Rhaenyra’s Irreversible Choice Leaves House of the Dragon Fans Stunned as Cast Teases the Darkest Chapter Yet
Spoiler Alert
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What To Know
Rhaenyra Targaryen suffers a devastating loss in House of the Dragon Season 3 that changes her forever.
Rhaenyra makes a major move for the Iron Throne in Episode 2, one that marks an irreversible turning point in Rhaenyra and Alicent’s relationship.
Emma D’arcy, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, and Fabien Frankel explain the episode’s ending.
The death toll is hiking up in the fight for the Iron Throne in House of the Dragon Season 3. The Game of Thrones spinoff staged a huge death in Episode 1 on June 21, and Episode 2 delivered another fatal blow to a character who’s been on the show since Season 1. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. That phrase is given new meaning for Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’arcy) in this episode. Here, D’arcy, Matt Smith (Daemon Targaryen), Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower), and Fabien Frankel (Criston Cole) react to the episode’s ending that changes everything. Warning: House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2 spoilers ahead.
The episode opened in the aftermath of the Battle of the Gullet, which claimed the life of Rhaenyra’s first child and heir, Jacaerys (Harry Collett). Baela (Bethany Antonia) returned his body to Dragonstone, where Rhaenyra broke down in disbelief and profound grief over her son. Jace’s tragedy was Rhaenyra’s final straw. She followed through on her plan to go to King’s Landing and take back the Iron Throne with Daemon and Alicent’s help. The episode is fittingly titled “Queen’s Landing.”
Alicent succeeded in getting Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) to fly Vhagar to Harrenhal, where he had a fateful meeting with the witch Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin). Rhaenyra and Daemon flew to the Red Keep with their three dragon riders and walked into the throne room with little conflict; Daemon struck down anyone who got in their way. But with Aemond gone and Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) on the run with Larys (Matthew Needham), Rhaenyra needed a head to roll that would signal the end of Team Green’s rule. Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) became that head. He had been imprisoned in secret in the Red Keep all this time, which viewers knew but Alicent didn’t.
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Rhaenyra had accepted the reality that she would need to kill Aegon to win, but she struggled with the idea of killing Otto, her late father’s close friend and someone who had been in her life since she was a child. And, of course, it’s Alicent’s father. Alicent painfully agreed to her son’s death. Killing her father wasn’t part of the deal. It took two blows of Rhaenyra’s sword to kill him. She left a trail of blood-soaked footsteps as she walked to the Iron Throne and finally took her place on it. Alicent walked in to the sight of her father’s decapitation. Daemon, meanwhile, beamed with pride.
Smith’s explanation of Daemon’s feelings about Otto, and how it will impact things with Alicent, is simple.
“I don’t think Daemon really cares,” he says. “Although I really want a scene with Alicent. I’m campaigning for a scene…I think there’s a really interesting scene to be had there.”
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The episode ended on individual closeup shots of Alicent and Rhaenyra. D’arcy defines Rhaenyra’s look and her struggle to kill Otto.
“I wanted Rhaenyra to be stripped of her adulthood by the time she reaches the throne,” says D’arcy. “She finds herself in this position where she’s required to execute her father’s former best friend. When someone has known you from your childhood, I think it’s very hard to retain the jacket of your adult self. And again when she sees herself via Alicent’s POV, there’s something of the two of them being children. This is also the court in which they grew up and the whole timeline is kind of laid bare between them in that look.”
“It’s probably immediately evident that Rhaenyra’s action is probably insurmountable in their relationship,” D’arcy continues. “I would guess that that’s immediately evident. But it’s tricky when you want to be seen as a person who is in control and in a position of power, but you are known too intimately by someone. I wanted her to feel uncomfortably revealed in what is a very public forum.”
Cooke explains this moment from Alicent’s point of view and what her final look means.
“This is the first time she’s seen Otto in a very long time,” Cooke says. “He’s not been responding to her letters that she’s being sent. She doesn’t know where he’s been. She thought he was in Oldtown, so this to her looks like Otto was potentially Rhaenyra’s prisoner and this has been her first political act as ruler. She feels betrayed by by her and feels like, ‘I’ve been a pawn. I’ve let you have King’s Landing and this is what you’ve done as your first order.’”
Is this something they can come back from? Cooke says, “Could you if your best mate killed your dad?” It’s a thorny question, but therein lies the drama of this season.
Criston has been fiercely committed to Alicent, not the Hightowers specifically. Frankel says that he’s still fighting for her, and the objective remains the same despite the new obstacles. Frankel admits that Criston just wants the war to end by whatever means necessary now, but that doesn’t matter; he has to lay in the bed he made with his support of the Hightowers.
“The idea of leaving and going somewhere else is a very appealing one to him, but I don’t know that that’s really an opportunity that he’s ever going to be granted,” Frankel explains. “To a degree, [he] wanted his cake and now he’s got to eat it. That’s the truth. You can’t fight for something so hard, get it to happen, and then halfway through, decide, ‘Actually, it hasn’t really worked out. Let me go somewhere else.’ He’s bound by his own decisions.”
Rhaenyra has been fighting for the chance to rule, but the kingdom she took back is in much different shape than the one she would have inherited had Alicent never interfered.
House of the Dragon, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO, Streaming on HBO Max
