The Connection You May Have Missed Between House Of The Dragon's Crabfeeder And Game Of Thrones
HBO's "Game of Thrones" prequel, "House of the Dragon," has already made its mark on fans in the early parts of its 1st season, pulling in massive numbers for its network. Its second episode, "The Rogue Prince," climbed to 10.2 million viewers across HBO's various platforms (per Variety), which was slightly higher than the premiere episode a week before. Basically, thus far, viewers who loved "Game of Thrones" have shown their willingness to return to the fantasy world of Westeros in droves.
One interesting element of the show thus far, however, was its swift introduction and then just-as-fast killing off of the villainous Crabfeeder (Daniel Scott-Smith), though some have compared his swift death negatively with the Night King's. The masked, grayscale-afflicted baddie is an interesting character in his own right, both because of his silent ferociousness and because he obviously serves as the first outside threat to the Targaryen protagonists. However, there's also something about him that surprisingly connects Crabfeeder directly to "Game of Thrones."
Crabfeeder's mask is very similar to the ones worn by Sons of the Harpy
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Crabfeeder actor Daniel Scott-Smith talked extensively about his time as the character on "House of the Dragon." Among the more interesting tidbits of what he had hoped to bring to the table for the role, Scott-Smith revealed something truly fascinating about his character's mask and its ties to a well-known "Game of Thrones" villainous cult. "And we spoke about the idea of him being the first person to wear this mask and it becoming iconic and, therefore, it's built from that [for 'Game of Thrones']," he said. "Why is he wearing the mask? How does he feel about that? It's a power statement, so he's quite happy wearing it."
While this is a fascinating connection for "House of the Dragon" to make to its parent show, it obviously raises as many questions as it answers. What inspired the Sons of the Harpy to start wearing masks modeled after the one that Crabfeeder wore? Is he something of a legendary figure for them or does it have some deeper, perhaps religious connotations? And perhaps most importantly of all, will the showrunners dive into this topic further or will it be saved for some other, far-off spin-off series? Regardless, it's still a big connection between the shows' lore that diehard fans will no doubt appreciate.
Does the mask represent something bigger?
Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) kills Crabfeeder off-screen in Episode 3 ("Second of His Name"), and the first antagonist the family faces in "House of the Dragon" is gone in the blink of an eye. The reappearance of the gold mask in "House of the Dragon" signifies that this person is an enemy of the Targaryens, just as the Sons of the Harpy were in "Game of Thrones." Fans of the original series will remember the resistance group as one of Daenerys Targaryen's foes in Seasons 5 and 6. The group forms to combat Daenerys and her new rule of Meereen.
The gold mask is a representation of The Harpy, a gold figure with the head and torso of a woman and the wings, tail, and legs of a bird. This was a symbol of the slave masters in Slaver's Bay, so why Crabfeeder would be wearing the same mask is a bit of a question mark. His armies are from the free cities, so perhaps this gold mask is just a way for "House of Dragon" to identify a foe of House Targaryen. Or, perhaps, it was just something thrown in for "Game of Thrones" stans. "It was definitely a nod to that for, I guess, the fans, because it's something familiar for them," Daniel Scott-Smith admitted.