House of the Dragon Season 2 ends not with battle and bloodshed, but with shots of quiet. Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), maneuvered and manipulated into roles decided for her by men her entire life, is now finally free. Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), who’s spent a lifetime defying social norms, is now caged by a prophecy. Both scenes invite contemplation, a fitting end to a season that leaves viewers with several lingering questions.
To be fair, the finale answered some questions we didn’t even know were being asked, such as: Will the show eventually introduce Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Helaena Targaryen’s (Phia Saban) third child, Maelor? “My cock is destroyed,” Aegon tells Grand Maester Orwyle (Kurt Egyiawan). “It burst into flames like a sausage on a spit.” So that’s a no, then?
Even so, here’s every other question worth contemplating in the long run up to Season 3.
Emma D'Arcy and Steve Toussaint
HBOHow different will the Battle Above the Gods Eye be?
In the book Fire & Blood, the Battle Above the Gods Eye is fought in the skies above Harrenhal and the Gods Eye between Daemon (Matt Smith) and Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), both on dragonback. What House of the Dragon does differently is reveal its duellers’ fates to them, prompting the question: If you knew the path laid out for you ended in death, would you still traverse it?
At Harrenhal, Daemon is first told by the witchy Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) that this is where he will die, before he envisions himself drowning. At King’s Landing, Helaena, in an uncharacteristically blunt summation of one of her visions, tells Aemond, “You’ll be dead. You were swallowed up in the Gods Eye.” Daemon accepts his role he must play in the larger scheme of things by the end of Season 2, but Helaena’s soft insistence that Aemond’s choices “wouldn’t change anything” might just prompt the wounded, enraged King Regent to act in defiance.
What happened to Laenor Velaryon?
Rhaenyra’s first husband Laenor Velaryon (John Macmillan) is never seen again after setting off with his lover Ser Qarl Correy (Arty Froushan) in Season 1, having convincingly faked their deaths and freeing up Rhaenyra to marry Daemon. In swerving from his much more tragic Fire & Blood fate — Qarl stabbing him to death — House of the Dragon gives him a happy ending and subverts the “bury your gays” trope. Except that Laenor’s death is what enables his dragon Seasmoke to eventually bond with his half-brother Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty).
Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke
HBOIt’s unprecedented for a dragon to accept a second rider when the first is still alive, which makes Addam’s eventual connection with Seasmoke in the show suspect. Did House of the Dragon unceremoniously kill Laenor offscreen? Or is it reinventing dragon lore by implying that Seasmoke, “perhaps lonely” as Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) suggests, simply grew tired of waiting for him to return and sought a new rider?
Rhaenyra’s more immediate focus is on the identity of Seasmoke’s new rider rather than Laenor’s fate, which means viewers probably won’t find out what happened to him either.
Will we see Nettles?
By the end of Season 2, Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell) ditches her half-siblings (breaking the trust Rhaenyra had in her to look after them) and goes in search of the Vale’s wild dragon, Sheepstealer.
In the book, Sheepstealer is a “vicious and ill-tempered beast”, either flambéing or feasting on anyone who attempts to ride him. His first — and last — rider is Nettles, a teenage girl who finally tames him with plotting and persistence, bringing him a sheep a day until he comes to look forward to her presence. Rhaena has no such plan, seemingly having acted on impulse. She roams the Vale thirsty and starving, chasing blindly after sightings of the dragon in the sky. When she finally locks eyes with him, she looks terrified.
Will the show merge Nettles’ arc with Rhaena’s and depict her claiming Sheepstealer anyway? It would be a lot more fun for House of the Dragon to pull a bait-and-switch instead, revealing that Nettles has been hanging out with Sheepstealer in the Vale this whole time and Rhaena’s just a little too late.
Olivia Cooke
HBOWhat’s the deal with Otto Hightower?
House of the Dragon benched its best actor early this season, with Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) dismissing his grandfather Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) as his Hand in a fit of petulance in Episode 2. Otto sets off for Highgarden, Alicent’s letters to him go unanswered for the rest of the season, and the other characters repeatedly wonder where he is (relatable).
There’s a glimpse of Otto in the finale, behind bars and being held hostage. But by whom? It’s likely Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), having successfully manipulated Aegon into fleeing with him and seeking to curtail Aemond’s power by robbing him of a successful strategist. Or it could be House Beesbury, seeking revenge for the death of one of their own.
Is the show setting up Rhaenyra Targaryen as a cult leader?
Emma D’Arcy seems to think so. “I think she feels like a god…She is now this emboldened fanatic,” she said in a recent interview. Rhaenyra’s newfound religious fervor and her actions in the penultimate episode support this — having spent the entire season attempting to avert the bloodshed that a prolonged civil war would bring, she watches potential dragonriders burn to their deaths in their attempts to join her cause, justifying it as the will of the Gods.
If prophecies denote a lack of control, the idea that your entire life has already been mapped out for you, Rhaenyra turns to The Prince That Was Promised to derive agency instead, believing that her actions must have divine, fated purpose. Some of her remorse at the prospect of war returns in the finale — “In striking, I doom thousands to their deaths,” she tells Mysaria and it remains to be seen if she will. For now, a son for a son will do.
