This week's episode of House of the Dragon featured a surprise cameo - Milly Alcock as the young Rhaenyra Targaryen - and an unexpected Game of Thrones Easter Egg (well, eggs).
In a bid to keep her children safe, Emma D'Arcy's Rhaenyra sends them to Vale alongside Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell). The rightful Queen's cousin/stepdaughter also takes two young dragons, Tyraxes and Stormcloud, and four fragile dragon eggs...three of which fans were quick to recognise.
Yes, the gold, green, and reddish-black eggs are indeed the same ones given to Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) in the first episode of Game of Thrones.
Talking to Mashable (via SFFGazette.com), House of the Dragon episode 3 director Geeta Vasant Patel confirmed, "Those are Daenerys' eggs. All of us who work on this show are big Game of Thrones fans, so it was very exciting to shoot that scene."
"The other part of [the egg scene] is Rhaena saying goodbye and giving up her family in order to be a leader," Patel added.
This marks a departure from the source material where George R.R. Martin established that Daenerys' dragon eggs were sent to Essos during the reign of Jaehaerys I, many years before the "Dance of the Dragons" took place. It's a minor change in the grand scheme of things, though, and an Easter Egg which better connects the two TV shows.
As for the fourth egg, we'd anticipate it eventually hatching into Rhaena's dragon, Morning.
In a separate interview with Screen Rant, Patel explained the meaning behind the young Rhaenyra's return and Daemon Targaryen's (Matt Smith) reaction to that vision of his niece/wife.
"[In] that dream, she looks at him — and the way we talked about it is she doesn't need to say anything. We just worked on the look; the meaning that comes from all the episodes before she looks at him, and she cuts him. She says, 'Hey, you killed a boy. You don't do that.'"
"People have said that to him all the way through. But when young Rhaenyra says it to him, it's the first time he feels it. It's the first time he processes his actions, though he's been killing people left and right since the beginning. This is the first time we see him regret. We see him feel. We actually kept talking, in between takes, about how this is something we've never seen before in Daemon."
"There was a take where Matt went in, and he just kept saying, 'No, I need another take. I need another take.' He was really such a hardworking actor on this, and all of a sudden I saw his face break after Milly looked at him. I just saw his hands loosen, and I saw the tear in his eye. Then I had a tear in my eye because we both felt it. Even the crew got emotional at that moment. And it wasn't about House of the Dragon, it was about making a mistake that you deeply regret that hurt somebody else. It's just that simple."
We're only three episodes into season 2 but war is now looming, something we see in a new promo for next week's episode of House of the Dragon.