SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details from episode 8 of House Of The Dragon on HBO
“I AM THE PRINCE THAT WAS PROMISED.”
These are the words Queen Rhaenyra screams in the season three finale to the people of Kings Landing as she unveils the future prophecy and sets the stage for what is sure to be an eventful final season.
The episode starts with the news of the return of Aegon’s dragon, leading Rhaenyra to not only put a search out for Aegon’s dragon but have Daemon move forward with the the attack on Tumbleton.
Rhaenyra also makes the drastic decision of relieving Mysaria of her duties as Master of whispers and banishing her from Kings Landing. This comes after the the two shared an intimate moment in previous episode.
As Ormund Hightower and Daemon Targaryen prepare for the battle of Tumbleton, brothers Aegon and Aemon reunite at Harrenhal to discuss plans on how they will take back the Iron Throne.
Even after delivering imprisoned Sea Serpent, Daemon denies peace talks from Gwayne Hightower setting the stage for the siege of Tumbleton, living up to the hype fans have waited weeks for.
The bloody battle not only leaves the city in ruins but also sees fiery end to Hightower ironically at the hands of Ulf the White and his dragon, who in the previous episode he had persuaded to cross lines and fight for his side. Ulf ultimately turns on both sides burning the city to the ground as Daemon is force to flee.
Back in Kings Landing, Rhaenyra comes to find that her prisoner, Helaena has taken her own life but left a parting gift for the queen the foreshadows a potential prophecy of Rhaenyra’s path towards madness.
When it came to mapping out not just this season, but season four as well, co-creator and showrunner Ryan Condal said that he and all the writers mapped out a “superstructure” that gave them an idea of how the series would end and once that came together plotting the rest of season three was seamless.
We were lucky enough in the breaking of season 3 because we knew at that point that for sure it was going to be a 4 season show that essentially when Sarah and I sat down with all the writers, we essentially broke the back of season 3 and 4 together, at least in the sort of superstructure of it,” Condal said. “So it was really planning out kind of from here to the end and trying to structure it in a way that had all the peaks and valleys of drama and to keep the pacing and to hit all the big set pieces that we have to hit. Once we kind of laid it all out, it felt like it would be really fun to bookend the season with the 2 biggest sequences we had ever done. So episode one, Battle of the Gullet, episode eight, the Battle of Tumbleton.”
Rhaenyra makes several decisions in this weeks episode that are establishing a clear path of no return for the upcoming final season and its hard not to see a similar trajectory to another famous Westeros character whose dark choices led to a tragic end. Emma D’Arcy, who plays Rhaenyra, understands how fans could see parallels between Rhaenra and Daenerys Targaryen and believes their similar paths has a lot to do with what the Iron Throne represents for all that seek it.
“I think the parallels do call to the greater themes of, of the song of ice and fire universe, which is pride and power and how power corrupts and how far it corrupts, it can change good people into corrupted people,” D’Arcy said. “It can take corrupted people and make them real villains. And other people like this era, it can simply just destroy them.”
As for the highly-anticipated battle of Tumbleton, Condal says he drew comparisons to when “the Nazis invaded Paris” while ultimately wanting something that looked and felt like a traditional medieval siege.
So all season long, we’re kind of setting up this, this classic medieval siege, which is really where we wanted to get to,” Condall says. “The concept of that battle was that Ormand had basically done all he could to blunt the threat of Rhaenyra’s greatest power, which is that she has, or had, six dragons under her command at that point. He sees his army as better trained and better suited, than the river men that are coming to attack. He knows the ground, he’s inside the city. They have to come over the walls, sacrifice a bunch of their men. So that’s where that’s where we all started, and then it was like, okay, well, we need to set to do this in a big location, to build it on, and who are POV characters? It was a very, very, very complex thing to fold all together, but, um, we just, we wanted to do the, you know, a classic medieval siege. was, was, that was the, the, the most, the elevator pitch for the finale.”
With the fourth season also marking the final season of the show, Condal says while he saw Game of Thrones as an epic story, he always viewed House of the Dragon as more of tragedy and while he won’t say much he does hint that this last season we be even bigger then the one we just watched.
“We have we have an incredible season coming as crazy and big as season 3 was,” Condall said. “I think season 4 is going to be even bigger. It’s a great privilege to be able to tell a story and to be able to write the ending and to control when and where that ending happens. This is not a given in making television, certainly. So we’re very excited to get back in and we have new characters and new dragons and new locations that I think are gonna make it a very worthy final season.
