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House Of The Dragon Season 2 Episode 3 Ending Explained By Director

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Warning: Spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2 episode 3 ahead!


Summary

  • Rhaenyra’s visit to King’s Landing is about her relationship with her father and the civil war’s impact on their bond, director Geeta Vasant Patel explains.
  • The final conversation between Rhaenyra and Alicent reveals the characters’ unwillingness to compromise, and avoiding the war was never really possible.
  • Rhaenyra will emerge confident in her rightful claim to the throne, while Alicent is shaken by the truth of her mistake.


House of the Dragon season 2 episode 3’s director opens up about the ending. Season 2 has so far seen the fallout of the brutal event that occurs at the end of House of the Dragon season 1: the death of Queen Rhaenyra’s son, Lucerys Velaryon. This led to the assassination of Dowager Queen Alicent’s grandson, Jaehaerys, the heir to King Aegon II’s Iron Throne. As the Targaryen civil war starts to pick up speed, Rhaenyra adopts a desperate attempt and travels to King’s Landing to speak to Alicent and avoid all-out war.

In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, Geeta Vasant Patel, the director of House of the Dragon’s latest episode, explains the final conversation between Rhaenyra and Alicent in detail. While Rhaenyra’s trip to King’s Landing is ostensibly about ending the war, Patel argues it has more to do with her father and his supposed change of heart. Read Patel’s explanation below:


When the two women came together at the end of this episode, we just felt like, ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t about stopping the war. This is about these two women and their relationship. This is about Rhaenyra’s relationship with her father.’ And so, we stopped for a minute and walked through episode 8 from last season, which we had all worked together on. In episode 8, these two women had been fighting, fighting, fighting, and then finally promised each other that they would be friends. And Alicent tells Rhaenyra, ‘You are the queen.’ This is the first time they’re coming back around and seeing each other face-to-face, and it is a reckoning for both of them. Alicent saw what she saw, and Rhaenyra feels betrayed by her sister.

The other thing that we realized was that, again, Rhaenyra is not there to make a deal. Why is she really there? In my mind, and this is what Emma [D’Arcy] and I talked about, she’s there because her dad walked down that aisle in episode 8 and told her, “I love you, and I choose you.” He had not chosen her before; nobody had chosen Rhaenyra. That was a big moment for her, and now everything that happened is thrown away because apparently he said, ‘No, no, I take that back. It’s not her. It’s this other guy.’

Rhaenyra was there to ask, ‘Did my father love me? Did he lie to me?’ And that’s what that moment’s about. That’s where, in the scene, you’ll see that’s where Rhaenyra is most emotional. And that’s where I think we did most of the work in that scene as a team.

The other thing about that scene that wasn’t clear to me until we started shooting how Rhaenyra came in to stop the war and confront Alicent to be like, ‘Hey, we can stop this.’ Alicent’s like, ‘Okay, what are you going to give me? How are we going to compromise?’ And Rhaenyra is like, ‘Well, no, I have nothing to compromise on.’ You realize that there is going to be a war because neither of them is willing to compromise. I think there’s something really profound that’s happening with Rhaenyra, because she is someone who in the past has compromised. But in this moment, I believe — and this is me as a fan — there’s an ego rising in her.

There is an ego forming, and I think that really helps develop the end of the episode where you feel the ego again. Alicent is spinning from everything she’s just heard, but her ego keeps her from saying, ‘Okay, you’re right. I’m wrong.’ Instead, she’s just like, ‘No, I’m sticking to my guns,’ so Rhaenyra’s galvanized to push the button.



The Targaryen Civil War Is About To Seriously Escalate

And This Conversation Between Alicent & Rhaenyra Will Be The Catalyst

The end of episode 3, “The Burning Mill,” dives deep into the core drama of House of the Dragon, going back to a vital moment in season 1 episode 8, in which a dying, incoherent King Viserys, mistaking Alicent for Rhaenyra, begins to speak of Aegon’s dream and the prophecy of the Prince That Was Promised. In a heartbreaking play on the franchise’s tendency to reuse names, Alicent misunderstands Viserys’ dying words to mean that he is telling her their own son, Aegon II, should rule instead of Rhaenyra.


Alicent’s misunderstanding of the prophecy is essentially the catalyst for the Dance of the Dragons, and episode 3’s ending could be seen as her and Rhaenyra’s point of no return. As Patel points out, war was already inevitable by this point, and both characters fully accept that after their talk. But Rhaenyra, who was plagued with doubt throughout the episode, is now confident in her claim to the Iron Throne. Not only that, but she now knows for certain that Alicent is choosing to proceed despite knowing the truth about Viserys’ wishes.


Heading into episode 4, the Greens have lost Otto Hightower as a restraining influence, and Alicent, who needs to occupy that role, may be seriously shaken after learning the truth. House of the Dragon season 2 has already set up the Dowager Queen as being weighed down by guilt, and to know that her mistake is the root of all this bloodshed could magnify that tenfold. Without her steady hand, Aegon II and Rhaenyra are set to unleash their dragons, and Westeros will be all the worse for it.



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