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For more than a decade, right-wing Christian groups have taken issue with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the nonprofit organization founded more than 50 years ago that researches and challenges those it characterizes as hate and extremist groups. The right-wing groups’ grievances have varied, but they tend to boil down to the claim that it’s the SPLC that’s hateful and extreme for labeling other groups that way. Recently it appears that, after an FBI investigation and a subsequent criminal indictment, the Department of Justice has taken the complaints of these Christian right groups seriously. In an April press release, FBI Director Kash Patel accused SPLC of having “lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups—even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes.” The government has yet to prove any of these accusations, but it is eager to keep the narrative going. When announcing the charges, acting attorney general Todd Blanche summed up the case: “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” It appears that the government has sided with the organizations that long populated SPLC’s hate-group lists.

Federal prosecutors have specifically alleged that SPLC defrauded its donors by using their funds to pay members of hate and extremist groups for tips on their activities. These practices are not a secret, least of all to the FBI, with which the SPLC had shared tips. Months before the indictment was made public, Kash Patel suspended any relationship between the FBI and SPLC; after the indictment, Todd Blanche claimed on Fox that SPLC had never shared information obtained from its confidential informants with federal law enforcement. “The Department of Justice is well aware that the SPLC provided helpful information, through the use of its confidential informants, to law enforcement,” said the SPLC in one court filing. “The Department of Justice also knows that these confidential informants helped law enforcement put violent extremists in jail.”

Blanche’s claims to the media are indicative of how the government’s narrative about the case has taken prominence over the legal process. In June, for instance, the Department of Justice sent a superseding indictment to the media before it was filed in federal court. SPLC’s lawyer Abbe Lowell told CBS News that sharing the indictment first with the press was “another example of the government’s troubling and unusual handling of this case.” In a later filing, the government said that “media members erroneously received the draft document.” It all only underscored the fact that what the government said in public showed their intentions more clearly than anything written in the court filings.

Groups that the SPLC placed on its Hate Map greeted the indictment eagerly, as an opportunity to turn public scrutiny back on a group that has long monitored them. Some are going further. At a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month, a senior staffer at the Southern Poverty Law Center–designated hate group Alliance Defending Freedom testified that his group, contrary to the SPLC’s characterization, is actually “mainstream.” Ryan Bangert, senior vice president for strategic initiatives as well as an advisor to the president of Alliance Defending Freedom, did not dispute that his organization had done what had warranted the SPLC’s designation: rolling back the rights of LGBTQ+ people by way of social stigma and the law. It is an agenda evident in its interventions at the Supreme Court, such as its 2003 brief arguing in favor of laws criminalizing sodomy, and in the words of its founder, who in 2012 described the group’s mission as a “battle” against “the homosexual legal agenda.”

This legal agenda is hardly mainstream. It wasn’t mainstream in 2003, either, when 74 percent of adults surveyed at the time supported overturning sodomy laws, including 70 percent of those adults who described their political views as “conservative.” But ADF has worked overtime in the years since to remake the courts and the country to serve its Christian nationalist enterprise. (Sometimes, as it did in arguing to overturn the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade, it succeeded.) But in this moment, when the Trump administration has marshaled the Justice Department to serve as the president’s enforcers, ADF may get to have it both ways: casting itself as an innocent victim of hatred for Christian conservatives, and recasting the whole idea of “hate groups” as a variety of fraud. It also appears, based on a new filing last week in the federal case against the Southern Poverty Law Center, that Alliance Defending Freedom may have played a more direct role in the FBI’s recent investigation into the SPLC than was previously known.

The Christian right’s grievances against SPLC go beyond the Hate Map. When ADF’s Bangert testified before the house committee in June, he not only positioned his group as a purported victim of SPLC, but he also called on Congress to “reach beyond the indictment,” to take “critical steps toward dismantling” SPLC’s work, which he called a “shadow censorship regime,” that had “tarred mainstream conservative organization as ‘hate groups.’” The examples of SPLC’s “censorship regime” were thin, and beside the point. Bangert was jumping onto the government’s attempt to unmake SPLC.

Bangert himself has worked for state attorneys general who supported ADF’s mission, such as former Missouri attorney general Josh Hawley (whose wife, Erin Hawley, works for ADF, arguing its failed attempt to ban medication abortion via telehealth in 2024). He also worked for Texas attorney general Ken Paxton (whom Bangert later testified against in his 2023 impeachment trial). He knew what he was doing when he repeated the indictment’s allegation that SPLC had been “funding the racist groups they claimed to fight,” mischaracterizing payments made to informants inside those groups for tips that informed SPLC’s research and publications, and which they also shared with law enforcement. But Bangert quickly pivoted to what he called the “broader story” behind those “shocking allegations.” That’s the story, he said, of “how the SPLC tarred mainstream conservative organizations as hate groups.”

For ADF, it’s not just about refuting the “hate group” label, but casting doubt on the idea that opposition to LGBTQ+ rights could constitute hate. “We’ve been on the SPLC’s hate map since 2016, which is odd given that we reject racism,” Bangert also testified. Given that ADF has been listed for more than a decade, one might think he was familiar with the actual reasons why. “The SPLC lists ADF as a hate group because it has supported the idea that being LGBTQ+ should be a crime in the U.S. and abroad and believes that is OK to put LGBTQ+ people in prison for engaging in consensual sex,” a 2020 story on the SPLC website begins. “ADF has played a role in the passage of religious exemption laws that lead to discrimination against LGBTQ+ people,” it goes on. “ADF is not only attempting to erase transgender people through its litigation and policy work but by deliberately misgendering them in media and on its website.”

For ADF to acknowledge the reason SPLC has designated the group as it did, however, would require ADF to acknowledge that queer and trans people have civil rights, which ADF is dedicated to eroding. It is extremely disingenuous for ADF to pretend that SPLC only labels racist groups as hate groups, but the pretending is strategic: ADF appears to allow the claim that there are “real” hate groups, if only to state that it is not one.

Now, Alliance Defending Freedom has appeared in the SPLC case by name—in documents the government had to hand over. A new filing from the Southern Poverty Law Center made these part of the court record. They point out that a prior investigation into SPLC, opened under Trump’s first administration, continued into the Biden administration, and then was dropped. “The investigation sat closed for approximately four years,” the filing states. “It was suddenly reopened during the Trump Administration at least as early as September 2025. The question before the Court is why.” A letter to Stephen Miller, produced by the government in discovery, could provide an answer.

That letter, which appears to have been sent in August 2025, complains that SPLC, a “biased” and “politicized” organization “unmoored from its original mission,” has “begun placing traditional value and faith-based organizations” on its Hate Map, such as “Alliance Defending Freedom” and “Moms for Liberty.” It goes on to claim that “the SPLC places many groups on its ‘Hate Map’ as a smear tactic solely because they disagree with its radical leftwing ideology.” (They may as well have called it a “homosexual agenda.”)

The Miller letter was signed by the head of Alliance Defending Freedom, Kristen Waggoner, as well as Tina Descovich of Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, Christian pseudohistorian David Barton, reactionary conspiracy theorist James Lindsay, and the founder of Gays Against Groomers, an anti-trans group that has operated in the vein of Libs of TikTok. Parts of the groups’ letter to Miller appear lightly paraphrased in another document the government turned over: a redacted FBI incident report dated October 24, 2025, not long after the killing of Charlie Kirk and Trump’s directives to investigate the left over alleged “political violence.” As SPLC put it, the FBI incident report reads like a “rehashing” of the letter sent to Stephen Miller by these groups, some of which appear on the Hate List, and were the main ones to complain about it. If groups like ADF protesting their appearance on the Hate Map is what prompted the FBI to reopen an investigation, SPLC contends, then the case wasn’t really about the financial crimes the government alleges. Rather, what provoked the investigation, it appears, was speech that these groups find objectionable.

If that is true, then the case against the Southern Poverty Law Center was at bottom motivated by Christian nationalist groups that want to punish SPLC for accurately describing their agendas. Also, notably, it was SPLC that exposed, based on scores of leaked emails, Stephen Miller’s links with white nationalists, pushing a shared anti-immigrant agenda that dates back to Trump’s first administration. A Department of Justice spokesperson told HuffPo that Miller “had nothing to do with FBI-Mobile’s investigation of the SPLC.” However, the spokesperson also said that the Miller letter “was provided by one of the signatory groups in the initial stages of an investigation of potential criminal law violations committed by the SPLC.” They did not say which group.

We may be hearing more about how this case came about soon, thanks to a whistleblower. The whistleblower’s allegations have not yet been made public, but they were described in an April 30 letter that Representatives Jamie Raskin and Mary Gay Scanlon sent to Aakash Singh, associate deputy attorney general. The congressmembers received reports that Singh “ordered the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama to rush through the indictment of the SPLC despite serious concerns about the strength of the case,” their letter states. Singh had also previously instructed the leaders of each U.S. Attorney’s Office that the president is their “chief client.”

It was perhaps with a bit of authority, then, that at the June House Judiciary hearing where ADF’s Ryan Bangert testified, Representative Raskin called the prosecution of SPLC “a tissue of lies, that will join the pantheon of debunked, fraudulent prosecutions that DOJ has been excoriated for by dozens of judges across the land.” He added, “I predict it will not be long before another federal judge casts this obscene prosecution to the winds.”

If an investigation into the case itself results, we may hear more from Stephen Miller and from the groups on the Hate Map. But we may never learn whether an anti-LGBTQ group—whose founder said of its mission that it aimed to stop “the homosexual agenda,” and which argues major cases before the Supreme Court, sometimes with a sitting senator’s wife making the arguments—also has the influence to wield the Department of Justice against its political opponents. Perhaps ADF is simply fortunate enough to share some enemies with the “chief client” of the Justice Department: the president.

The Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii law on Thursday that forbid concealed-carry permit holders from bringing their guns onto private property without the owner’s express permission. “This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court. “We hold that the law is unconstitutional.”

The 6-3 decision in Wolford v. Lopez, which fell along the usual ideological lines, is the court’s latest effort to apply its relatively new history-and-tradition test to state gun-control laws. Along the way, the court raised new questions about what kinds of “historical analogues” can be used to defend gun restrictions—and whether the bigotries of past generations should be a factor.

In 2022, the Supreme Court adopted a new Second Amendment test for lower courts in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. At issue in Bruen was New York’s restrictive law for granting concealed-carry licenses. In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority held that the law violated the Second Amendment because it fell outside the historical bounds of gun rights in America.

Bruen’s history-and-tradition test, as articulated by the court, has two steps. “When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct,” Justice Clarence Thomas explained in his majority opinion. “The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s unqualified command.”

At first, lower courts found themselves applying Bruen to a wide range of long-standing gun restrictions. Different courts also reached wildly different conclusions on when and how to use historical evidence to decide whether a law fit within “the nation’s historical tradition.” Two years years later, in United States v. Rahimi, the conservatives clarified the Bruen test: the government need only identify a “historical analogue” to survive judicial scrutiny, not a perfect match or a “dead ringer.”

After Bruen, states that historically favored greater restrictions on guns rewrote their laws to accommodate the Supreme Court’s ruling. Among those states was Hawaii. One of their changes was to the state’s “default rule” for trespassing. Before Bruen, it was lawful to bring a concealed weapon onto private property that is generally open to the public—restaurants, stores, gas stations, and so on—unless the owner specifically prohibited it. (For brevity’s sake, I’ll just refer to this as “private property” from now on, even though I am not literally referring to all private property in the state.)

Hawaii reversed that presumption: Now it would be illegal to bring a gun onto private property unless the owner had explicitly allowed it. With only a handful of exceptions, the law requires private-property owners to provide “clear and conspicuous signage” that grants permission or “unambiguous written or verbal authorization.” As Alito noted in his opinion, Hawaii also bans concealed carry altogether in a variety of other locations, like public buildings, parks, banks, schools, hospitals, beaches, playgrounds, and so on.

A group of Hawaii gun owners sued to challenge the law in federal court, arguing that it violated their Second Amendment rights by depriving them of the ability to feasibly carry their concealed weapons anywhere in public. The state defended the law by arguing that the individual right to bear arms does not supersede an owner’s right to exclude people from their property. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state last year.

Since the Bruen decision was announced, lower courts and litigants have sharply disagreed on what counts as evidence of a “historical tradition” in Second Amendment cases. Hawaii, which had a unique path to entry into the Union, cited legal texts from the Kingdom of Hawaii in the early 19th century that strictly limited when and how weapons could be carried in public. This tradition, the state argued, supported Hawaii’s passage of a new default-rule law. Not so, said Alito.

“The Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States,” the justice wrote in his majority opinion. “It cannot give way to ‘the spirit of Aloha’ in Hawaii, any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald [v. Chicago]). It applies in the same way to our 50th State (where about 8 percent of adults possess guns) and our 49th State (where the figure is roughly 59 percent).”

In other words, the Second Amendment’s interpretation must flow from British common-law sources and those found in the colonial and early founding era, the court held. (There is an ongoing dispute over how Reconstruction-era sources apply, but I’ll come back to that later.) Hawaii cited those laws as well, pointing to 18th-century statutes in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania that restricted gun owners from carrying their weapons in private fields at certain times of the year.

Unsurprisingly, Alito dismissed their value as historical evidence as well. The laws that Hawaii cited, he wrote, “consist almost entirely of laws that prohibited unauthorized hunting of deer or small game on someone else’s private property,” and did not implicate stores, restaurants, and the like. “They had little if any impact on the Second Amendment’s central objective: protecting the fundamental right to self-defense,” Alito claimed. “And their obvious aim was to prevent the distinctive harms and risks associated with unauthorized hunting.”

The three liberals justices disagreed in their dissents. Justice Elena Kagan, writing only for herself, noted that Bruen envisioned that historical analogues might be enacted for different purposes. Both the Hawaii law and the colonial-era laws cited by the state meant to address, in her view, the problems that would come with unauthorized gun possession on private property.

“The ‘how’ is identical: The new law, just like the old ones, sets a default rule against gun carry that a private landowner may reverse,” Kagan explained. “The ‘why’ is sufficiently close. Both sets of laws respond to the dangers and harms that someone with a gun can cause on another person’s property. That the old laws had a special (though by no means exclusive) concern with poaching does not matter.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a separate dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, took the same view of Hawaii’s historical analogues. She additionally argued that the case should be primarily viewed as a property-law case where the state is owed more deference than a Second Amendment case. Alito countered that Bruen clearly applied, since it commanded judges to apply it in any case involving gun restrictions.

Perhaps the most controversial citation made by Hawaii was to an 1865 law in Louisiana that made it illegal to bear arms “on the premises or plantations of any citizen, without the consent of the owner or proprietor, other than in lawful discharge of a civil or military order.” Alito dismissed the statute because it was an isolated example and not “widespread, well-known, or widely accepted.”

The conservative justices have left open a debate over whether Reconstruction-era gun laws have any weight in the Bruen test. Under the court’s precedents, the Second Amendment applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Therefore, the “original public meaning” that the court claims to seek might naturally take them to the 1860s when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, and not just the 1790s when the Second Amendment was adopted or earlier.

But there’s a complicating factor here: Louisiana did not adopt the 1865 law in a vacuum. Instead, it enacted the restriction as part of what became known as the Black Codes—laws specifically designed to deprive formerly enslaved Black Americans of the fundamental rights that they would otherwise enjoy. In other cases, states have cited founding-era gun restrictions drafted to disarm Native Americans and enslaved people. To what extent does that reflect the “original public meaning” of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments?

In Alito’s eyes, such laws hold no weight. He concluded that the Radical Republicans who drafted and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment intended to protect Black civil rights, including an individual right to bear arms, and that this intent supersedes that of Southern state legislatures. “Unless we put history entirely out of our minds, Hawaii’s claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously,” he wrote.

Alito was not the only conservative member of the court to criticize Hawaii for its choice of historical analogue. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a separate concurring opinion where she specifically castigated Hawaii for invoking the Black Codes, which she described as “vile laws,” in a 21st-century case.

“The State seems to think Bruen is a matching game: Southern states enacted broad default rules, Hawaii reasons, so it can do the same today,” Barrett wrote. “But even if Hawaii is right that the how is analogous, it also must identify an analogous why.” She noted that the Black Codes were enacted to “subordinate newly freed slaves,” and that since Hawaii did not have the same intent, the laws did not count as a historical analogue.

It is always a welcome sight to see the Supreme Court condemn the bigotry and discrimination of the past. The majority’s words would also carry slightly more weight, however, if they were more consistent about it in the present. Their condemnation, for example, would have more moral weight if she and her conservative colleagues had not gone out of their way to sanitize Trump’s racist bile towards Haitians as merely a strong, constitutionally permissible critique of immigration in Mullen v. Doe—a case decided on the same day as Wolford.

Alito’s appeal to the intent of the Reconstruction Amendment’s drafters is also laudable. At one point, he cites the Republican Party’s platforms in 1856 and 1860 to illustrate how the Fourteenth Amendment’s drafters meant its protections to operate for certain rights. One can only hope that he and his colleagues show the same deference to the Reconstruction Amendments’ purpose when they decide the imminent case on birthright citizenship next month. It is lamentable that Reconstruction’s lessons have already been forgotten or disregarded by Alito and his allies in cases on voting rights, racial gerrymandering, and insurrectionist disqualifications.

Jackson agreed with her colleagues in the majority that the Black Codes were “ugly” and “racist.” She also argued that the court “cannot have it both ways” by selectively drawing from relevant statutes. Though Jackson was not on the court when it decided Bruen, she criticized its approach to constitutional law in follow-up cases and described it on Thursday as “a grave mistake.”

“Either history does matter, and if so, all potentially relevant historical experiences must be thoroughly examined to determine whether they reflect our Nation’s history and tradition of firearm regulation,” Jackson argued. “Or, it does not, and the Court should just admit that the test it has created is boundless, allowing it to accept or excise any historical analogue it chooses for any reason it prefers.”

That is problematic, Jackson explained, because the court’s original rationale for the Bruen test was to rein in lower courts that were upholding too many gun restrictions. “Of course, the real irony is that the Court’s effort to rein in judicial discretion has resulted in an arbitrary rule that unleashes judges to thwart gun regulation at every turn,” she explained. It is hard to disagree with that assessment, just as it is hard to believe that future Second Amendment cases will not be similarly arbitrary.

A gloomy financial prognosis for Social Security by the program’s trustees could spell a reduction in benefits for millions of Americans in just six years. The cuts to Social Security benefits would come amid changes that already make it more difficult for low-income adults to access key federal nutrition and health programs.

A June report estimated that, barring congressional action, the Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund, or OASI—which includes both retiree and survivor benefits—is expected to be depleted by the end of 2032. Incoming revenue for the program will only be able to pay out 78 percent of full benefits, a cut of 22 percent applicable to current and future beneficiaries.

Around 70 million Americans receive Social Security benefits, the majority of which is paid through the OASI trust fund. If combined with a separate, far smaller trust fund that pays out benefits for disabled workers and their families, the OASI fund could remain solvent for an additional two years—but this would also require action from Congress. The earlier timeline is due in part to the Republican tax and spending law that was approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last year, which reduced revenue going into the Social Security trust fund. Lower expected rates of immigration and births will also contribute to the fund’s depletion.

Social Security is not an anti-poverty program, and the pending bankruptcy of its primary trust fund would affect millions across wealth brackets. But low-income beneficiaries will likely be the hardest hit.

“There are a significant number of Americans who only have Social Security, and so any type of reduction in benefits would have a much more dramatic effect on those who have no other source of income,” said Joel Eskovitz, senior director of Social Security and savings at the AARP Public Policy Institute.

The Republican law foisted onto states a share of benefit costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Medicaid. It also tightened work requirements and narrowed eligibility for both programs. For SNAP, this includes the expansion of work requirements for able-bodied adults without children, applying to adults up to age 65, where previously people over age 54 were exempt. The new work requirement also removes exemptions for homeless people and veterans.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, approximately 1.4 million adults between the ages of 55 and 64 receive SNAP benefits. Another report by the Urban Institute found that the Republican law would result in 480,000 families with a member between the ages of 55 and 64 losing their SNAP benefits entirely, while 312,000 would see lower benefits.

The new work requirements for Medicaid are applicable to adults living in states that  expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act. There is not total overlap between the exemptions for SNAP and Medicaid work requirements, further complicating the process of applying for and maintaining both benefits.

For the first time, millions of enrollees between the ages of 55 and 64 will need to prove either that they are working or that they qualify for an exemption, a significant burden that could result in people losing their benefits. According to the AARP, nearly 80 percent of the 4.6 million adults between the ages of 55 and 64 who receive both SNAP and Medicaid benefits reported being either retired or unemployed. For those roughly 20 percent that do work, more than half did not meet the minimum 80-hour-per-month requirement.

Tracey Gronniger, the managing director for economic policy for the advocacy group Justice in Aging, said that the work requirements do not accurately “reflect the disabilities and the challenges that older adults may be facing in terms of age discrimination, or being able to maintain work, or other kinds of health issues.” Meanwhile, given the higher burden of expenses on states, legislatures may choose to cut SNAP benefits or narrow eligibility for the program, as well as slash Medicaid payments to health care providers, both of which would result in people being booted from the program.

Even when they are no longer subject to work requirements, these older adults who have struggled to maintain their benefits may be faced with further economic hardship. Imagine a childless 59-year-old SNAP and Medicaid recipient who must now work 80 hours per month to obtain their benefits. Assuming that this person is able to find a job and maintain employment for the next six years, they decide to retire at age 65 in 2032. That person may no longer be subject to work requirements, but if Congress has not taken action to raise revenue for the Social Security fund, the individual is now receiving payments that have been cut by 22 percent.

For those older Americans who rely entirely on Social Security payments as their only source of income, these cuts would feel like salt in a wound already gouged by stringent program requirements for their other benefits.

“We’re going to see older adults who should be economically secure, who should have these benefits that are helping them to maintain their economic security, instead finding that it’s harder and harder to keep up with costs of health care and shelter and all the other expenses that people continue to have,” said Gronniger.

Once a person reaches age 65, their difficulties in obtaining benefits will not necessarily come to an end. Jessica Johnston, senior strategist for economic wellbeing at the National Council on Aging, noted that SNAP already has low participation rates among eligible adults. In 2023, only 38 percent of eligible adults over age 65 received SNAP benefits. This low number is due in part to significant administrative hurdles and personal reluctance to accept assistance from the government. SNAP participants already need to regularly recertify their benefits, and requiring states to screen for the new requirements and exceptions could further complicate that process.

“We already have an enrollment problem, and so when you add on the number of older adults who might fall off the rolls due to not meeting a work requirement or not understanding new recertification requirements, the likelihood that they will unexpectedly lose the benefit becomes much higher as well,” said Johnston.

There is also a complicated intersection of eligibility for nutrition and health care assistance. In 2022, nearly nine million adults ages 65 and over who were eligible for SNAP were not eligible for the Medicare Savings Program, which covers premiums for qualifying low-income elderly individuals. (Separately, the hospital trust fund for Medicare is expected to be depleted by 2033, with money enough to pay 89 percent of full benefits.)

Johnston said that the assistance offered by SNAP to cover food purchases would not offset rising health care costs—and that these struggles could in turn be compounded by cuts to Social Security.

“A cut to their Social Security benefit is likely going to mean that they have to make even more difficult decisions about whether to pay for housing or for food or for medications,” said Johnston. “We hear from our community-based partners regularly that older adults will come in and talk about cutting pills in half or not being able to afford food that helps them manage chronic conditions, and so a cut to Social Security is only going to exacerbate those types of situations.”

States are already responding to the new limits on SNAP and Medicaid, but there is some time to address the pending bankruptcy of the Social Security fund. There are a few strategies that Congress could employ to keep Social Security solvent, such as eliminating the limit on taxable income. The trust fund largely receives revenue through payroll taxes, but there is a taxable maximum of $184,500. This means that most people earning less than that amount will pay taxes on 100 percent of their income, whereas a person with a far higher salary will only pay taxes up to that $184,500 limit. Rising income inequality has exacerbated the issue, with the fund unable to benefit from higher earners’ pay.

Lifting the cap on the payroll tax has bipartisan support and polls well among Americans, although making any change to Social Security is easier said than done. Other strategies, such as raising the tax rate, increasing the retirement age, or slimming down benefits, would likely be less popular with Americans. But Eskovitz said that lawmakers could not afford to kick the can down the road.

“The quicker Congress acts, the less dramatic the changes will need to be,” Eskovitz said.

So Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi of Long Island has come out swinging against the socialists. “We are capitalist, not socialist,” reads a letter that The New York Times reports he and 14 other legislators signed and began circulating last week. This went out Thursday, two days after three self-described democratic socialists backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani won Democratic congressional primaries in the city.

The letter, which is on the short and vague side, states two broad principles to which the signatories adhere. The first is “growth, competition, and broad prosperity.” “Growth” and “prosperity” are time-honored centrist buzzwords, as they’re hoisted into use to send the message that these Democrats value economic dynamism more than “fairness,” which is a word that moderates fear signals endorsement of excessive statism, although interestingly, the concept is tucked into the first sentence (“We believe in a growing, fair, and competitive economy…”). The second is “safety, security, and human dignity,” under which the letter lists four components: fiscal discipline, a government that works, free speech, and patriotism.

There’s nothing wrong with these things as far as they go. But they don’t go far enough. In particular, there’s one big missing word. I’ll circle back to that, but first, let’s talk about why these democratic socialists are winning in some places.

The first reason is that people are really pissed off at a system they see as totally rigged. Suozzi is roughly my age. He and I grew up in a United States in the 1960s and ’70s that Lord knows had many problems, but that was at least trying to build a robust middle class and was taxing excessive wealth appropriately.

The Gini coefficient is a number that measures economic inequality. Like golf, lower scores are better, and the lowest Gini scores, invariably logged by the Scandinavian countries, are in the mid-20s. The highest is always South Africa, in the low-60s.

When Suozzi and I were toddlers, the U.S. number was fairly high—around 37. Then came the Great Society—the civil rights, fair housing, and other anti-discrimination laws that first brought large numbers of Black families into the middle class, and other anti-poverty programs. The right has sold middle America on the idea that the Great Society—which I’d hope most Democrats today are proud of, but much of which was, as the word is used today, “socialism”—was a failure. But by the 1980s, right before Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. Gini number reached its lowest point in modern history, 34.7.

Then came Reagan and supply-side economics and the war on the War on Poverty. By the time Bill Clinton took office, the number was north of 40. Today it’s 42 and climbing. We’re worse than Russia and Iraq and about on par with Argentina and Mexico.

People aren’t stupid. They may not know what the Gini coefficient is or who Gini was (an Italian economist), but they know what’s been happening to the country and their money in their bones. And they know how they’re being ripped off by corporate actors, as these hidden junk fees become more and more just a fact of life, especially for working-class people paying rent to private-equity landlords or trying to take their kids to a ball game. So, it’s small wonder that more people are voting for the candidates who are saying most emphatically that they’re going to try to do something about all that—specifically, fighting back against the people who’ve been cheating the middle- and lower-classes for years.

The second reason socialists are winning elections is that the Democratic base has moved well to the left of where it was even just 10 years ago. Early this year, The New Republic commissioned a poll of 2,400 rank-and-file Democrats. We asked respondents to identify themselves ideologically, giving them five choices: conservative, moderate, moderate-to-liberal, liberal, and progressive. There were little descriptions of each, so it should have been clear to all that “progressive” was the left-most choice.

I thought “progressive” was going to finish third. It finished first (within the margin of error): Progressive got 32 percent, liberal 31, and moderate-to-liberal 21. Moderate was way back at 12 percent. Back in the Obama days, moderates were around 35 percent of the party. Indeed, liberal overtook moderate as the top Democratic category only around 2012, according to Pew.

So that’s a huge change. Now it’s true that other polls, which unlike TNR’s didn’t offer five categories, show a higher moderate share, but the overall move leftward by Democratic base voters is undeniable. They haven’t done so because they want the government to take over the means of production. They’re enraged at the way they’re getting nickel-and-dimed by these billionaires who have more and more power, and they want their party to take on that fight, and the democratic socialist candidates are, in most cases, the ones who are being clearest that they would take up that challenge.

Moderates can choose to recoil at that word “socialist” if they want. The branding carries some amount of risk: We have a diverse population and many people who reside here now remember when totalitarian regimes that called themselves socialist ravaged their lives—a far cry from the way socialism is practiced in Canada and the Nordic states (all of which are, or course, capitalist countries at their core). Still, it’s not even clear it’s such a dirty word, at least to Democrats. In our poll, we asked people if they thought the word was a plus or a minus or didn’t matter. Results: plus 31, minus 24, didn’t matter 43.

I’d rather see moderate Democrats try to make common cause with this resurgent left to the extent possible. As recounted in the 2024 book, The Truce, this is a feat that President Joe Biden managed for much of his presidency, so it can be done. I should note that I think the left bears some responsibility for this as well. As I wrote in a long piece back in our March issue, both sides are just too emotionally invested in regarding the other side with suspicion. As political psychologist Drew Westen explained to me in that piece, Democrats tend to discuss politics and policy in a way that emphasizes their differences and not their points of commonality.

Members of Congress form a lot of caucuses and coalitions. It’s telling that to my knowledge, there isn’t one, not one, that tries to bridge the differences between the two sides and highlight some things they agree on. It would be nice if a prominent left leader and a prominent moderate leader formed some kind of coalition that said to America hey, we agree on these X number of things. For starters:

1. That the rich should pay higher taxes, with a top marginal rate somewhere above 40 percent.
2. That Social Security must be made solvent forever, probably by reimposing the Social Security tax above a certain income level (the so-called “donut hole” approach, which by the way polls through the roof).
3. That the minimum wage should be raised to $18 an hour (there’s been a lot of inflation since the Fight for 15) and that Congress should index it to inflation so that it never has to worry about passing increases again.
4. That the expanded child-tax credit enacted in the wake of the pandemic—which as The New Republic’s Grace Segers reported was a historically successful anti-poverty program—should be made permanent.
5. That they will pass laws cracking down on monopoly power.

Doing this would send the almost unprecedented signal to voters and the media that Democrats are less interested in fighting each other than in uniting to pass an agenda that actually improves people’s daily lives. These five positions would signal such a commitment. They should all be completely uncontroversial.

Ah, but that last one … And here we return to the Suozzi letter. It sings the praises of competition. Great. I’m all for it. But what force today in the United States is crushing competition? It’s not the Democratic Socialists of America. It’s not the government. It’s not Zohran Mamdani.

It’s the billionaire class, or “the Epstein class,” if you prefer Jon Ossoff’s acerbic locution. You call yourself a capitalist, Tom Suozzi? Well, monopoly is the most grotesque perversion of capitalism that exists. There’s a reason Adam Smith hated monopolies. Centrist Democrats should familiarize themselves with that history, if they don’t know it.

And this is a telling point on which Suozzi’s letter comes up short. That missing word I alluded to above is “monopoly.” You can’t praise competition without criticizing monopoly. Monopoly kills competition—period, end of story.

But to criticize monopoly is to be willing to make powerful enemies. The democratic socialists—and by the way, in proper historical terms, they’re really social democrats; go Google “difference between social democrat and democratic socialist”—are willing to do this. The centrists are not. And until they are, their happy talk about competition won’t mean much. Rank-and-file Democrats want their party to fight. That doesn’t mean just fighting Donald Trump. It means fighting the powerful interests that are screwing them deeper into the ground every day.

Fareed Zakaria, who I’m pretty sure is not a card-carrying DSA member, made the point forcefully in his Washington Post column over the weekend. Discussing a new book on liberalism by Adrian Wooldridge, Zakaria wrote that liberalism “was once the most radical force in politics. It attacked inherited privilege, monopoly power, censorship, aristocracy, clerical authority, and closed guilds. It was not the ideology of the establishment. It was the battering ram against the establishment.”

That’s what this country needs. I don’t care that much whether it’s called liberalism or socialism. I prefer that it be called liberalism, but if others want to call it socialism, I won’t go into hysterics. The point is that the Democratic Party better do it, or it will lose again in 2028, and it, and our democracy, will die.

To pursue as many potential paths to a local funding source as possible, the Santa Cruz Metro board discussed moving to put a half-cent sales tax on the November ballot on its own accord, while Friends of Santa Cruz Metro continues its push to gather enough signatures for a citizens’ initiative ballot measure. If the board does decide to put a sales tax on the November ballot, it will require a two-thirds majority.

"Am I confident on the data set? As long as I'm doing the cases, I don't really give a f*** if it's old as long as it's making money." According to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), this was part of a message sent by the director of a company fined for targeting financially vulnerable people with unlawful texts, including fake bailiff messages. The message, sent by KRA Consultancy Ltd (KRA) director Khuram Rezvan Ahmad, appeared in the watchdog's monetary penalty notice, which said the firm did not check "the loan decline data was accurate" or whether the recipients had consented to receive marketing messages. The regulator fined KRA £300,000 last week, saying it had targeted people who were already in financial difficulty and had been turned down for loans. The watchdog described the operation as a "calculated, unlawful scheme," saying the fake bailiff messages had left recipients fearing that bailiffs were coming to their homes to remove their family's belongings. The ICO said KRA sent fabricated bailiff threats in the hope of scaring recipients so much that they would then engage with the company's debt services. The fake messages were sent using the sender ID "DEMAND." It read: "We have attempted on numerous occasions to contact you without any success. This matter has escalated further and an Enforcement agent will attend ****** within 48 hours to remove your goods as per Court Order. If you are on any legal/debt plan you will need proof readily available." The ICO also claimed the company deliberately tried to evade detection. It alleged that Ahmad had contacted a telecoms provider based in China and sought assurances from the telco that the mass text messages would be "completely untraceable." KRA promoted debt "solutions" to people, sending 5,575,715 unsolicited direct marketing texts between April 2022 and May 2025, the watchdog said. The campaign generated more than 60,000 complaints to the ICO and Mobile UK's 7726 spam-reporting service. The company was not registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, despite directing people towards debt solutions, the ICO added. In internal WhatsApp messages uncovered during its investigation, the ICO said Ahmad used the term "coaching" as a euphemism for the threats. "Get through as much as and pitch whatever. Don’t worry about forcing anything back because the coaching will take care of that tomorrow morning." During the ICO's investigation, search warrants were executed at KRA's offices and Ahmad’s home. The watchdog said KRA resumed its unlawful marketing activity following the searches, leading to 161 new complaints. Andy Curry, head of investigations at the ICO, said: "People in financial difficulty deserve support, not exploitation. KRA deliberately sought these people out – knowing they might be especially susceptible to this kind of high-pressure marketing – and bombarded them with illegal texts. When that wasn't enough, it sent fake threats telling people bailiffs were coming to their homes to remove their belongings. This was a calculated, unlawful scheme, and it caused real fear and distress to people who were already struggling with debt. "KRA showed complete disregard for the law throughout our investigation and this £300,000 fine – one of the largest for nuisance marketing in recent years – reflects that. It should leave no doubt that we will pursue any company that thinks it can evade the law and prey on the public." Alongside the Monetary Penalty, the ICO also issued KRA with an Enforcement Notice, ordering the company to stop sending marketing messages without consent within 30 days. ®

Donald Trump has insisted six people have been arrested and many more have been given citations for vandalizing the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. This allegedly includes carving a 350-foot gash in the pool’s sealant, and in a dark and angry tirade, Trump just described these people as akin to enemies of the state. But The New York Times just obtained a new statement from federal prosecutors. While they confirmed some citations, the Times also reports that administration officials and prosecutors are refusing to provide a single detail about what happened, refusing to divulge anything about who’s been targeted or what their offenses were, and refusing to confirm any arrests of any kind. As former prosecutor Ankush Khardori tells us in today’s episode, this is deeply strange. We discuss why it’s unusual for officials to clam up about such a high-profile claim, how this raises unnerving possibilities about the unhinged despot in the Oval Office, and why it all points to a deeper rot of Trumpian corruption. Listen to this episode here.

OPINION Microsoft is making massive progress in quantum computing, says Microsoft. Oh no they're not, say researchers. Anthropic's frontier models are too powerful for general use, says the US government. No, it's just Anthropic being punished for not doing what the US government tells them, say critics. Humans-in-the-loop are a pain-in-the-neck, says Amazon exec. Go do one, says this human. Three tech news stories from last week, six interpretations. You can probably decide between Microsoft PR and a peer-reviewed paper in Nature. Likewise, whether vindictiveness or virtue is at work with Anthropic. Amazon or a Reg hack? Harder to call. In all these cases, as in all cases, prior knowledge is the best context in which to judge media reports. Most citizens don't know much about most news, an eternal truth that is causing the UK government to fret about the future of public service broadcasting – or as it has become, public service media (PSM). With fewer people, especially that dread tribe, Young People, watching the wholesome fare of highly regulated broadcasters but feeding instead on firehoses of algo-spew, public service media risks suffocating on insignificance. That's a reasonable fear, if you feel that public service media deserves to be heard. It is a complicated argument where great forces have clashed since the birth of broadcasting, but if you know that the rhetoric of "fake news" has an antecedent in the German slur "Lügenpresse," you'll know the answer is yes, and yes, with a side order of yes. Vivat Reith. Having identified the problem, the brains of Britgov propose exactly the wrong solution. Get the algorithms that drive content consumption on social media to rank the quality PSM product higher. All those lost eyeballs will be brought back into the fold. This won't work for reasons both obvious and subtle. Forcing a quota of state-mandated media into the stream, even with the best of intentions, is a hostage to fortune. It's probably unenforceable, will be deeply unpopular with users and companies alike, and will poison PSM across the board. It also amplifies two falsehoods about PSM: that it's about news, and that it's about numbers. Both are important, but neither is anywhere near enough to argue for PSM's right to life. One of PSM's primary roles is to provide content that isn't commercially viable or is otherwise invisible. That reflects culture, art, science, all the human stuff that enriches life. It's where new ideas and new people come from, and some of those will become box-office hits. Putting numbers first, as parts of the BBC are moving toward, kills diversity and gives the commercial sector the killer argument that PSM is just unfair competition. PSM has always had the tension between being popular enough to matter to lots of people and broad enough to do the things that only it can do, but it does need both. That has been very expensive, but arguably worth it. High-quality news is one pillar of that, but only one. The one thing that keeps PSM alive is the editorial process, the decision-making that understands the purpose, constituent parts, and audiences, and applies that equation to the resources available. Those resources have changed, but they haven't gone away. What's needed now isn't a public service tweak to secret commercial algorithms, but a public service algorithm with humans in the loop, amplifying the good stuff on the platforms by driving traffic through exposure. How to design channels that do that and are compatible with the platforms themselves is an interesting challenge begging to be explored. However realized, it would be entirely compatible with providing natively sourced news, entertainment, sport, and everything else that keeps a brand current. It adapts seamlessly to multiple platforms, all of which have PSM-worthy content in quantity, if you filter out the toxins. It's a model that scales up and down, provided only that there are sufficient motivated and trained editorial staff who know who they're serving and why. There have to be ethical standards, transparency, training and support, and just the right level of management. That would turn the threat of the new media environment into a huge promise, all the techniques of distributed, diverse digital content from adversary to amplification. Public service broadcasting, at least in the UK, has been moving in this direction for decades, in the name of efficiency, outsourcing more and more programming to independent production companies – usually staffed by ex-BBC employees. You can't move very far in TV, radio, film, or digital media in the UK without tripping over ex-BBC bodies. That's another role of PSM, creating a huge pool of talent that irrigates an entire economic sector. A PSM strategy that encourages content creators to align with production and editorial standards would have invigorating effects in the new landscape. Public service media deserves to survive and thrive in an attention economy driven by so many forces designed to exploit rather than enlighten the public. Done well, it gives voice to the voiceless, describes a nation to itself, and sets standards that inspire trust and quench cynicism. All of this is there to be had, even today, even in the future. We just need to keep the right humans in the loop. Sorry, Amazon. ®

WHO, ME? The world of work is basically broken, which is why The Register uses Monday mornings to remind readers of that foul fact in a new instalment of “Who, Me?” – the reader-contributed column that shares your mistakes and reveals how you recovered from them. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Hank” who told us his career started in the 1990s with a gig as sysadmin for a small town poultry factory that was an outpost for a larger company. “I was brimming with excitement to work on the latest tech, Novell NetWare 4.1!” he told The Register. One of the first things Hank was asked to do was a storage upgrade for a pair of servers. “We bought a pair of very expensive 750MB disks and since I was the sole IT person at the plant, head office sent me the drives and put me in charge of the upgrade.” Hank was excited when the drives arrived, so he unboxed them and spent a little time fondling what was then just about the most capacious and expensive storage device money could buy. “Who would not want to touch 750MB SCSI drives with blazing fast reads courtesy of 10,000 RPM spindles?” he asked. “It was cutting edge!” It was also rather slippery, because after removing one of the drives from its anti-static bag, Hank dropped it. “Panic set it shortly after,” he admitted. “This drive was worth more than I made in a month. I was still new and on probation. Visions of unemployment and having to move back in with my parents danced through my head.” Hank’s solution was to tell a big fat lie. “I called my boss told them I thought one of the drives was making a strange sound and might have an issue.” Then Hank played his trump card, offering the wise-beyond-his-years suggestion that it would be a waste of time to do the upgrade with a bad drive. His boss agreed and told Hank how to contact the vendor to have a new drive delivered overnight. “The new drive arrived the next day and the upgrade went off without a hitch,” Hank said. “And I learned to sit down when handling expensive hardware.” Have you broken hardware and blamed it on something else? If so, break your mouse by clicking here to send email to Who, Me? We’d love the chance to share your story! ®

Wants to revive the lost art of the National Internet Registry, which APNIC has deprecated and isn’t keen to bring back The government of Malaysia has commenced a consultation on whether it should regulate management of IP addresses and autonomous systems numbers, over objections from regional internet registry the Asian Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC). Malaysia announced its consultation in June, when the nation’s Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) posted a paper [PDF] in which it explains that a lot has happened since passage of the 1998 Act that governs its activities – so it probably needs an update. One of the proposed changes would see Malaysia create a statutory authority with the power to manage electronic addressing “including the management of IP addresses, AS numbers and associated fees.” “This is to support the development of a National Internet Registry model and to ensure a transparent and sustainable administration of electronic addressing resources in Malaysia which will be overseen by the Commission,” the consultation paper states. “This will contribute to a more robust and well-governed digital infrastructure environment in Malaysia.” APNIC says its talks with the MCMC saw the Malaysian entity express a desire for “full operational and technical autonomy over resource assignments” – powers that existing NIRs don’t have. National Internet Registries (NIRs) are a relic of the time before regional internet registries came into being. Only APNIC and LACNIC, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry, allowed NIRs – and only nine exist, covering China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil. APNIC stopped accepting applications for new NIRs in 2012, and in 2024 made the moratorium on new applications permanent. In 2024, APNIC’s executive chair Kenny Huang explained: “NIRs are a historical feature of the APNIC membership structure, recognizing that some IP address registries were already operating at a national or economy level when APNIC started, and some were in formation.” “In the past, particularly while IPv4 address space was being rapidly allocated and needed careful management, NIRs provided important support to a fast-growing Internet with high demand for number resources and registry services.” The internet governance community long ago decided that internet resource distribution and management works best when handled by sizable organizations which operate at regional scale, and that if every country had an NIR it would create unhelpful risks and overlapping authorities. If Malaysia presses ahead with its desire to create its own National Internet Registry (NIR) and have it assume some of APNIC’s functions, it will therefore challenge the status quo. If it actually gets an NIR into operation, that would likely revive debate about whether national governments should have a role in allocating internet resources given the potential for such power to be used for political purposes such as denying resources to groups that a government opposes. The United Nations last year had its say on that idea by re-affirming its support for multi-stakeholder governance under which governments are one of many voices that participate in debate about the future of the internet. Kenny Huang has written [PDF] to the Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), pointing out that it’s currently not possible to create a new NIR and that APNIC won’t revisit its policy on the matter – but he also notes that it’s always possible to commence a consultation and policy process that would see APNIC debate a new position. But that process could only start after the conclusion of work on ICP-2, the major revision of the rules that govern the operation of RIRs. The current ICP-2 timeline calls for a revised document to be in place by the end of 2026. If MCMC decides to pursue creation of an NIR, it will be in conflict on a collision course with APNIC. In the past, most collisions in the world of internet governance occurred at low speed and involved mostly civil debate that plays out over years. ®

Alicent Hightower made a shocking offer in House of the Dragon‘s season two finale. After a lifetime of service and a fatal deathbed misunderstanding, the Queen Dowager wanted the war to end. In exchange for the crown, Rhaenyra just had to grant Alicent and her daughter Helaena the freedom to live peacefully. In House of the Dragon‘s third season, Rhaenyra was eager to accept even if her advisors feared a trap. Were they right? Or was she finally able to claim the Iron Throne? In season three’s second episode, we got our answer.

HBO ⚡ Quick Take

• In House of the Dragon season 3, episode 2, Rhaenyra and Daemon took King’s Landing.
• The Queen beheaded Otto Hightower and executed several Green council members.
• Alicent failed to escape with her daughter and granddaughter.

Rhaenyra’s small council did not share her faith in Alicent’s offer. For a brief moment it wouldn’t have mattered if they did. The Queen was bedridden with grief following the death of her son and heir, Jace. She only got out of bed when her husband Daemon arrived and told her he’d learned about Aegon the Conqueror’s White Walker prophecy. That was enough to stir her to action, which she took once learning Aemond had left King’s Landing on the back of Vhagar.

Her advisors still worried she was walking into a snare, but Rhaenyra did not care. She said she would either claim the Iron Throne or die trying. Dressed in black scale armor, she led the way to King’s Landing on the back of her golden dragon, Syrax. Daemon on Caraxes, Ulf on Silverwing, and Hugh on Vermithor flew with her. The sight of four dragons sent the people in the capital rushing to the city gates. Meanwhile, Green forces quickly laid down their swords and knelt to Rhaenyra when she arrived.

HBO

The Queen and Daemon then walked through a mostly abandoned Red Keep. Alicent had worked to make sure no Green soldiers would stand against Rhaenyra and mostly cleared the castle before trying to escape the city unseen with Helaena and little Princess Jaehara.

As Rhaenyra and Daemon walked through the castle alone (yes, alone for some reason), they encountered little resistance. Daemon easily cut down the few Green soldiers who did oppose them. It wasn’t until the two reached the throne room that any real force tried to stop them. Kingsguard knight and Alicent’s protector, Ser Rickard, led a small Green force to stand before the Iron Throne. He laughed when Rhaenyra pulled her sword to fight alongside Daemon, but he wasn’t laughing when Ser Luthor Largent entered. The City Watch Lord Commander and his men stood alongside Daemon, the prince who’d given them their Gold Cloaks almost twenty years ago.

HBO

The City Watch then took Rickard and the Green soldiers prisoner so Rhaenyra could claim the Iron Throne. She refused to take the Conqueror’s chair until she took the head of her half-brother Aegon, but he had long fled the Capital. While Rhaenyra waited for Daemon to find Aegon, she thanked her now-freed supporters, those who’d remained loyal to her, in the throne room.

Like all the Greens, Grand Maester Orwyle honestly didn’t know where Aegon had gone. He instead saved his own neck with some quick words and by offering up Lord Jasper Wylde’s head instead. Daemon accepted. He swiftly decapitated the Green council’s Master of Laws after Rhaenyra sobbed her way through a slow, painful execution of Otto Hightower. The missing former Hand had been secretly imprisoned in the black cells by Ser Larys Strong before the Clubfoot fled King’s Landing with Aegon. Daemon told his wife, by swinging the sword herself, she would finally become Queen.

HBO

Her first attempt missed. Otto groaned from the pain. Then she finished the job and took the Iron Throne as the captured Alicent and Helaena were brought before her to see what had happened to Ser Otto.

Alicent’s plan worked, but only for Rhaenyra. And even then it only partially worked for the new ruler of King’s Landing. The Dowager Queen did not get what she wanted. Alicent and Helaena failed to escape and it seems impossible Rhaenyra can just let them go now. Meanwhile, although the new Queen now sits on the Iron Throne, her usurper half-brother remains at large. The whole point of taking the Iron Throne was to end the Dance of the Dragons. Instead, the Fall of King’s Landing didn’t end this civil war or succession the way any queen wanted.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post Did Rhaenyra Take King’s Landing on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON? appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• The Vampire Lestat brought us a Devil’s Minion wall slam. But it turns out the wall push is a fandom ship classic. We celebrate it!

Happy Pride! As we near the end of this celebratory month, The Vampire Lestat gods decide to bestow upon us a gift. And by us, I mean Devil’s Minion shippers. In The Vampire Lestat episode four, Armand and Daniel share several beautiful, emotional, and deeply complex moments together. But the Devil’s Minion ship also does something else. Yes, in “The Devil’s Road,” DM enters one of the most Hallowed Halls of fandom as Armand and Daniel complete what I like to colloquially call “The Wall Slam.” “The Wall Slam,” or wall push, is a very intricate maneuver, in which one member of the ship, often overcome by rage, but really, by the inability to stand the intensity of emotions they have for the other person, shoves the other member of the ship against the wall and then gets obscenely close. (You know, because that’s what you do when you’re mad.) Then, in most cases, what transpires is the AO3 tag: “Unresolved Sexual Tension.” Though, for the lucky few, there comes a kiss. (You know they’re already SO close.)

Alas, no kiss luck yet for Devil’s Minion, but a quality wall slam if there ever was one, executed to top marks with everything the trope should hold. Just off the top of my head, the moment nostalgically flared to life a number of ships past. And as I dug into the concept, it turns out, nearly every good ship out there has a variation of “The Wall Slam,” also known as Kabedon or Wall Pin of Love. At first, I considered ranking these devilishly subtextual ship moments. But I decided that all wall slams are valid. So instead, in the spirit of Pride—let us celebrate these fine moments in fandom, which have spurred thousands of fan creations and lingered long in memory.

Devil’s Minion, The Vampire Lestat: Armand and Daniel’s Wall Push Gets Extra Marks for Style

screaming crying throwing up I CAN’T MOVE THIS IS THE BUZZIEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN.. THEY’RE THE COUPLE OF ALL TIME #tvlspoilers pic.twitter.com/b4wBibzTxA

— nora ꕤ (@norabuckleydiaz) June 27, 2026

Our newest entry into the Wall Slam Hall of Fame, Armand and Daniel, did not come to play in episode four of The Vampire Lestat. I mean, factoring in that Armand turned Daniel into an immortal being, then ran away for two years, left Daniel to fend for himself, and has NOT been in touch, it’s only fair that Daniel push him into a couple of walls about it. That, along with the incredible chemistry and tension between them, gives us all the ingredients we need for a very successful ship Wall Slam.

RELATED ARTICLE

Will Armand Call Daniel ‘Beloved’ in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT? Who Knows, But We’ll Always Have This

But honestly, we have to hand it to Daniel. Usually, the wall push is a one-and-done kind of scenario. But we give Devil’s Minion extra points for Daniel actually pulling Armand forward so he could slam him back again a second time. Two-in-one Wall Slam. Yeah, we’re not mad about it. Extra points for Armand following it up with a love confession. It’s not a kiss, but we’ll take it.

AMC Destiel, Supernatural: Dean and Cas Actually Have Like a Zillion Wall Slams, But This Season 4 Finale One Has Stayed with Me

Dean and Cas did not invent the Wall Slam, but they certainly made it their signature move. Over the course of Supernatural‘s many seasons, they’ve had at least three wall slams, if not more. But it’s this moment of Castiel pushing Dean against the wall in the Supernatural season four finale that has stayed with me, and what I see in my mind’s eye when I imagine the Wall Slam. There’s nothing like sealing “I’m betraying Heaven and everything I’ve ever known for you” by pushing the object of your affections into a wall and getting extra close. (Which is saying something when it comes to Dean and Cas.)

The CW BlackBonnet, Our Flag Means Death: They Win Because They Kiss at the End

This is a nice wall slam because it’s just pure love. We could honestly use a few more cheerful wall pushes amongst our ships. Stede and Blackbeard are living their happily ever after as a fully realized canon ship, and that means loving wall slams and kisses. Should all our ships be so lucky, amen.

BlackHands, Our Flag Means Death: The Form of a Wall Slam If There Ever Was One HBO

But, you know, Izzy and Blackbeard are a dang good ship, too. And they bring us the definition of a fandom ship Wall Slam in Our Flag Means Death‘s season one finale. Izzy wants Blackbeard to go back to his old self, and he’s not afraid to bait him into it. And baiting Blackbeard means ending up against the wall, a hand to your throat. It’s what Izzy wants, and it’s what BlackHands shippers need.

HBO

RELATED ARTICLE

Steve and Dustin Break Our Hearts in STRANGER THINGS 5 (As Eddie Haunts the Narrative) Steddie, Stranger Things: A Ship Is Born with a Wall Slam

Steddie is a truly beautiful ship. Even though Steve and Eddie could not be more different, they quickly bond over their shared love and child, Dustin. Steddie stole the hearts of many Stranger Things shippers in record time. And even though the pair only share a handful of canon scenes together, one of them is the all-important Wall Slam. Eddie pushes Steve into a wall, presses a broken beer bottle to his throat, and the rest is history.

Netflix JohnLock, BBC Sherlock: There’s Nothing Like Pushing Someone Against a Wall to Say “Stop Hurting Yourself”

(PS, the video works if you press play!) Oh, JohnLock. So much potential. But we won’t dwell on old wounds. Instead, we’ll celebrate this intense Sherlock season two, episode four “The Lying Detective” moment that had JohnLock fans buzzing. In a fit of rage that Sherlock won’t stop abusing drugs, John Watson slams into a wall and actually slaps him, and the moment devolves into a fight between the pair. It’s an intense sequence. But it’s clear that it’s born of the fact that Watson and Sherlock love one another in ways they can’t understand or express.

BBC Aziracrow, Good Omens: Don’t Call Crowley Nice, Aziraphale (Or Do…)

Good Omens‘ Aziracrow is another one of those ships destined for actual canon. But there’s a lot of bluster between the pair before they can fully admit their feelings for one another. In this famous sequence, dubbed “That Wall Scene,” Crowley can’t take the idea that Aziraphale might think he’s… nice. And the reaction is naturally for Crowley to push him against the wall and glower in his face about it. Yup.

Spuffy, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer: A Wall Slam That Influenced a Generation

Spuffy’s Wall Slam is generational. And it contains the best of all worlds. Not only does it begin with the classic antagonism and intensity that any good ship Wall Slam will have, but then it devolves into a frenzied make-out. I have it on good authority that this Spike and Buffy kiss against the wall in Buffy‘s season six, episode nine, “Smashed,” changed lives. Some might call it the hottest scene on television… And so I rest my case about the importance of a Wall Slam to a ship.

RELATED ARTICLE

All 7 Seasons of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, Ranked Buffy: The Vampire Slayer Also Has Spander and Fuffy Wall Pushes The WB

It turns out, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer is RIFE with Wall Slams. Enemies to lovers sweetheart ship Spander, Spike and Xander, has one, and so does Fuffy, Faith and Buffy. That’s a show that knows how to do it!

The WB Sterek, Teen Wolf: A Classic Wall Slam

Sterek was one of Teen Wolf‘s major ships—so, of course, it requires a good wall slam. Like so many ships before them, Sterek began life as an antagonistic match-up, which involved a lot of menacing and finger-pointing into faces, and yes, getting way too close to walls. Happily, eventually, the pair found their way into something softer. But we’ll never forget the early days of tension and Wall Slams.

MTV VillanEve, Killing Eve: A Wall Slam Plus a Knife, Winning.

VillanEve is a god-tier ship. We need more tense love and angry chemistry among our ladies in the world. And Villanelle and Eve delivered that to us in spades on Killing Eve. We say their Wall Slam is absolutely up there in our books. Not only does it involve all the usual hallmarks, a lack of personal space, a good deal of sexual tension, heaving chests, and a ton of threats, but it also brings a knife into it. 10/10 Wall Slam, gals.

George and Mitchell, Being Human: A Fandom Favorite Wall Slam

I’m told this incredible show, featuring a vampire and a werewolf as roommates, is a must-watch. In addition to constantly saving one another from their vices, George and Mitchell know a thing or two about the wall slam. Compelling television and a strong ship. If you haven’t watched this one yet, what are you waiting for?

BBC Lisa and Jackson, Red Eye: Hello, Airplane Wall Push

Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams bring Wall Slams into the air with this steamy scene. Terrorism, assassination, and some heavy breathing in the sky. It wasn’t a wall push that immediately jumped to my mind, but I can see now why it had such an impact on so many. Red Eye, we salute you.

BatJokes, The Dark Knight: Batman and Joker are an OG Ship, They Deserve a Wall Slam Warner Bros.

The Batman and Joker have been intertwined for a long time. In some ways, they give the other a reason to keep going. And BatJokes is a truly classic, well-loved ship. And so, we were thrilled for long-time (and new) fans of the pairing when The Dark Knight brought a truly growly wall slam into the mix for this comic-based ship. We certainly wouldn’t want Batman holding us against the wall like that… But we feel like Joker totally does.

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THE HUNGER GAMES: SUNRISE ON THE REAPING Trailer Delivers FAMOUS Faces Everlark, The Hunger Games: Katniss Pushes Peeta Against the Wall

Sometimes, a woman has to slam a man against the wall, and we are here for that. When it comes to Katniss and Peeta, it’s definitely Katniss who is the more reactive of the pair. And she’s not afraid to throw an elbow up and go for the full neck choke in her rage, which we fully applaud. It’s only the beginning of the relationship between Katniss and Peeta in The Hunger Games, but for fans of EverLark it’s absolutely a memorable scene.

Lionsgate Honorable Wall Slam Mentions: Spirk in “Amok Time,” Hannigram’s Ladder Scene, Spike and Angel Fight

It turns out the Wall Slam is a very specific kind of scene. So, we had to be firm on what was and what wasn’t a Wall Slam. But we feel like there are a few spiritual offshoots of the Wall Slam. One of them is the “Floor Pin,” which Spirk, Spock and Kirk, perform admirably in Star Trek: The Original Series‘ “Amok Time” and Spike and Angel demonstrate nicely in Buffy.

The other is whatever Hannibal’s Hannigram has going on during “The Ladder Scene.” Hannibal doesn’t literally pin Will to the ladder. But you know, he may as well have…

The Vampire Lestat airs on AMC and AMC+ Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively. You can snag The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice to read, if you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She’s so ready for Devil’s Minion to become canon so one of her ships can finally sail.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post The Devil’s Minion Wall Slam Continues a Time-Honored Ship Tradition appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Assad Zaman spoke to Nerdist about Armand’s love confession to Daniel in The Vampire Lestat, where it came from, and what it means.

In episode four of The Vampire Lestat, a long-awaited reunion finally comes to pass. After three excruciating episodes of separation, Armand and Daniel reunite for the first time since Armand turned Daniel into a vampire. Their first collision with one another in The Vampire Lestat doesn’t go so well—Daniel becomes drenched in complete rage at the very sight of Armand, and Armand attempts to communicate with Daniel by reading from a script. But the course of true love never did run smoothly. And the second meeting between them takes a much different turn; a complicated muddle of that same rage, but drenched in something far more raw on both sides of the equation, something pained and, perhaps, yearning. And in the mix of it, Armand, perhaps more honest than he’s ever been in his life before, confesses that he’s in love with Daniel. Being obsessed with this sequence as we are Nerdist dot com, we had to discuss it with Armand actor, Assad Zaman, who filled us in on the confusion inside of Armand, the unexpected nature of the confession, and the way in which, in the end, the result was a tender moment between the pair.

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For Zaman, Armand, as always, is a muddle of confusing and conflicting emotions and motivations, a tangle that is inscrutable, even to the vampire himself. On the one hand, Zaman confirms that Armand has absolutely been following Daniel and company for some time, lurking in the shadows and watching them from afar. He notes, “I said this before, Armand has, even though he hasn’t been around, he has been around. He’s always watching, he’s a lurker, he’s a serial lurker, and he’s been that as his world has crumbled and he’s gone into the shadows.” And offers that a motivation for keeping tabs on everyone is that he feels the Great Conversion is dangerous, and he wants to stop the impending explosion. And yet, beyond the idea that “Daniel is there creating a documentary about Lestat and vampires,” which could definitely add fuel to the fire, “He’s also Armand’s fledgling…” And although the act of creating a vampire fledgling is abhorrent to Armand, now that he has created one, the idea that Daniel is Armand’s fledgling isn’t something that Armand can let go of easily.

But despite this magnetic draw between the pair of them, Zaman thinks Armand couldn’t fully grasp why he was doing what he was doing in this time. “Does he know that he missed him? Does he know that he is in love with him?” Zaman responds when I wonder why Armand has stayed away if he is in love with Daniel. “I think what’s beautiful about the end of four, that confession that when I read that, I was like, ‘Wow, this is a really, really fascinating way to make this admission.’ Because I don’t think Armand was prepared to… I think it surprised Armand, even, that it came out because it also confirms that what happened in Dubai, the sort of not being able to hear Daniel’s thoughts or being able to be on top of the manipulation, letting himself be discovered was in essence something to do with his affection for Daniel that he himself didn’t understand and couldn’t work out, couldn’t place.”

RELATED ARTICLE

Will Armand Call Daniel ‘Beloved’ in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT? Who Knows, But We’ll Always Have This

He continues, sharing that coming to terms with his love for Daniel is still a work in progress for Armand, “I think that only happens after he’s turned. I think that happens after he’s turned Daniel. And we don’t know the circumstances of his turning Daniel, yet. But I think the cocoon period of Armand happened very soon after turning Daniel, because the act of turning himself is something that he’s just done, something that he finds abhorrent. He, as a vampire, finds disgusting, disgraceful, and abhorrent. And so there wasn’t any space in his mind, I think, to go, “Oh, I’m sorry, let’s work this out. Let’s find…” He just runs away. So this is him facing it, him facing Daniel facing his sort of actions.”

And even though Armand couldn’t be sure what his emotions for Daniel are, it is, as mentioned, more than just his concern over the Great Conversion that draws him out of hiding. Zaman shares, “At the same time, he’s trying to come to terms with what he’s done in Dubai, what he’s done to Louis and Daniel, and trying to reconcile with that. It’s sincerity that’s always peppered with manipulation or peppered with a mission that he feels like he needs to do to survive.”

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And that sincerity, the one which surprises even Armand, comes out in the form of a love confession to Daniel. And it’s drawn out by Daniel… Being Daniel. Zaman walks me through the love confession scene between Armand and Daniel in The Vampire Lestat episode four, “In the beginning, I think he just thinks that Daniel is just going to sort of berate him again because that’s what he did in the bowling alley. He fully believes that Daniel has every right to hate him. He left him. He left him completely vulnerable. He left him with something that he didn’t ask for, and so he feels guilt for that, and he knows that Daniel really does hate him in his guts right now, but then I think both of them don’t… Daniel and Armand, they don’t understand what this connection is that’s happening. Armand does more than Daniel, but they don’t understand this vampire bond because it’s new for Armand as well, but the fact that Daniel is asking about Dubai and going, ‘Was it all a lie? Was it all fake?’ Is a moment that kind of comes out of nowhere for Armand.”

Daniel’s abrupt ability to throw Armand off his game and press him for the truth when he least expects it is one of the reasons why I’ve always thought the pair make a ton of sense romantically. Daniel presses to the heart of things with stubborn intent, and Armand, who is always evading, can’t help but let himself be pinned.

Zaman shares that Armand felt what might be one of the rarest sentiments that could exist in Armand. He offers, “In that moment, I feel like he doesn’t want to lie to Daniel.”

#tvlspoilers
it’s their first real conversation in 2 years and armand is admitting he loves daniel, armand really is the world's biggest hopeless romantic pic.twitter.com/Qhb9ukL3Mp

— dah 🦇 (@vmprlstt) June 27, 2026

And from that determination, born of his affections for Daniel, he gives him something honest—his love. The confession of the power that Daniel has over him. Zaman concludes, “And I think it comes out, it’s an honest confession that, ‘Yes, you can hate me, you can hate me for what I did. I manipulated you. I turned you, I did some fucked up shit, but that pretending to let you manipulate me… That’s not true. You think you were under my spell, actually, I was under your spell. That’s why you were able to free everyone,’ and maybe that’s part of it. Maybe Armand, somewhere deep inside, is like grateful to Daniel for freeing Louis and Armand from this disastrous, nothing relationship that’s a spiral of misery. So yeah, it’s a really tender moment that comes out.”

RELATED ARTICLE

All the Devil’s Minion Teases We Got From THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Cast and Creators

The tenderest. And so we must ask, and then what happens…? But for that, and the rest of Armand and Daniel’s (hopeful) twisted love story, we’ll have to wait for more of The Vampire Lestat.

The Vampire Lestat airs on AMC and AMC+ Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively. You can snag The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice to read, if you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She’s ready for Devil’s Minion to become canon so one of her ships can finally sail.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post Assad Zaman on Armand Making THAT Emotional Confession in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Episode four of The Vampire Lestat feels like a Devil’s Minion fanfic in the best way and gives us all the feelings about Armand and Daniel.
• In episode four, we get wall slams, incredible love confessions, and a deep, multi-layered complexity of emotions.
• Assad Zaman and Eric Bogosian both talk to us about Armand and Daniel’s journey in The Vampire Lestat.

If you’ve ever read a fanfic, you know the high. (And if you’ve never read a fanfic, what are you doing with your life?) That unbelievable euphoria that comes when the stars align, the writing is on fire, there’s hurt, there’s comfort, there’s a deep tangle of confused feelings, and yet some fated, universal thing is irresistibly pulling two characters together in exactly the way you’d hoped for. And then, if you love that relationship, you come to literally understand where the concept of the word “high” came from in the first place. Because you feel like you’re floating. Perhaps for people who regularly ship canon ships, this kind of thing is not unusual in official capacities. But for folks who hold queer ships in their hearts, these moments are rare to behold on our screens, and rarer still to receive with true meaning, depth of story, and intent behind them. Often, we get glimpses of exciting possibilities, enough to get the fanfic machine revving and creating, but almost never do these moments combust into something greater. But, oh, The Vampire Lestat episode four, “The Devil’s Road,” brought that full fanfic feeling to life when it came to the scenes between Armand and Daniel, also known as “Devil’s Minion.”

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In my The Vampire Lestat Review: Devil’s Minion Edition, I slyly noted, “And I will say this, there is a moment later in the season, one of my favorites, that could have been plucked from a Devil’s Minion fanfic. Where I was like, ‘Omg, Daniel, just…’ And Daniel did! We love to see it.” And for me, that’s the entire diss track concert sequence in The Vampire Lestat episode four, and everything that comes after it. But specifically, it’s that moment where Assad Zaman drapes Armand in that fanfic favorite “look of fragile pain and frozen rage” and turns on his heel to exit the show, furious and humiliated by Sam Reid’s unbelievable Lestat, who oozes an incredible sheen of sharp viciousness and a desire to punish. (Which, Armand, of course, in so many ways, deserves. He has done much worse and caused much harm. And despite this can still feel hurt in this moment.)

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Meanwhile, Daniel is in the crowd, watching all this unfold with an, as the fanfics love to say, “unreadable expression.” And now, I invite you to imagine the fourth member of this unholy quaternity, me, leaning over my laptop at midnight, yelling at the screen. “Oh my god, Daniel! Just GO!! AFTER!!! HIM!!!!” Yes, this actually happened, just like that, and I’m proud of it. And Daniel…

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If The Vampire Lestat was a Devil’s Minion fanfic, then as Armand despondently pushes his way through the crowd and out into the street, Daniel, conflicted though he might be, would feel unable but to follow him. The world would vanish around them, figuratively and literally. The only two souls left in the world. Daniel would shove Armand into the nearby wall, get too close, “their breaths mingling” or “their faces suddenly so near their breath became shared” or what have you, they’d say angry, awful things, and then Armand would inadvertently confess his love, even though he didn’t mean to, but how could he not? Wait a minute. That’s what happens in The Vampire Lestat. Do you hear that? That’s the sound of a million DM fanpeople collectively losing their minds across the world.

RELATED ARTICLE

Will Armand Call Daniel ‘Beloved’ in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT? Who Knows, But We’ll Always Have This

Of course, if this were a Devil’s Minion fanfic, we might suggest Armand and Daniel would have kissed here against the wall in The Vampire Lestat episode four. But, in some ways, for me, Daniel going after Armand and everything that comes with it, in this moment, is almost better than a kiss. Or, to be clearer, it’s an incredible lead-up to an eventual kiss which had better come. But kiss or not, the exchanges in The Vampire Lestat episode four speak to that intense something that pulls Armand and Daniel toward one another, unfold so perfectly the dense, delicious promise of their relationship.

Armand and Daniel’s clashing together here is so intensely multilayered. Though Daniel might think he’s furious at Armand and going after him just to yell at him some more, that’s clearly not the case. And when Daniel asks Armand why he’s finally returned, and Armand says, “You’re courting great danger with Lestat.” Daniel’s “Him?” is so pained, it literally begs to be the reason why Armand is there. That veneer of anger holds for a breath, then shatters away completely.

screaming crying throwing up I CAN’T MOVE THIS IS THE BUZZIEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN.. THEY’RE THE COUPLE OF ALL TIME #tvlspoilers pic.twitter.com/b4wBibzTxA

— nora ꕤ (@norabuckleydiaz) June 27, 2026

As Eric Bogosian tells us, “Well, it does start out with raw anger, but just as we saw when we ended the second season, there’s more to be learned when it comes to Armand; there is a lot more to be learned. As he learns it, he’s really put on his back foot. It’s something that just keeps moving along through the season.” And we can see Daniel start to learn it here in episode four of The Vampire Lestat.

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Meanwhile, on Armand’s end, there’s a rawness we hardly ever see on the vampire. Perhaps still born of his journey through Arun and Amadeo and the confusion of who he is amongst all the broken pieces of his current existence. And although we know Armand lies like breathing, intent and vulnerable, he wants Daniel to believe that Dubai wasn’t just a farce, that it’s the truth when he says, “But it was love.” And I want that too.

#tvlspoilers
it’s their first real conversation in 2 years and armand is admitting he loves daniel, armand really is the world's biggest hopeless romantic pic.twitter.com/Qhb9ukL3Mp

— dah 🦇 (@vmprlstt) June 27, 2026

Assad Zaman tells us of the moment where Daniel confronts Armand in The Vampire Lestat episode four:

Well, in the beginning, I think he just thinks that Daniel is just going to sort of berate him again because that’s what he did in the bowling alley. He fully believes that Daniel has every right to hate him. He left him. He left him completely vulnerable. He left him with something that he didn’t ask for, and so he feels guilt for that, and he knows that Daniel really does hate him in his guts right now, but then I think both of them don’t… Daniel and Armand, they don’t understand what this connection is that’s happening. Armand does more than Daniel, but they don’t understand this vampire bond because it’s new for Armand as well, but the fact that Daniel is asking about Dubai and going, “Was it all a lie? Was it all fake?” Is a moment that kind of comes out of nowhere for Armand.

And in that moment, I feel like he doesn’t want to lie to Daniel.

And I think it comes out, it’s an honest confession that, ‘Yes, you can hate me, you can hate me for what I did. I manipulated you. I turned you, I did some fucked up shit, but that pretending to let you manipulate me… That’s not true. You think you were under my spell, actually, I was under your spell. That’s why you were able to free everyone.’ and maybe that’s part of it. Maybe Armand, somewhere deep inside, is like grateful to Daniel for freeing Louis and Armand from this disastrous, nothing relationship that’s a spiral of misery. So yeah, it’s a really tender moment that comes out.

AMC

Tender, messed up, and beautiful. Truly, we could want for nothing more. Except maybe that kiss. But for now, we’re content with this gorgeous slow burn between Armand and Daniel. And our hats off to Assad Zaman and Eric Bogosian for their top-notch acting and the incredible way they bring to life the beauty of Armand and Daniel’s constantly shifting, tumultuous emotions and complex affections.

The Vampire Lestat airs on AMC and AMC+ Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively. You can snag The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice to read, if you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She’s ready for Devil’s Minion to become canon so one of her ships can finally sail.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Episode 4 Gives Me That FANFIC HIGH appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Assad Zaman sat down with Nerdist to discuss Armand’s motivations, addictions, and love confessions in The Vampire Lestat.

The Vampire Armand is finally back in full force in The Vampire Lestat. And, as always, his true intentions are hard to parse. At times, Armand appears contrite for the wrongs he’s managed to stir up in the lives around him, worried about the state of vampire kind and the safety of those he… loves? But, of course, with Armand, multiple motivations are always at play. And it’s hard to tell where tenderness bleeds into manipulation, bleeds into sincerity, bleeds into lies. But, in my book, that’s what makes him so interesting. In the wake of The Vampire Lestat‘s stunning fourth episode, “The Devil’s Road,” Nerdist sat down with Armand actor Assad Zaman to pry open Armand once again and dive into his addictions, confessions, and intentions in the series. Enjoy our full interview with Zaman below, Beloveds.

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So in episode three of The Vampire Lestat, Armand introduces himself as an addict. What is he addicted to?

Assad Zaman: He is addicted to lying, to manipulating. He’s addicted to surviving above everything. He hasn’t got the wherewithal, the courage to understand that maybe the world would be a better place without him. He’s like, “No, the world will not be a better place without me. I will find my place.”

He should think that.

Assad Zaman: He should think that! Maybe he thinks, “The world will be a shitty place, but fuck it. I will make it shittier as long as I survive.” Of course, we can debate how sincere he is about being in an AA, especially the same AA as a member of Lestat’s band. Is that a coincidence or is that by design?

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Armand also calls himself Arun at that meeting in episode three of The Vampire Lestat. Why does he use that name?

Assad Zaman: Well, part of it might be, obviously, to use as a disguise, although the book is out. I don’t know how useful that is as a disguise if people are reading the book and know that his name is Arun. But also, there’s a more sincere answer there that he… I think where we meet him here, it’s two years after his entire world’s collapsed, everything that he has built has sort of gone away. We don’t know exactly how he spent the two years, but I think there has been a regression. There has been a regression into a past version of himself. I think that’s meant that he’s had to revisit his traumas, his past traumas, and parallel them, compare them with what’s happened here.

One of the things that we know about Armand from the books is that this collapse isn’t the first collapse of his existence. He’s had a few of these in the past, and each one has been devastating in its own way. After each one, he’s had to regroup, rebuild himself from the crumbs, from the ashes, and find who he is and survive again. So each time I think Armand never really gets a chance to really understand his trauma and understand, come to terms with it and really sort of evaluate it. He doesn’t give himself the chance to do it, and neither does anyone else really engage with it, really help him to get through it because they have good reason not to.

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He’s a manipulative asshole. He doesn’t do himself any favors. So he’s never really been able to come to terms with the things that have happened. And here, there’s another thing that has happened that’s been devastating, and you’d think anyone would come out of it going, “Okay, wake up. What have I been doing?” That’s what a normal person would do, and hopefully try to come out of it a better person. Does Armand do it? I don’t know. I don’t know that he’s capable of that. I think it’ll take something really big. So Arun is an effect of that. Arun is him coming back out of his cocoon, his two years of sort of hibernating after this devastation. He’s coming out, he’s showing himself, and he’s like the baby version before coming back into Amadeo and Armand. What that’s going to be, we don’t know yet.

If Armand loves Daniel as he implies, and maybe he’s missed him, why did he abandon him for two years after turning him?

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Assad Zaman: Does he know that he missed him? Does he know that he is in love with him? I think what’s beautiful about the end of four, that confession that when I read that, I was like, “Wow, this is a really, really fascinating way to make this admission.” Because I don’t think Armand was prepared to… I think it surprised Armand, even, that it came out because it also confirms that what happened in Dubai, the sort of not being able to hear Daniel’s thoughts or being able to be on top of the manipulation, letting himself be discovered was in essence something to do with his affection for Daniel that he himself didn’t understand and couldn’t work out, couldn’t place.

I think that only happens after he’s turned. I think that happens after he’s turned Daniel. And we don’t know the circumstances of his turning Daniel yet. But I think the cocoon period of Armand happened very soon after turning Daniel, because the act of turning himself is something that he’s just done, something that he finds abhorrent. He, as a vampire, finds disgusting, disgraceful, and abhorrent. And so there wasn’t any space in his mind, I think, to go, “Oh, I’m sorry, let’s work this out. Let’s find…” He just runs away. So this is him facing it, him facing Daniel facing his sort of actions.

RELATED ARTICLE

Will Armand Call Daniel ‘Beloved’ in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT? Who Knows, But We’ll Always Have This

Daniel asks Armand, “Why are you here?” And Armad gives him an answer, but why has he come back now after staying away for so long?

Assad Zaman: Many reasons. There are wider reasons relating to the Great Conversion that he feels that he has a duty, responsibility to halt and make people understand. Daniel is there creating a documentary about Lestat and vampires, and he’s also Armand’s fledgling… And I said this before, Armand has, even though he hasn’t been around, he has been around. He’s always watching, he’s a lurker, he’s a serial lurker, and he’s been that as his world has crumbled and he’s gone into the shadows. Everyone else has sort of come out of the shadows and are certainly being very loud. Louis is enterprising all over the place, and Lestat’s on a world tour, sort of bringing in the entire world of vampires together, and there’s Daniel documenting it all, and it’s something that Armand finds dangerous, so he has to do something about it.

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And at the same time, he’s trying to come to terms with what he’s done in Dubai, what he’s done to Louis and Daniel, and trying to reconcile with that. It’s sincerity that’s always peppered with manipulation or peppered with a mission that he feels like he needs to do to survive.

When I first watched episode four, and Armand left the concert, I was like, “Daniel, go after him.” And then Daniel did. How did that feel for Armand for Daniel to kind of pursue him?

#tvlspoilers
it’s their first real conversation in 2 years and armand is admitting he loves daniel, armand really is the world's biggest hopeless romantic pic.twitter.com/Qhb9ukL3Mp

— dah 🦇 (@vmprlstt) June 27, 2026

Assad Zaman: Well, in the beginning, I think he just thinks that Daniel is just going to sort of berate him again because that’s what he did in the bowling alley. He fully believes that Daniel has every right to hate him. He left him. He left him completely vulnerable. He left him with something that he didn’t ask for, and so he feels guilt for that, and he knows that Daniel really does hate him in his guts right now, but then I think both of them don’t… Daniel and Armand, they don’t understand what this connection is that’s happening. Armand does more than Daniel, but they don’t understand this vampire bond because it’s new for Armand as well, but the fact that Daniel is asking about Dubai and going, “Was it all a lie? Was it all fake?” Is a moment that kind of comes out of nowhere for Armand.

And in that moment, I feel like he doesn’t want to lie to Daniel.

AMC AMC

And I think it comes out, it’s an honest confession that, ‘Yes, you can hate me, you can hate me for what I did. I manipulated you. I turned you, I did some fucked up shit, but that pretending to let you manipulate me… That’s not true. You think you were under my spell, actually, I was under your spell. That’s why you were able to free everyone,’ and maybe that’s part of it. Maybe Armand, somewhere deep inside, is like grateful to Daniel for freeing Louis and Armand from this disastrous, nothing relationship that’s a spiral of misery. So yeah, it’s a really tender moment that comes out.

The Vampire Lestat airs on AMC and AMC+ Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively. You can snag The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice to read, if you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She’s ready for Devil’s Minion to become canon so one of her ships can finally sail.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post Assad Zaman Talks Armand’s Addictions, Confessions, and Intentions in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Assad Zaman spoke to us about why Armand called himself Arun in episode three of The Vampire Lestat and what it reveals about the character.

In Interview with the Vampire season two, the series gives us glimpses of the complicated past that is Armand’s; a series of tragedies that have left the vampire with an intense hunger for survival and the inability to ever truly find or trust peace. Armand tells us that his earliest memories are blurry, kidnapped by slavers in Delhi, sold to a brothel, and then purchased by his vampiric maker, Marius, whom he “served with all his heart”… Only for that existence to be cut short by the Roman Coven, who burned Marius and his home, and stole Armand away again. As a poignant demarcation of each instance in which Armand was destroyed and remade against his will, a different name was forced on him at each point. Arun, in the brothel, a name which may or may not have been Armand’s at the outset. Amadeo, with Marius. And Armand, from the Romen Coven. It’s a dizzying array of identities, none of which Armand chose to acquire.

And so, it is of particular note that in episode three of The Vampire Lestat, Armand introduces himself as Arun during a group meeting he attends, coincidentally/not coincidentally, alongside the wayward member of Lestat’s band, Alex. Curious about the moment, Nerdist asked Armand’s actor, Assad Zaman, to break it down further with us. Why did Armand call himself Arun in The Vampire Lestat? And what does it reveal about the character? Here’s what Zaman had to say.

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Zaman offered the following incredible insights about Armand and his relationship with Arun and his other names and selves:

Well, part of it might be, obviously, to use as a disguise, although the book is out. I don’t know how useful that is as a disguise if people are reading the book and know that Armand’s name is Arun. But also, there’s a more sincere answer there that he… I think where we meet him here, it’s two years after his entire world’s collapsed, everything that he has built has sort of gone away. We don’t know exactly how he spent the two years, but I think there has been a regression. There has been a regression into a past version of himself. I think that’s meant that he’s had to revisit his traumas, his past traumas, and parallel them, compare them with what’s happened here.

One of the things that we know about Armand from the books is that this collapse isn’t the first collapse of his existence. He’s had a few of these in the past, and each one has been devastating in its own way. After each one, he’s had to regroup, rebuild himself from the crumbs, from the ashes, and find who he is and survive again. So each time I think Armand never really gets a chance to really understand his trauma and understand, come to terms with it and really sort of evaluate it. He doesn’t give himself the chance to do it, and neither does anyone else really engage with it, really help him to get through it because they have good reason not to.

He’s a manipulative asshole. He doesn’t do himself any favors. So he’s never really been able to come to terms with the things that have happened. And here, there’s another thing that has happened that’s been devastating, and you’d think anyone would come out of it going, “Okay, wake up. What have I been doing?” That’s what a normal person would do, and hopefully try to come out of it a better person. Does Armand do it? I don’t know. I don’t know that he’s capable of that. I think it’ll take something really big. So Arun is an effect of that. Arun is Armand coming back out of his cocoon, his two years of sort of hibernating after this devastation. He’s coming out, he’s showing himself, and he’s like the baby version before coming back into Amadeo and Armand. What that’s going to be, we don’t know yet.

AMC

If there’s one thing that’s true about Armand, it’s that he’s deeply traumatized. And even though he’s likely only play-acting at group therapy, maybe the attendance of it will be somehow helpful for him. Whoever Arun, Amadeo, and Armand are to Armand, they are, all of them, deeply damaged. And five centuries of trauma without understanding it is a lot for any vampire to deal with, especially on their own. Manipulative asshole or not, we’d like him to try to find the way that’s right for him. And maybe even a name that he gets to choose for himself. Until then, we’ll sit with these intense Armand-feelings and wait to see what happens next.

AMC

The Vampire Lestat airs on AMC and AMC+ Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively. You can snag The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice to read, if you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She’s ready for Devil’s Minion to become canon so one of her ships can finally sail.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

The post Assad Zaman on Why Armand Calls Himself ‘Arun’ in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT appeared first on Nerdist.

House of the Dragon season three’s second episode starts off with some serious heartbreak. Rhaenyra is parsing through the demise of her son Jace, who died in the Battle of the Gullet. She’s angry and lashing out at everyone, and understandably no longer focused on her plan to take King’s Landing. It seems that no one will be able to motivate her into getting back into the game… well, except one person. Enter Daemon Targaryen, her husband who has been determined to see her sit on the Iron Throne since he saw those visions of Daenerys last season. And, it is that vision about the song of fire and ice that re-ignites Rhaenyra and leads her to seizing the opportunity to claim the Iron Throne.

Ollie Upton/HBO

Daemon receives a letter informing him that Jace is dead. The next move is to fly to King’s Landing with Rhaenyra and take the Iron Throne in Aemond and Vhagar’s absence. He returns home to find Rhaenyra in bed grieving and, in true Daemon fashion, he starts to talk her into chaos. She questions if it is worth losing her sons to sit upon a throne and Daemon counters, saying that they cannot let them die in vain. He begins to speak in High Valyrian and tells her about the in-depth visions that he saw while in Harrenhal. 

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HOUSE OF THE DRAGON Made Daemon Targaryen a Part of GAME OF THRONES’ Story

In case you forgot, last season, Daemon saw his own descendent Daenerys Targaryen hatching three dragons from the flames. And, he also saw that all of that will only be possible if Rhaenyra, not himself, sits on the Iron Throne.

⚡ Quick Take

• Daemon Targaryen’s vision about Daenerys is the motivation to get Rhaenyra out of bed and into action to take King’s Landing.
• He tells her briefly what he saw, reminds her of her father’s words, and says that she cannot let her sons die in vain.
• This leads to action where Rhaenyra and Daemon take King’s Landing and she finally sits upon the Iron Throne.

I saw it, Rhaenyra. At Harrenhal. The darkness in the north. The Song of Fire and Ice. I saw a girl with silver hair in a desert far away. And there were dragons at her breast… But if it is real, what my brother told you… If it were true, what then would you do? 

Of course, the girl with the silver hair is when Daenerys emerges from the fire with her dragons in Game of Thrones and earns her moniker “the unburnt.” This speech from Daemon, combined with reminding Rhaenyra of Viserys’ promise and vision, is enough to make her want to rise from bed and seize the throne. 

And, well, she does indeed do that but it is with a cost in many ways. She severs the head of Otto Hightower, who manipulated his daughter and grandsons’ path into power, only for Alicent to show up and see her father’s headless body on the floor. Yep, it’s pretty messy.

It is nice to see the interconnectedness between Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon despite the stories taking place hundreds of years apart. The choices that Rhaenyra makes will certainly impact the legacy of the Targaryens and set the course for what we’ve seen with Daenerys.

The post The Daenerys Prophecy Takes HOUSE OF THE DRAGON to Another Level appeared first on Nerdist.

This post contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon season three, episode two. If you want to avoid them for now you can instead check out our coverage of the season premiere.

HBO ⚡ Quick Take

• Rhaenyra finally claimed the Iron Throne on House of the Dragon, but the show made some pretty big changes to the Fall of King’s Landing from Fire & Blood.

Alicent’s offer to Rhaenyra in House of the Dragon‘s season two finale guaranteed the Fall of King’s Landing would be different from its source material. In Fire & Blood, historians say the whole city and those who ruled there were caught off guard by the Queen’s arrival. On the HBO series, Alicent made sure it happened. But just how different was the show’s version compared to George R.R. Martin’s? They took different paths to arrive at the same place. But they both ended with Rhaenyra on the Iron Throne and Otto Hightower’s head separated from his body.

Rhaenyra’s Comings and Aemond’s Goings HBO

Fire & Blood says that “anger” and hatred” over the death of her son Jace at the Battle of the Gullet, as well as a lost battle not yet seen on House of the Dragon, drove Rhaenyra to make an assault on King’s Landing. Meanwhile, in King’s Landing, Prince Regent Aemond Targaryen also decided to attack his uncle Daemon at Harrenhal with a multi-pronged attack. It was not a decision the entire Green council supported, but Aemond was determined to claim the castle, kill his uncle, and destroy the army of riverlords Daemon had amassed.

Unlike on House of the Dragon, book Aemond did not head to Harrenhal alone. He left King’s Landing with an army led by Ser Criston Cole. On HBO, Cole had long ago left the capital city, but he was waiting for Aemond and Vhagar to go to Harrenhal. Cole is now leading his army there on House of the Dragon.

HBO

In both versions of the story, Rhaenyra was able to easily take King’s Landing because Aemond and Vhagar were not there to protect it since Queen Helaena refused to fight with her dragon Dreamfyre. The major difference was that on House of the Dragon, Alicent convinced her reluctant son to leave King’s Landing. In Fire & Blood—which never indicated Aemond intentionally tried to kill his brother Aegon—the Queen Dowager is said to have urged caution. Alicent wanted Aemond to wait for Aegon, still recovering in the Red Keep, and Sunfyre to heal.

Daemon Flees and Ser Simon Strong Dies HBO

On House of the Dragon, Daemon left his forces in the Riverlands because Rhaenyra summoned him to Dragonstone. The Queen wasn’t abandoning the infamous castle entirely, though. She’d ordered Addam, Ulf, and Hugh to stay at Harrenhal to await Aemond’s impending arrival, which Alicent had guaranteed. The three dragonriders abandoned their post citing both a possible “misunderstanding” and the urging of possible “witch” Alys Rivers.

In Fire & Blood, Daemon happily left Harrenhal after a too-long stay because he got word of his nephew’s plan. The Rogue Prince still had friends in King’s Landing and those unknown allies alerted him to Aemond’s imminent arrival. It would not be the last time friendly faces in King’s Landing would come to his aide.

HBO

Aemond killed Ser Simon Strong in both versions of the story, but in Fire & Blood, the Prince Regent did it in a far crueler way the show only hinted at. History says Aemond, after already taken the castle and having it under his control, forced the elder knight to pick up a sword for a formal duel. Aemond accused Simon of too easily giving Harrenhal to Daemon previously. On House of the Dragon, Aemond told Ser Simon to pick up a sword during his attack. The Prince Regent then stabbed the armless man when Simon tried to calmly tell Aemond he’d already won.

It was an unjust death in both tales, but HBO’s version made Ser Simon’s murder feel more impetuous and emotional rather than the cold, calculated, monstrous charade of a “duel” history remembers.

A Very Different Role for Ser Gwayne Hightower HBO

The Greens of Fire & Blood knew the City Watch of King’s Landing had deep ties going back decades to their former Lord Commander, Daemon Targaryen. As Game of Thrones fans know, the Gold Cloaks are powerful enough to help decide who rules. Baelish paid the City Watch to betray Ned Stark, ensuring Joffrey would become king.

In Martin’s history, the Greens, well aware of the City Watch as formidable armed force within King’s Landing, long ago decided to keep a close eye on the current leader of the Gold Cloaks, Ser Luthor Largent. (Book Luthor was 7-feet tall.) To make sure the City Watch stayed in line, the Greens installed Alicent’s brother, Ser Gwayne Hightower, as the Gold Cloak’s second in command.

HBO

Since his introduction on HBO’s prequel, Gwayne Hightower has marched alongside Ser Criston Cole. The two have led the Green forces as they’ve attacked Rhaenyra supporters in the Crownlands. While Gwayne is not exactly having a good time fighting the war, he has already survived longer than his book counterpart. Book Gwayne fell in the Fall of King’s Landing.

Rhaenyra’s Dragons Arrive in King’s Landing HBO

Only Rhaenyra (atop Syrax) and her husband (flying Caraxes) flew to King’s Landing in Fire & Blood.

In the show, Ulf and Hugh accompanied her with their dragons. They offered support book Rhaenyra instead got from Lord Corlys. He sailed his fleet into Blackwater Bay in a coordinated attack. That was not possible on House of the Dragon. In the source material, the Queen’s arrival in the capital happened well after the Battle of the Gullet. That legendary conflict was not yet over at the start of season three’s second episode.

In the book, the denizens of King’s Landing panicked. Some tried to hide, some began looting, while others tried to flee King’s Landing. The City Watch eventually got the mob under control. House of the Dragon showed much less of the commonfolk’s reaction to the invading dragons, but we did see some panic in the streets.

HBO Alicent – Queenmaker Versus Desperate Queen Dowager

Olivia Cooke’s Alicent convinced her son to abandon King’s Landing in season three’s premiere. In the second episode, she wouldn’t let her sworn Kingsguard protector, Ser Rickard, stay with her. She was working to make the Green army to stand down before Rhaenyra arrived. Alicent wanted to make the Queen’s ascension as peaceful and bloodless as possible. She also wanted to make sure she got to escape.

Alicent tried, and failed, to sneak out amid the throngs of people who took to the streets. She and Helaena were caught and taken before the Iron Throne. There Alicent saw her father’s head no longer attached to its body.

HBO

Book Alicent’s story during the Gall of King’s Landing was totally different.

In Fire & Blood, she did everything she could to save her family. She sent riders to bring Aemond and Cole’s army back to King’s Landing. She also ordered Grand Maester Orwyle to send ravens calling for help. The Gold Cloaks made sure neither happened. The City Watch under Ser Luthor Largent remained loyal to Daemon. They killed the Green loyalists who operated the seven city gates, so Alicent’s riders never made it out of King’s Landing. Gold Cloaks also beat and imprisoned Orwyle before he could send any ravens. And when Gwayne Hightower tried to sound an alarm he too was taken. Luthor then split open Gwayne’s stomach. (See? Show Gwayne might be miserable but he still has it much better.)

The City Watch then opened up the gates to Lord Corlys men. Once captured, Alicent made a wild, desperate offer to Rhaenyra. Instead of a bloody war to determine succession, she said they should summon the kind of great council that had once chosen her father as heir. An angry Rhaenyra shot down the offer saying she knew the lord of the Realm would always chose a man. Out of options, Alicent turned over the keys to King’s Landing and ordered the Green forces to surrender. (On House of the Dragon, many Greens immediately laid down their swords on their own they saw Rhaenyra’s dragons.) Alicent then promised Rhaenyra would not rule long, promising Aemond would soon return “with dire and blood.”

Rhaenyra Meets Little Resistance on House of the Dragon HBO

HBO’s prequel didn’t show the full scope of the City Watch’s role in the Fall of King’s Landing, but it did prove pivotal to Rhaenyra claiming the Iron Throne.

Rhaenyra and Dameon encountered very little resistance as they made their way through the Red Keep. Daemon easily slew the few Green soldiers who attacked. It wasn’t until they came before the Iron Throne the Queen’s life was in obvious danger.

Lord Rickard and Green soldiers tried to stop Rhaenyra when she entered the throne room with only Daemon by her side. The only thing that saved the couple was the arrival of Ser Luthor and his Gold Cloaks. On the show, it did not appear Daemon was fully expecting their aide, making him and Rhaenyra’s entrance into the throne room needlessly reckless. House of the Dragon‘s Ser Rickard was then taken prisoner.

HBO

In both tales, Rhaenyra’s men then went looking for Aegon. He was long gone on the show, having fled his brother’s wrath in season two.

Aegon’s book counterpart only left King’s Landing when Rhaenyra arrived. Larys Strong, with Ser Rickard’s help, smuggled Aegon out through secret passages the City Watch didn’t know about. Aegon’s two surviving children also went with him. He only has one on the show, Jaehaera, who we saw Helaena carrying as she tried to escape with her mother. Book Helaena was easily taken from her bedchamber during the hunt for Aegon. In each version, not even Alicent knew where her son had gone.

Rhaenyra Executes the Greens But Spares Her Fellow Queens HBO

Both Lord Jasper Wylde and Ser Otto Hightower, two members of the Green small council that conspired to seat Aegon on the Iron Throne, lost their heads after Rhaenyra claimed King’s Landing. (It happened much, much sooner on House of the Dragon.)

There’s nothing written in Fire & Blood to indicate Rhaenyra herself wielded the sword to execute Otto Hightower. He was present when Alicent surrendered the city on behalf of the Green council. Book Otto was also never a secret prisoner of Larys Strong like on House of the Dragon.

Tyland Lannister was also taken prisoner after the Fall of King’s Landing. In Fire & Blood, Rhaenyra did not execute him, though. His fate currently mains unknown on House of the Dragon after Admiral Lohar threw him and his heavy armor overboard during the Battle of the Gullet. Drowing would be a blessing compared to what awaited his book counterpart….

HBO Queen Rhaenyra Finally Sits on the Iron Throne

House of the Dragon delayed Rhaenyra’s big moment until after she killed Otto Hightower. In the source material, his execution didn’t happen until well after the Queen was secure on the Iron Throne. That was a minor change in time, but a major change in tone. Rhaenyra’s ascension was not a triumphant moment on the show. In front of the entire royal court, she sobbed throughout the execution of a hated enemy her book counterpart relished see die.

HBO

The show did give its answer to an always dubious tale written by a Septon partial to Aegon. It’s a the story about what happened when Rhaenyra sat on the Conqueror’s chair. This is what that biases historian says happened when she rose in the early dawn following her first night on the Iron Throne where she had listened to people swear fealty and beg forgiveness. From Fire & Blood:

“….cuts were seen upon Her Grace’s legs and the palm of her left hand. Drops of blood fell to to the floor as she went past, and wise men looked at one another, though none dared speak the truth aloud: the Iron Throne had spurned her….”

Rhaenyra’s father King Viserys famously cut his hand on the Iron Throne. It was an ill-omen. On House of the Dragon Viserys’ cut never healed (to say the least). Even in the book it cost him two fingers. But this story about the Conqueror’s seat rejecting Rhaenyra has always felt like propaganda meant to undermine her rule after the fact. It was also meant to connect her to the worst Targaryen ruler from the family’s first century in Westeros.

HBO

This story is a reference (and not the only one) to Maegor the Cruel, whose memory helped lead to the Dance of the Dragons. Many lords, like Otto Hightower, feared Daemon would be a “second Maegor” if he ever claimed the Iron Throne. Daemon’s actions combined with the memory of Maegor—who caused the first issue of Targaryen royal succession—contributed to Viserys naming Rhaenyra his heir. Daemon had been first in line before Viserys broke that tradition, which set in motion the Dance of the Dragons.

Maegor’s bloody, violent reign ended when he was found dead on the Iron Throne with his arms “slashed open from wrist to elbow” and blade sticking up through his neck. Some said Maegor ended his own life, others say it was regicide. But there were those who believed the Iron Throne itself killed the cruel King.

A chair of steel cannot intentionally cut anyone, not even the unworthy. The Iron Throne itself does not pass judgement, and it didn’t on House of the Dragon, at least not the first time Rhaenyra sat in it as Queen. It did not reject her by making her bleed. But that story was never about the truth. It was about trying to paint Rhaenyra as a monster who was never meant to rule. A nickname she will soon earn will do the same….

Why Rhaenyra Made Her Move on the Iron Throne HBO

In both versions the Queen, dressed in black scale armor, was determined to either take the city or die trying. The big change was “why.” Rhaenyra only agreed to take King’s Landing on House of the Dragon because Daemon reminded her of Aegon the Conqueror’s White Walker prophecy. It was not out of rage over Jace’s death like in Fire & Blood.

Only, that might not really be a change. The already unreliable history of the Dance of the Dragons didn’t know about Aegon’s dream. No source material before House of the Dragon ever cited the Song of Ice and Fire as the reason the Conqueror wanted to unite Westeros, but it seems likely (certain?) that revelation came from George R.R. Martin. directly.

HBO/IGN

There was never a good explanation for why House Targaryen suddenly turned its attention to the Realm after one hundred relatively quiet years on Dragonstone. A fan theory long ago, that the author spoke about, did posit that Aegon’s interest in the Seven Kingdoms was tied to the impending return of the White Walkers. But while it wasn’t an outrageous revelation when we learned that’s exactly what happened, it did change everything we ever thought we knew about House Targaryen’s rule, including Rhaenrya’s fight for the Iron Throne.

No matter the “real” motivation behind Rhaenyra’s attempts, though, the source material makes clear it had nothing to do with a secret offer from Alicent. And while it might seem possible to argue historians could not possibly have known about such a treasonous pact, what followed Rhaenyra’s arrival in King’s Landing in the book make any possible collusion with Alicent impossible.

The result in both tales ends the same way, though. Queen Rhaenyra finally sits on the Iron Throne. Now she must try and keep it.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He’s not upset the traitor Ser Otto is dead, but he will miss Rhys Ifans. You can follow him on Twitter at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post The Biggest Changes HOUSE OF THE DRAGON Made to the Fall of King’s Landing appeared first on Nerdist.

House of the Dragon season three is only two episodes in, but A LOT is going down. Rhaenyra is dealing with Jace’s death, Alicent is desperately trying to get TF out of King’s Landing, Rhaena is trying to NOT get murked, Aemond is unhinged, and Daemon continues to be an agent of chaos. In episode two, Daemon and Rhaenyra finally make their move on King’s Landing to take the Iron Throne. But, with that takeover, heads must roll to assert their authority. And that’s exactly what happens… but not with whom we’d expect. House of the Dragon showed the epic return of Otto Hightower and his swift demise at the hands of a tearful Rhaenyra. 

Ollie Upton/HBO

In this episode, Rhaenyra and Daemon bring the dragons and confidently slice their way to the Iron Throne. After gaining the support/surrender of the City Watch, Daemon finds Grand Maester Orwyle, who says he’s no hero nor a fighter. He declares himself faithful to the true Queen Rhaenyra and offers up a prisoner in exchange for his own demise. Daemon discovers that it is Jasper Wylde, the same man who tried to sexually assault Alicent. Predictably, Wylde is talking lots of trash, so Daemon is more than willing to offer him as a sacrifice. But, he learns that Lord Larys Strong left him the greatest gift of all: an imprisoned Otto Hightower. 

⚡ Quick Take

• House of the Dragon season 3, episode 4 brings back Otto Hightower for a surprise return.
• He’s offered up as a sacrifice to assert Rhaenyra’s dominance as she takes the Iron Throne.
• Rhaenyra chops off Otto’s head right before Alicent is brought in, which will surely cause more tension between the former friends.

The return of Otto Hightower in House of the Dragon was inevitable considering that he played such a big role in setting all of this mess in motion. He was replaced as the King’s Hand when Aegon took the throne. After Ser Criston Cole took his place, he left to gather allies in the Reach but disappeared. Last season, we saw him in a dark jail but it wasn’t clear where he was. Well, it seems he was in King’s Landing the entire time. Look at that. 

HBO

Otto and Wylde are brought to Rhaenyra. Daemon tells her that she must take their heads to assert her authority, but she is hesitant. Not everyone is a natural born killa, Daemon! Otto laments that her father wouldn’t want to see things go this way, to which she replies by telling him to shut up. She finally did what needed to be done and chopped both of their heads off.

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Meanwhile, Alicent, Helaena, and Helaena’s child are captured and brought into the room. Alicent is shocked to see her father’s lifeless body on the floor as she looks at Rhaenyra sitting on the throne. RIP Otto, you got what you deserved, my guy. 

The post A Key HOUSE OF THE DRAGON Character Makes a Shocking Return appeared first on Nerdist.

In a significant flashback in episode four of The Vampire Lestat, “The Devil’s Road,” we see a major life milestone moment in the personal development of Sam Reid’s Lestat. And it explains so much of his later behavior with so many other characters, particularly his fledglings, Louis and Claudia. Episode four shows us the first time his mother, Gabriella, picked up and abandoned him for years and years. This left a hole in his heart that he always tried to fill with the love of others. Particularly, his great love, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson).

⚡ Quick Take

• The Vampire Lestat episode 4, “The Devil’s Road,” showed us a significant beach scene.
• It depicted the first time Gabriella abandoned Lestat.
• This left a hole in Lestat’s undead heart.

AMC Gabriella Abandons Lestat in the 19th Century

In one of the 19th-century flashbacks, we see Lestat and Gabriella on an unnamed Italian beach. They have finished picking off a group of sailors, and they decided to take cover from the morning sun. They dig holes in the sand, and flip over two lifeboats for protection from the sun’s rays. But when Lestat awakens the next evening, he turns over the boat next to him, and finds that his mother/lover has already left. He knows that this time, shes gone for good, leaving him all alone. This leaves him despondent, feeling totally abandoned by the woman who gave him life, and whose life he saved in return when he gave her the Dark Gift.

AMC

This leads to a depression that causes Lestat to bury himself in the Earth for nearly a century. In Anne Rice lore, a vampire can essentially cease drinking blood and lie in the ground for an unlimited amount of time. But the longer they stay in that state, the more difficult it is to climb back up to life. They consider it a form of death and eventual rebirth. They can telepathically hear the world around them, but they take all that information as if in a dream state. Lestat does this until the early 20th century, which brings us to season one of Interview with the Vampire.

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THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’S Backstory, Explained in Linear Fashion

Based on things that Gabriella has said so far, while under her guise as “Sofia,” she did come back to see Lestat here and there over the last few hundred years. Apparently, she nursed him back to health after the assassination attempt by Louis and Claudia in season one. But then, it’s evident that she disappeared again for a very long time. It’s unclear how long Lestat went without seeing his mother by the time the pair are reunited in The Vampire Lestat. But it seems to have been decades at least. Gabriella simply does not need Lestat the way he needs her.

How Lestat and His Mother Parted Ways in the Anne Rice Novel Alfred A. Knopf/Ballantine Books

In the book, the rupture between Lestat and his mother unfolds over time. The two travel the world together for a decade, but even then, Gabrielle would vanish for days, then weeks, then months at a time. She much preferred hunting in nature to living among human civilization. For her, she would prefer to kill a wild bear or elephant than a regular human. In the novel, she and Lestat did not kill their family together. Lestat’s brothers died in the French Revolution, and his father, Gabrielle’s husband, escaped to New Orleans. She kept this news from Lestat, who, enraged, told her to leave him forever. Gabrielle does not see Lestat again for nearly 200 years, reuniting with him at Lestat’s San Francisco concert.

AMC

This event in Lestat’s life left a permanent mark, and informs so many of his bad choices in later years. He clings so hard to Louis, largely because of feeling abandoned by his mother. And also, the disaster with his first love, Nicholas, informed a lot of that as well. But if Gabriella had not abandoned him, he may have never embarked on a trip to America, and settled in New Orleans. A lot of Lestat’s bad decisions can be traced back to that evening on the beach in Italy.

The Vampire Lestat drops new episodes on Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

The post Why the Beach Scene in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Is Significant appeared first on Nerdist.