The much-awaited second series of HBO’s House of the Dragon launched on Monday night.

A prequel to the smash-hit Game of Thrones, the show takes place 200 years earlier and follows the Targaryen and Hightower families.

Viewers were surprised in the episode’s opening scenes as a Corrie alumnus made an appearance.

James Craven, who featured as a member of the Stark family, formerly played Aaron Sandford in the ITV soap.

Introduced as a member of a diabetics support group, Aaron starts dating Summer Spellman (Harriet Bibby) although his arc took a dark turn after he raped her best friend Amy Barlow (Elle Mulvaney).

Aaron had flirted with Amy following an argument with Summer, which in turn had stemmed from sharing their personal problems with his ex-girlfriend.

Although Amy had been at first receptive to the advances, she passed out before being able to give further consent.

With the young man denying what he’d done, Tracy Barlow’s daughter took to social media to reveal what had happened.

Aaron’s father Eric (Craig Cheetham) sued Amy for libel but this was later dropped and Aaron departed Weatherfield with his dad.

A year after his on-screen exit from Corrie aired, James’ House of the Dragon character was in very different territory.

The HBO episode started off in Winterfell while viewers heard a voiceover explaining how the selection process worked for men to become part of The Night’s Watch.

People drew stones out of a bag to determine who would be joining up, with James’ character unfortunately choosing the odd one out.

Having picked the black stone, the unnamed character realised he would have to leave his village behind to start his position at the wall.

As of now, it’s unknown whether the former soap star will reappear in the popular series, although James’ IMDb page credits him as Stark Night’s Watch Candidate.

The actor’s former Coronation Street co-star Jack James Ryan, who played Jacob Hay, acknowledged the cameo on social media.

He wrote in his Instagram stories: “Everytime I turn on the telly I see bromeo and I’m really not mad about it [dragon and heart emoji].”

In other recent work, James starred in Netflix’s Geek Girl alongside Emily Carey, who played the younger Alicent Hightower in series one of House of the Dragon.