‘House Of The Dragon’ Topped A Disturbing ‘Game Of Thrones’ Moment With This Gasp-Inducing Callback

(House of the Dragon spoilers will be found below.)

“Lord of the Tides” got gruesome this week with a tongue-wagging scene.

The episode brings viewers back to King’s Landing six years after we last saw King Viserys I not looking healthy, exactly, but he didn’t look as ghastly as he did this week. Rhaenyra and Daemon left Dragonstone to convene about the missing Sea Snake and Driftmark and succession and many things that they’d rather not address, of course. The bed-confined Viserys, despite being in an immense amount of pain, hauled himself up and entered the throne room. He reiterated his declaration of Rhaenyra as heir, and that’s when things grew really dramatic with a callback to Joffrey Baratheon’s “Your fingers or your tongue” moment in Game of Thrones.

Way back during an especially disturbing moment of the O.G. dragon-filled series, Joffrey gave a singer a choice for which of his physical attributes that he’d rather lose. It was a disturbing scene that Sansa Stark witnessed while also being forced to be subservient to the little cretin. And on this week’s HotD, Viserys put an end to succession petitions, and Vaemond Velaryon made the very unwise choice to stand up and issue a shout-filled condemnation while calling Rhaenyra’s children “bastards.” He also decided to brand her a “whore,” at which point Viserys declared that he’d have his tongue. In a flash, Daemon (following a dare to Vaemond) stepped forward to defend his wife, made one swift movement, and off went most of Vaemond’s head.

He did, however, get to “keep his tongue.”

This throne-room carnage happened without warning, and I did gasp upon seeing it happen. As it turns out, I wasn’t alone (and yes, shocked laughter happened), and people thought that Vaemond definitely deserved his method of death: