House of the Dragon: We Light the Way - Review of Episode 5

Created: 09/19/2022, 18:00

When a dress becomes a declaration of war: Alicent Hightower (E mily Carey) in bright green in the "House of the Dragon" episode "Lighting the Way" © HBO

The fifth installment in the House of the Dragon series finally rouses Alicent Hightower, played by young Emily Carey, as a key character in the story.

Overall, a lot is happening - maybe even a bit too much.

The character Alicent Hightower - who will be played by young actress Emily Carey for the last time in the fifth episode of House of the Dragon, We Light the Way, before appearing in the second Half of the first season then “Ready Player One” star Olivia Cooke takes over – so far it has remained an enigma.

At first she was just the inconspicuous girlfriend of the dazzling princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), until she rose involuntarily to become the queen by marriage.

But even then, Alicent only served her husband Viserys (Paddy Considine) as the mother of his offspring.

The dismissal of her father Otto (Rhys Ifans) as royal hand and Rhaenyra's planned marriage to Ser Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate) put Alicent under pressure for the first time.

So of course it is now the episode that bears the motto of your house as the title,

in which she slowly brings her own agenda to the Game of Thrones.

Alicent thus positions herself as a promising opponent of Rhaenyra, without us really being able to blame her for declaring war on our heroine.

This Queen's enlightenment is the most important development of the new episode, which unfortunately can get lost because there's just too much going on...

"House of the Dragon": That's how you know the cast

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Clare Kilner ("The Angel of Darkness") is directing again this time, who is again allowed to spend a large part of the overall budget, which mainly flows into elaborate crowd scenes.

The scenery of the Velaryon seat Driftmark is also impressively expanded (and the obligatory dragon action should not be missing either).

The script, meanwhile, is penned by Charmaine De Grate ("The 100"), with some help from producer Sara Hess ("Orange Is the New Black").

The running time ends up again at a compact 60 minutes.

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