Over the course of House of the Dragon Season 2, Aemond Targaryen, the conniving, much-maligned second son of King Viserys and Queen Alicent, has emerged as the show’s inarguable villain.

“Compassion is weakness in Aemond’s vocabulary,” Ewan Mitchell tells Inverse. “He wants to be seen as someone who is almost like a T-1000 Terminator.”

Like Robert Patrick’s murderous antagonist in James Cameron’s sci-fi thriller T2: Judgment Day, Aemond is cold, calculating, and vicious — a temperament that marks him as a baddie even without the eyepatch he earned after a childhood spat. But in Season 2, this has become even more apparent.

“The long hair, the eye patch — it screams villain,” Mitchell says, “but it depends on what side you’re on. He’s the guy who is prepared to do the necessary evil. He wants to be seen as a war hero.”

With Season 2 come and gone and the stage set for the pivotal Battle of the Gullet, Inverse about Aemond’s role in the Season 2 finale, where he stands, what he’s planning, and what he faces ahead in House of the Dragon Season 3.

Joe Pantoliano doesn’t like steak.

“I’ve never been a beef lover,” the actor tells Inverse in an interview (to be published in full soon) promoting his role in Bad Boys 4, “and especially rare, super rare meat — it just makes me gag.”

Normally, the gastronomical preferences of Hollywood stars wouldn’t matter much to the fans of the movies they make, but in the case of Pantoliano and his The Matrix villain, Cypher, it almost ruined a crucial scene.

You can probably guess the one. Midway through the Wachowskis’ 1999 sci-fi classic, Pantoliano’s character (a member of the group of human rebels who recruit Keanu Reeves’ Neo to fight back against their robot oppressors) switches sides. While eating rare steaks at a fancy restaurant with the evil AI known as Agent Smith, Cypher cuts a deal with his enemies, trading key rebel information for a chance to reboot his life in the Matrix as someone rich and important... like an actor.