WARNING: This newsletter contains spoilers for a lot of TV shows. So if you don’t want to know pertinent details about House of the Dragon, Game of Thrones, ER, Cracker, It’s a Sin, The Wire, The Walking Dead and The Sopranos, you might want to skip the first section and scroll down to the Take Five section.
I’ve witnessed a lot of deaths on TV over the years, but suicide by dragon is definitely a new one. That was the fate that Laena Velaryon opted for in this week’s instalment of House of the Dragon, extinguished by fire after realising that neither she or her unborn baby would survive childbirth. “TV deaths don’t get more horrific than that” was how the Guardian’s recap put it. I’m not sure about that – I still have the gruesome end of the Red Viper of Dorne in House of the Dragon’s predecessor stuck in my head – but it certainly was memorable. (Controversial too – playing as it did into wider questions about the show’s peculiar fixation on childbirth.)
