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Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon. If you haven't seen the final Season 2 episode yet, turn away now.
Everything is coming up Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy), or so it seems, in the House of the Dragon Season 2 finale. The true heir to the Iron Throne started the season grieving her son Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) and lost the war for the throne's first major battle. Things were looking very bleak for Rhaenyra after Rook's Rest, but the gods started to show her favor when it was revealed that you don't have to be of noble birth to be a dragon rider.
The fierce dragon Sea Smoke started that revelation when he left the keep and adopted a small folk rider--Corly's (Steve Toussaint) second bastard-son Adam of Hull (Clinton Liberty). Rhaenyra put out the call to all small folk who believed they had a claim to Targaryen blood to come to Dragonstone and try their luck with the two remaining unclaimed dragons in the keep. Two King's Landing small folk, Ulf (Tom Bennett) and Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew), rose to the challenge and claimed the last adult dragons in Rhaenyra's possession.
Adding three more dragons to her cause was a necessary bolster in Rhaenyra's cause, and it put Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) on his heels in the last two episodes of the season. Team Green realized that Rhaenyra had the tactical advantage in the war, and multiple people, including Larys (Matthew Needham) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke), changed up their strategies in the final episode. Alicent went as far as traveling to Dragonstone to make a deal with Rhaenyra, allowing her into King's Landing to take both the throne and Aegon's head in exchange for letting Alicent and Helena (Phia Saban) escape.
The season ended with Rhaenyra contemplating Alicent's offer. Meanwhile, everything is in motion for two major battles in Season 3. Corlys is heading to the Battle of the Gullet after Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) secured ships from Essos to break Corlys' blockade. Aemond is also planning to take Helena and her dragon with him to the River Lands to wipe out Daemon's (Matt Smith) forces, despite Helena's ominous warning about what would happen to Aemond if he continued down that path.
The House of the Dragon Season 2 finale was a major setup for big events to come in Season 3. The tides have turned in the war, but we still have many questions after the open-ended events of the season finale. Let's get into it.
Alicent essentially offered Rhaenyra the Iron Throne on a silver platter. All Rhaenyra has to do is allow her former best friend and her half-sister to go freely. Helena already had to watch her son be murdered in the Season 2 premiere, so I think we can all agree that she's been through enough and deserves a reprieve. Alicent even conceded that Rhaenyra could take Aegon's head where everyone could see so they would know the throne was hers. However, Alicent was the one to push Aegon to steal the throne in the first place, so there is a question of trust in the arrangement. It's unclear whether Rhaenyra is going to go straight for King's Landing when Aemond flies for the River Lands, or if she's going to use the intel Alicent gave her for a different plan.
At the end of Rhaenyra and Alicent's bargaining, Rhaenyra said that killing Aegon would be "a son for a son," meaning that Aegon's life would be a fair exchange for Lucerys'. However, where does that leave Aemond? He's the prince regent and the one on the throne. He's calling the shots while Aegon recovers from the Rook's Rest battle. Rhaenyra will also have to kill Aemond to take the Iron Throne, and then it would be two sons to avenge Lucerys' life. It feels weird that they would leave Aemond out of the negotiation when they both know he needs to die for Rhaenyra to have a peaceful reign.
One of the big twists of the finale was that Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) wasn't wandering around his home kingdom or living up retirement in a brothel. He's been held captive somewhere and was being released at the end of the episode. Who has been holding on to the former hand of the king and what do they plan to do with him in the coming days? Someone from Team Green could use him to try to bring Aemond to heel. Team Black could use his knowledge to help them infiltrate King's Landing. He's a very useful power-player and an advantage to whoever has him on their side. It remains to be seen who that will be and why they think now is the time to put Otto Hightower back into the game.
Daemon has been going through it at Heron Hall. He's been haunted by visions of his ex-wife, the teenage version of his current wife, and his dead brother. During the finale, he placed his hand on a bleeding tree and saw visions of the Night King and Daenerys hatching her three dragons. He knows the chaos that is coming and it seems to be enough to make him renew his vows to Rhaenyra. He swears that he's her faithful servant now and he's raised an army to fight for her cause… but can we trust him? Daemon has spent the entire season gathering forces so that he could claim the throne for himself. Was the last set of visions really enough to align his loyalty with Rhaenyra again? Rhaenyra should keep an eye on Daemon in the coming weeks to make sure he is staying true to his word.
Larys (Matthew Needham) convinced Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) to escape King's Landing with him before Rhaenyra arrives with her dragons under the guise that they would go to Essos and live off of Larys' squirreled-away family savings, but Larys is always thinking two to three steps ahead. If he has possession of the usurper, would they really go to Essos and wait, or would Larys use Aegon to gain him favor within Rhaenyra's court? Aegon should be careful with how much trust he has put into Larys, who has proven multiple times that he will do whatever it takes to survive.
Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) is making the case for being the most-underrated Targaryen at this point. She ditched her nanny duties to chase down a wild dragon. One of the closing scenes of the finale was Rhaena facing down the giant beast. We know from previous exposition that Rhaena was almost burned alive as a child when she first tried to claim a dragon. Will this adventure go better? If she does manage to seat the dragon, that'll give Rhaenyra a four-dragon advantage over Aemond and his fleet--though we expect that riding a wild dragon will be much more difficult than claiming one that's been raised and fed in a keep for most of its life. Rhaena may add a number to the fleet, but she'll have the most-unpredictable dragon out of everyone in Westeros and she's the most-inexperienced rider. Before we can get to how Rhaena will deal with battle, she needs to actually get on the dragon without being eaten first. We don't know for sure that she's going to make it.
Aemond tried early on in the episode to force Helena on her dragon to ride with him to take down Daemon's forces, but Alicent put a stop to it. He approached Helena alone later on and she promptly called him out for trying to murder Aegon, and she predicted Aemond's death. He threatened to kill her and she said it wouldn't make a difference. It was the boldest we've ever seen Helena be, but it didn't answer whether she would join Aemond's cause. Having Helena with him is the only way that Aemond can overtake Rhaenyra's fleet, but Helena seems to have no interest in helping her brother. Having a psychic on the team would be really great if anyone would take Helena seriously, but it remains to be seen how Helena is going to factor into this next phase of the war. Does she go with Aemond? Does she leave with Alicent to escape all of the fighting? Or is there a third path none of them have been able to suss out yet?
Rhaenyra is really popular at the moment. Daemon has re-pledged his loyalty to her, seemingly putting their marriage back on track. Then there's Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), who Rhaenyra made out with in Episode 6. Alicent also offered for Rhaenyra to run away with her and Helena. So who has Rhaenyra's heart these days? Obviously, she has a lot on her plate with the war and trying to get her inheritance back, but Rhaenyra has also always made time for bedfellows. Is she married to Daemon but hooking up with Mysaria on the side? Is she going to continue hooking up with Mysaria? Did running away with Alicent sound appealing at all to the hopeful queen? We need to get some wine and figure this out, Rhaenyra.
Daemon also sees a vision of a raven when he's getting the Song of Ice and Fire download from the bleeding tree. He's been having visions the entire time he's been at Heron Hall, but that final set makes it seem that Daemon may have a tie to the three-eyed raven. We know the three-eyed raven was one man until he passed the power of Sight on to Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) in Game of Thrones, but could Daemon end up in that haunted cave at some point during his journey to reclaim the Iron Throne for Rhaenyra (or himself)?
The House of the Dragon Season 2 finale saw Tyland Lannister land in Essos to ask for ships to help him break the blockade held up by Corlys' naval forces. He was granted the ships after winning a mud-pit-wrestling match against Admiral Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn). After the match, the two struck up a bit of a friendship and ended the episode sailing their giant navy toward Corlys' armada. Their joking banter was very reminiscent of Tyland's future relative Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his knight best friend Brienne (Gwendoline Christie). Are Lannister middle siblings always drawn to powerful women? This seems to be setting up a pattern, but we can only hope that Tyland treats Sharako a lot better than Jaime treated Brienne in the end.
