Mashable

Guys, I hate to say it, but I think House of the Dragon's Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) is going to be a bad queen.

No, it's not because of how she keeps alienating allies like Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), or how she springs to execute her detractors among the smallfolk of King's Landing. And no, it's not because of the crises she inherited, like a depleted treasury or a starving, restless city.

Instead, it's because she dares disrespect the Targaryens' most fun tradition. Don't worry, it's not incest. It's the Small Council's marbles.

First seen in House of the Dragon's Season 1 premiere, these multi-colored balls serve as a way for the members of the Small Council to clock into work. Once you put your marble in your dish, you're punched in and ready to help rule the realm.

The marbles are an aesthetically pleasing world-building detail, but they're also versatile: In Season 1, Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) kills Lord Lyman Beesbury (Bill Paterson) by smashing his skull into his own marble. In Season 2, King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) fiddles with his own ball during a meeting, even letting his son Jaehaerys give it a spin. Forget their potential as a bureaucratic tool or murder weapon; these marbles just seem fun to play with.

Which brings me to my beef with Rhaenyra. In House of the Dragon Season 3, episode 4, she tells Grand Maester Orwyle (Kurt Egyiawan) that he is welcome to stay on her Small Council so long as he remains loyal. When he goes to clock in with his marble, she stops him, calling them "relics of a dead regime."

Respectfully, Rhaenyra, how dare you? The Small Council balls have been a delightful way for members to announce their presence. They allow every member to have some colorful flair, they sound great when they plunk into place, and they look so fun to play with. Would you deny your team the satisfaction of a little ball to fidget with? Ruling the realm is a stressful task, Rhaenyra! Maybe you'll find that playing with a big old marble is a much better way to decompress than taking your worries out on the smallfolk.

But what worries me most about Rhaenyra's statement isn't her clear hatred of a fun time. It's the fact that she declares the marbles a relic of a dead regime, meaning Aegon's. Yet the marbles were in place during her father Viserys' (Paddy Considine) reign, and likely during the reigns of many of the Targaryens who came before. Is she so blinded by hatred of Aegon that she would dismiss her father's relatively peaceful rule? Is she over prior Targaryen patriarchal regimes in general and hoping to have her own Daenerys Targaryen "break-the-wheel"-style moment? Or did she just forget the marbles even existed during her many years away from the Red Keep? (I know, who could forget them?) Whatever the reason, Rhaenyra's on thin ice post-marble gate. Let the Small Council play with their balls!

House of the Dragon Season 3 is now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes premiering Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.

Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) and his scaly steed were last seen storming Harrenhal in House of the Dragon, only for the drama king to take a blade to the kidney after attacking one Strong too many.

So the question is, where are they now?

Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) and Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox) finally make it to Harrenhal in search of Aemond in episode 4, only to find the castle looking just as haunted and abandoned as ever.

They do, however, find the witch Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), who eventually tells them that Aemond is long gone.

"He was here," Rivers says. "He seized the castle after Prince Daemon abandoned it. But when he learned that Rhaenyra took King's Landing, he and his dragon fled."

Later, Cole and Hightower are sitting in poor old Ser Simon Strong's dining hall when a soldier gives them an update: "We've scoured the area, Lord Hand. There is sign of a large dragon nest, but it has been abandoned. Prince Aemond may indeed have fled."

So the question is, where's Aemond? Has he really fled? Is something else going on? And is he even still alive after the injury he sustained back in episode 2?

The good news for Aemond fans? He definitely isn't dead, because there's footage of him in the "weeks ahead" trailer HBO dropped after episode 1 (jump to 54 seconds in) — footage that we haven't seen yet.

What's even more intriguing? The shot in the trailer sees Aemond speaking about Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) taking over King's Landing to someone offscreen. But he's sitting in Harrenhal's dining hall eating a meal when he says it. We double-checked this by cross-referencing the shot of Aemond with the shot of Cole sitting in the exact same seat in episode four (the chair is broken, so you can tell it's the same one).

The conclusion? Alys Rivers is most likely hiding Aemond in the castle while he recovers from his injury. Vhagar may even be hiding, too — we know from the Rook's Rest battle in back in Season 2 that she is capable of laying low in the woods, despite her size.

Aemond may be AWOL for now, but we'll likely be seeing him again very soon.

House of the Dragon Season 3 is now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes premiering Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.

Meta's Must Image tool, which launched last Tuesday, is now being shuttered by the company, according to Reuters.

The social media giant released a statement on Friday announcing it would discontinue the feature: "Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public ​content could be referenced in this way. We've ​heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so ⁠it's no longer available."

Meta launched Muse Image as part of a suite of new AI tools. Designed for Instagram and WhatsApp users, it lets them touch up, alter, or add 3D effects to new photos. Muse Image took things a step further, allowing users to use photos from public-facing Instagram accounts as reference material for generative AI. Worse still, they enabled the feature by default, so if you didn't want your personal photos being used as AI fodder, you had to either make your account private or locate the specific setting that would toggle the feature off.

Unsurprisingly, the backlash came hard and fast. 

But it was actors and other famous people with massive followings and public accounts who led the charge. Hacks star Hannah Einbinder took to her Instagram stories to urge her followers not to use the feature, prompting the Screen Actors Guild to take action as well, urging its members to "protect your likeness" by deactivating it. To its credit, though, this time around Meta listened.

There's no shortage of controversy regarding generative AI and copyright issues, whether we're talking about companies asking child actors to sign away their voice rights or major record labels suing music generators over creative use, but leave it to Meta to carelessly trip every wire and provoke a backlash so severe that they were immediately forced to back down.

Expect more heated battles over image rights, privacy, and generative AI as these tools only become more powerful and more ubiquitous, but in the meantime, let's all be glad that Meta was receptive to the negative feedback.