Things I liked

• The new intro - IMHO it is much better than 3D Valyria model, but not as good as OG Planetos' map.
• Seeing the north, Winterfell and the Wall again
• Cregan Stark was better than I expected.
• Meeting new characters, a lot of time spent with this Alyn fella in the docks with Corlyn 😉
• Rhaenyra and Jacaerys mourning scene was the standout scene for me.
• Looks like they're using humor to humanize Aegon II.
• Seeing everyone over at r/asoiaf loose their mind over Blood and Cheese ROFL

Things that puzzled me.

• Torren knelled at the wall ?
• Cole x Alicent - IMHO it came out of nowhere.
• The pacing of Blood & Cheese and the fact that the final minutes of the episode was split into 3 scenes: Blood & Cheese, Helaena's random walking and finally her entering Alicent's chamber.

Random Thoughts

• So... is Maelor chillin' with Daeron (The Daring) over at Oldtown ?
• Change the intro as much as you like, every season if you will. As long as OG GoT theme song plays, it will never be skipped.
• I love that they are still leaving us with the idea that, just like F&B, some events are still not completely understood/shown. We never see Daemon give the explicit order to target - same as we never see Daemon explicitly say "Heir for a Day" back in S1.
• I really think that Rhaenyra will be furious at Daemon - not only because he single-handedly plunged everyone further into a MAD scenario, but Rhaenyra's side (probably) just lost the moral high ground.

Great start IMO, good pacing and loads of nice setup! Looking forward to the rest of the season!

I really thought that Blood & Cheese would be more gruesome and dramatic.

Don’t get me wrong - the sound effects were hair raising - but on the whole I expected it to be much more emotional.

I get they are trying to make Heleana a damn weirdo, and I get how one of the shows themes is that accounts of war can be colored by bias, unreliable narratives and exaggerations. But, I still expected her to be more emotional; she was forced to sacrifice her child and I thought she would have more of an internal struggle.

One explanation I did read was that (earlier in the episode) she expressed to Aegon that she did not want Jaehaerys to be king. Specifically, Aegon said “he is to be king someday” to which Heleana responded said “well what if he doesn’t want to be king?”

Maybe she saw giving up Jaehaery’s to Blood & Cheese was a way to set him free from the responsibility of being king?