In the Flesh: House of the Dragon S1E02: The Rogue Prince (Patreon)

We open on a sandbar where scores of men are nailed or in the process of being nailed to wooden posts and frames, their bodies swarming with crabs that snip and pick at their waterlogged but still-living flesh. The deformed and leather-masked figure of Craghas “The Crabfeeder” Drahar stalking among them completes the spectacle, giving the whole sun-bathed scene the sweltering, nightmarish feeling of something yanked straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In King’s Landing, the ailing King Viserys lowers an infected pinky into a box full of seething maggots, that same filth and monstrosity contained, codified, and made acceptable. Make no mistake: it’s all horror, from the king’s painful courtship talk with twelve-year-old Lady Laena Velaryon (Nova Foueillis-Mose) to Alicent Hightower’s ambitious father seizing on her self-harm as a chance to berate and shame her. The only difference is whether or not you see the hammer coming.

Director Greg Yaitanes alternates between bright exteriors and dark, glowering interior shots, cutting from the Crabfeeder’s rampage to Viserys’s murky solar, from the fiery dark of the great Targaryen sept to the scenic, windswept gardens of King’s Landing. His interior shots of Dragonstone are particularly striking, as is his sweeping panoramic shot of rival diplomatic parties facing off on the bridge leading to Dragonstone. The choice to give each dragon its own distinct appearance goes a long way toward making a visual meal of scenes featuring more than one of the great beasts, and when the reptiles face off on the bridge there’s a real sense of distinct character to Syrax and Caraxes, a feeling that they function not just as extensions of their riders but as dangerous, beautiful, and vulnerable animals in their own right. The tension as one waits to see whether or not the leviathans will crash together, unleashing burning hell on each other and everything in sight, makes even the slightest personal conflict feel freighted with horrible potential violence.

Paddy Considine remains brilliant as King Viserys, a man who hides behind his own weakness in order to do whatever he wants and then pretend the consequences are beyond his control. He’s easy, affable, and a guaranteed disaster in a position of authority, and when he manages to upset almost everyone around him by announcing his intention to marry Alicent, daughter of Lord Corlys Velaryon’s (Steve Toussaint) rival Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) and object of his teenage daughter Rhaenyra’s budding affections, it feels both infuriating and inevitable. The show is shaping up to be as much about masculine weakness and shortcomings as it is about violence or the struggles of women, and its material in that regard is sharp so far. Power is a dangerous sword to wield, but not wielding it, refusing to acknowledge it at all, can prove just as deadly. Top to bottom, first to last, it’s horror all the way down.