Welcome back everyone it's charlie a lot of you probably been seeing your feeds reports about
elizabeth olsen being cast for house of the dragon season two so i'll explain what that is what she's
reportedly being cast for and how that's going to fit into the story really cool deep cut some
of you might remember too elizabeth olsen actually auditioned for daenerys targaryen alongside emilia
clarke obviously wound up losing out because we got emilia clarke daenerys so all this talk of
coming back the house of the dragon is like coming back to the source if you're brand new to the
channel i'm doing videos for all the episodes just like i did for the main game of thrones episodes
be sure to subscribe to get them all we're also doing a giveaway for hbo max subscriptions all you
have to do to enter is be a subscriber and just post all your theories in the comments below who
should she play for the night is dark and full of terrors but if you haven't seen the news in your
feeds this morning reportedly hbo is talking to elizabeth olsen about joining the cast of season
two it doesn't say exactly who they're looking at her for a lot of people are talking about
her playing a young version of melisandre i'll explain why in how melisandre's timeline works
into the events of house of the dragon because if you remember the original series they explained
melisandre uses a gem to glamour herself she's actually 400 years old later in the timeline and
that's a little under 200 years in the future me that she's still closer to like 200 years old when
the events of house of the dragon take place so she's already pretending to be much much younger
next to the dragons themselves she's like the oldest living thing in game of thrones a really
good example is bullarian the black dread he lives till he's about 200 years old and then
dies of natural causes the dragons just continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger as they get
older that's why the older ones are the biggest like veigar is currently the biggest dragon on
house of the dragon during the first couple of episodes they've had a lot of easter eggs for
the main game of thrones episodes especially aegon's prophecy of a song of ice and fire the
prince who was promised like literally mentioning jon snow's character because he is literally
a song of ice and fire because his parents are rhaegar targaryen and lyanna stark from my blood
come the prince that was promised and his will be the song of ice and fire
there are other really old characters during the events of game of thrones that can connect some
of the events that happened in the past but this far in the past currently melisandre's the only
one who's alive at this point in history we're about 112 113 ac the events of season one of
game of thrones picks up just after 300 ac the other oldest character during the events of the
main series is the three-eyed raven and his real name was brendan rivers he was a big part of the
blackfyre rebellions but those actually don't take place like he isn't born till way later
in this timeline like well after the dance of the dragons so the only way they could feature
bran for instance or the three-eyed raven that we saw during the game of thrones series would
be for them to show up viewing the events in the past like do their weird version of time
traveling where they're kind of viewing the past but they're not in the past technically it's kind
of like their spirit using the weirwood trees to see into the past which is how they're able to
influence characters like hodor that's how bran is able to mess hodor up basically but the way
it works in the books is they can only do that weird time traveling when they're near weirwoods
it has something to do with the way the children of the force power works and when they're doing
that it's called green sight green sears are also like a rare form of children of the force in other
people it's like one in one hundred 000 people are born with the ability that's how rare it is they
refer to bran as the last greenseer but the thing with elizabeth olsen playing a younger version of
melisandre is that she was very active during this period in essos in the red temple within the book
story that they're adapting for this series there aren't any maesters who actually wrote the story
itself like that's where we're adapting from who knew whether or not the king or anyone else who
potentially knew aegon's prophecy of a song of ice and fire the prince it was promised the long night
talk to anyone else from any other continents like essos about the prophecy itself because
the maesters themselves didn't know it because it was a secret aegon never told anyone but his heirs
that's why the first time we're hearing about it is house of dragon episode 1 and it's george
r martin writing that backstory in and he's basically saying the book that i actually wrote
about this was written by other people who were taking down accounts of other people themselves
who just witnessed events from afar so the people actually writing this history down were not privy
to secrets like aegon's prophecy here the way aegon had the prophecy is that he had a dragon
dream and that's specific to the targaryen family here but that's also a way of describing visions
of the future daenerys has dragon dreams in the house the undying seeing visions of the future
in the long night a bunch of different things she sees a lot of things in the house the undying but
like melisandre has her own version of that when she stares into the flames like varys stares into
the flames and he says he hears a voice calling out from them and she claims that it was the red
god speaking to her showing her a vision of this potential long night future so just because we've
seen these particular people that know about the secret doesn't mean that there aren't other people
out there that have also had visions of the future in one way or another so just provides the wiggle
room here for other people outside of the line of succession for the iron throne to know about this
and be talking about it during the events of the series in going back to the beginning of the story
that we know for her so far the reason why she came to dragonstone in the first place was because
she was looking for azor ahai the vision given to her inside the flames of this potential long night
issues that when she first came to dragonstone she believed it was stannis because that was
the beginning of the events of season two both times she came to dragonstone sensing that the
prince who was promised would be at dragonstone she was correct she just came a little bit early
so technically she was right but it wound up being jon snow he didn't come to dragonstone until much
later that's why after they suffer many many defeats with stannis like she tries to use her
power believing him to be the one and they just continually fail over and over and over again and
she's kind of dejected until she's able to use the red god's power to raise him from the dead
and once that happens then he eventually goes to dragonstone and she believes that it is him
he came back from the dead it has to be him and that's basically been her life's mission so after
400 plus years of being alive that's why she collapses dead after the end of the long night
after they kill the night king as if she used her power her connection to the red god the boon
granted to her by him to keep herself alive that long and that's why she's lived so long and also
why you don't have tons and tons of people living that long whoever follows the red god like why
don't all the red priests live that long it's just a way to show you that there is magic within the
world of game of thrones and even though george rr martin never fully explains it it is meant to be
a thing so it's a way of showing you that she has a special connection to the power of the red god
that the other red priests don't there's a lot of theories that the gods and game of thrones are all
really the same source of power and people are just tapping into it in different ways like is
the red god the true god or are the seven the true gods i think a little bit of it's inspired by the
idea that in the real world you have a bunch of different religions all worshiping similar figures
and they just have different ways of describing these similar figures and their backstories so
when melisandre is tapping into the power of the red god it really is like the same type of power
the children of the forest draw on the same power that bran is now drawing on and because the white
walkers were created by the children of the forest they're tapping into the same type of old power
there isn't a ton of information in the books about melisandre's early life but she was born
into slavery in the far east in asshai her name when she was born was melanie she was part of
what was called lot 7 sold to the red temple at an early age and cool connection back to aegon the
conqueror for talking about aegon's conquest we're like at 110 112 ac or so right now where the show
is taking place melisandre would be close to 200 years old during the events of house of the dragon
meaning that she's way older like she far pre-dates aegon the conqueror even making her
closer to the same age as valyrian the black dread meaning that she would have been alive
during the time of old valyria so like viserys says that blair in the black dread is the only
living thing that remembered or had memories of ancient valyria that's not true because
melisandre would have been alive in that part of the world slightly different country but her
activities as a red priestess would have taken her all over essos so she would have run into
other valyrians during that time there are way more followers of the red god in esso so there
are red temples in a lot of the major cities in essos we haven't really spent a lot of time
in essos in the series yet most of the other stuff outside of westeros that we've seen so far
is happening in the stepstones and that's down here kind of in between essos and westeros
the main red temple where the fiery hand are based out of is in volantis so that's where the
high priestess of the red god is we saw the high priestess during the events of game of thrones she
comes to daenerys and marine talking about similar things that melisandre was talking about when she
was talking to stannis and then eventually to jon snow daenerys has been sent to lead the
people against the darkness in this war and in the great war still to come do you remember what you
heard that night you heard a voice call out from the flames should i tell you what the voice said
should i tell you the name of the one who spoke so a lot of melisandre's backstory is just spent
practicing her arts so because there's very little documentation about melisandre's early
life it's just always possible elizabeth olsen could be playing a version of that character
and it gives them a lot of wiggle room because george rr martin is also helping them write the
story so george rr martin and the showrunner said that when they did the house of the dragon series
they wanted to make the show be like the true version of events because they wanted to show
you what really happened during these events whereas in the books it's more of like a history
tone kind of like the silmarillion like george r martin himself makes some jokes calling it the g
marillion because it's kind of a history term like first this happened then this happened to
this person then this happened whereas on the show it's much more of a longer narrative where
you just kind of see people's lives play out but you're actually watching it happen
so we get to see the true version of events it just makes it a lot easier for george r martin
to write new material for melisandre's backstory or for backstory relative to other red priests it
is always possible that they're looking elizabeth olsen to cast as someone who's native to westeros
she's a fantastic actress but i have a little bit harder time seeing her play just like a
regular person as opposed to playing someone who's part of the red temple when i first saw
the news i actually thought she was almost a little too famous like wow famous person
inside game of thrones she seems a little bit big for them to cast but like matt smith for
instance is a good example of them casting a very well-known actor in a high-profile position the
funny thing about this too is that carrice van halton the person who played melisandre in the
original game of thrones series was like hey melisandre is still alive shouldn't she cameo
during this series at some point like she was trying to get herself onto house of the dragon
my full house of the dragon episode 3 video will post sunday just like normal be sure to
enable alerts for my channel so you don't miss that everyone click here for my full house the
dragon episode 3 trailer video and click here for my full house the dragon episode 2 video
thank you so much for watching everyone stay safe and i'll see you guys in the next one!