Rhys Ifans’ Otto Hightower Is the Biggest Reason to Watch ‘House of the Dragon’
Dragons streak through the skies and swords clash on the battlefield, but one of the most compelling sights in HBO’s fantasy drama House of the Dragon is simply that of Rhys Ifans erupting in anger.
In Episode 2 of the show’s second season, Ifans’ Otto Hightower learned that his grandson, the King (Tom Glynn-Carney), ordered every ratcatcher in the kingdom hanged for the crimes of one. This new act of cruelty was sure to backfire horribly against his family, undoing all the painstaking work Otto had put in to gain the public’s support. He strode across the room and impressed upon his grandson the full force of his moronic course of action. Then his voice dipped. He delivered a full accounting of Aegon’s flaws: thoughtlessness, fecklessness, self-indulgence. Each descriptor was more cutting than the last, delivered with venom, spat out with disgust.
Later, when Aegon commended the knight Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) for putting a (frankly Looney Tunes-esque) murder plot into motion, Otto shut his eyes in pained disbelief. “And what…has…Ser Criston Cole…done?” he asked, sounding out each word sound as though it was dragged unwillingly from his mouth, stretching out the sentence as though he was afraid of what further foolishness he might hear in response.