for House of the Dragon Season 2 during Brazil’s super-sized Comic Con, CCXP, this weekend. The two-minute clip, titled “Revenge” on Max’s Hot D page, teases massive battles, numerous beheadings, and dragons dueling for supremacy of Westeros. Make no mistake: House of the Dragon Season 2 is going to be non-stop bloodshed and misery. We don’t need Alicent (Olivia Cooke) warning her father Otto (Rhys Ifans) or Rhaenys (Eve Best) advising Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) on the topic to know that a big body count is coming.

However, hardcore Game of Thrones fans and readers of George R.R. Martin‘s Fire & Blood are already dreading one infamous death scene in particular…and the new House of the Dragon Season 2 trailer teases that it’s happening in a blink and you’ll miss it moment.

HBO’s House of the Dragon is a Game of Thrones prequel series set approximately two hundred years before the days of Daenerys “Stormborn” Targaryen, Jon Snow, and Cersei Lannister. It specifically covers a period of time known by in-universe historians as the “Dance of the Dragons,” a civil war fought within House Targaryen that almost extinguished the royal family’s bloodline altogether. In House of the Dragon Season 1, we watched as the close childhood friendship of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower was torn asunder by the competing interests of their family’s. As the eldest surviving child of King Viserys (Paddy Considine), Rhaenyra is tapped as the realm’s heir apparent. That becomes an issue when Alicent weds Viserys and gives him three more Targaryen heirs — including a son, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney). After Viserys dies, Alicent’s power-hungry father Otto moves to put Aegon on the Iron Throne, using sexism and scandal to sow dissent against Rhaenyra.

House of the Dragon Season 2 ends with Rhaenyra learning that her second-born son, Lucerys or “Luke” (Elliot Grihault), was killed mid-flight home to Dragonstone by Alicent’s second-born son, Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). The grief in her eyes is only eclipsed by an obvious hunger for — you guessed it — fire and blood. Book readers know what comes next and it seems that HBO’s first trailer for House of the Dragon Season 2 is confirming it… We’re getting, gasp, Blood and Cheese.

**MASSIVE SPOILERS for George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood and potentially House of the Dragon Season 2 ahead!**

In George R.R. Martin’s telling of events, Rhaenyra hatches a horrific plan to exact vengeance on Alicent and Team Green with the help of husband/uncle Daemon (Matt Smith) and his ex flame Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno). Daemon and Mysaria hire a pair of assassins named Blood and Cheese to infiltrate the Red Keep. “Blood” was a hulking former member of Daemon’s City Watch, aka the Goldcloaks, while “Cheese” was a ratcatcher familiar with the secret passages of the castle. (Remember Daemon used those passages to sneak Rhaenyra out in Season 1? Foreshadowing, baby!)

When Blood and Cheese enter the Red Keep, their target ironically isn’t Aegon or Aemond. Instead, it’s sweet Heleana Targaryen (Phia Saban) and her three young children by brother/husband/king/abuser Aegon. They hold Heleana at knife-point and make her choose which of her two toddler sons will die. She asks to be killed in their place, but they retort that they are there to collect payment on a debt: “An eye for an eye, a son for a son.” Heleana reluctantly chooses her younger son. Blood and Cheese taunt the child, telling him his mother wants him dead, before murdering the older boy instead.

House of the Dragon has already played fast and loose with the details of Fire & Blood, so we don’t know for sure if the show will stick closely to Martin’s own unreliable narrators’ version of events. However, there’s one quick shot of Heleana being held at knife-point in the trailer that suggests, yes, we are getting Blood and Cheese. (It’s at about the 52 second mark if you want to see it for yourself.)

The reason why Blood and Cheese are so infamous amongst fans is probably twofold. One, Heleana and her children are some of the only true innocents in the Dance of the Dragons. The Heleana we’ve met on House of the Dragon is a sweet, odd girl burdened by prophetic visions and forced to marry her monster of a brother. Her children are just babies. She had nothing to do with Luke’s death or the plans to usurp Rhaenyra’s crown. Plus, there’s something so dark about forcing a mother to choose a child to die.

Secondly, this is the point of no return for the war. Luke’s death is presented in House of the Dragon as a half-mistake from Aemond. It’s almost an accident. Blood and Cheese’s macabre murders were cruel, pre-meditated, and done out of revenge. It unleashes a non-stop back-and-forth of bloody vengeance.

Even if House of the Dragon Season 2’s first trailer isn’t actually teasing Blood and Cheese, it is warning audiences that the show is about to get far more horrifically bloody. Buckle up because in Summer 2024, HBO and Max are going to unleash horrors on the characters we met in House of the Dragon Season 1…

House of the Dragon Season 2 premieres Summer 2024.