House of the Dragon brings back another season 1 player for surprise cameo

Warning: This article contains spoilers from House of the Dragon season 2, episode 6.

Harrenhal has so many uninvited house guests it's a wonder Daemon Targaryen hasn't checked out yet.

So far on House of the Dragon season 2, Matt Smith's Rogue Prince experienced hauntings by a young Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock), his youthful niece who was named heir to the throne instead of him; Lady Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell), his first wife who chose to kill herself with dragon fire rather than dying helplessly in childbirth; and the mother he never knew, Alyssa Targaryen (Emeline Lambert), with whom Daemon decided to have an Oedipal tussle in the sheets in that particular vision.

Episode 6 introduces yet another season 1 figure we thought long gone from this world: Paddy Considine's King Viserys I Targaryen.

Daemon first sees his late sibling sitting on the Iron Throne in full health, holding the Valyrian steel sword Blackfyre and donning his crown — not the decaying husk of a man he ended up becoming as a result of disease at the end of his life.

Viserys chastises Daemon for calling his son, who died a newborn in season 1, episode 1, "heir for a day" and for not remaining by his side through his rule of Westeros. Viserys appears to Daemon a second time, weeping over the body of his wife, Queen Aemma Targaryen (Sian Brooke). Again, he expresses his rage over how his brother was not there to support him after Aemma died in childbirth.

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"In season 1, Daemon Targaryen is an iconic character from the book: he's this sort of crazy, swaggering sort of character who is impulsive and you never know what he's going to do, but he also feels a little closed off," Sara Hess, a lead writer on House of the Dragon with co-creator Ryan Condal, tells Entertainment Weekly in an interview conducted earlier this year. "It's not like he sits down and tells people what he's thinking or how he's feeling about stuff. So in season 2, sending him to Harrenhal felt like this opportunity for us to peel him back a little bit. We could use it to destabilize him enough or externalize things, even symbolically, or to show what's going on in his heart and in his mind."

Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), the witchy woman of Harrenhal who likes to say she's an owl cursed to live as a human, becomes Daemon's pseudo therapist. Before the weirwood tree of Harrenhal — the same place where she forebodingly declared Daemon would die — she unpacks how Viserys never wanted to be king but tried his best. She says Daemon, who actively plots to steal his wife's crown, is ill suited for the job. The crown, she notes, is not a prize to be won but a burden to bear.

"Daemon, he's not going to therapy," Hess quips. "He's not going to sit down and be like, 'I just feel like I lost my mom when I was 2.' It just felt like this really interesting, cool way to get into Daemon's psyche against his will almost."

Speaking previously with EW about the surprise return of Alcock's Rhaenyra, Condal said of Daemon's hauntings, "Instead of warfare or dragons or images of horror, it was really more of him being haunted by these people who he had done wrong by in his past, particularly young Rhaenyra. That's the girl who took his claim, not elder Rhaenyra, played by Emma D'Arcy. It's that version of Rhaenyra that removed him as the heir to the throne, and then was named heir and took his claim. As you'll see his story at Harrenhal unfold, there is an element of Daemon having to reckon with his past and choices that he's made and things that he's done."

The penultimate episode of House of the Dragon season 2 premieres Sunday, July 28, followed by the season finale on Sunday, Aug. 4.