HBO has finished filming the second season of House of the Dragon. All there is to do now is wait.
Nah, just kidding; between now and premiere day, we’ll be talking about every sliver of information we can get about HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, whether it be exciting, unsettling, or both.
Today, we have something unsettling to report: according to House of the Dragon fan account @housethedragons on Twitter/X, a pair of important characters from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood will not feature in the second season of the show. Read on for the SPOILER-y details.
and won’t appear in House of the Dragon season 2?
@housethedragons claims to have heard from “an inside source” that neither Daeron Targaryen nor Nettles the Dragonseed will appear in House of the Dragon season 2.
We’ll say at the outset that just because a fan account reports this information does not make it true. Until this is confirmed or denied by HBO (or until we see it with our own eyes), this is speculation.
Still, it’s speculation worth talking about. So who are Nettles and Daeron Targaryen?
Is Nettles cut from House of the Dragon season 2?
The second season of House of the Dragon will feature an event known as the Sowing of the Seeds. At one point during the Dance of the Dragons civil war, Rhaenrya Targaryen will find herself with more dragons than she has people to ride them. So she and her advisors hatch a plan: they announce that if anyone can tame any of the wild dragons living on the island of Dragonstone, and then ride those dragons into battle on behalf of Rhaenyra, they will be given lands and titles.
Naturally, tons of people respond. Many people try their luck at taming dragons, but in the end, only four emerge intact: Hugh Hammer, Ulf the White, Addam of Hull and Nettles. These four come to be known as the dragonseeds.
All four dragonseeds are common-born, but other than Nettles, all of them may be Targaryen bastards, or have Targaryen blood somewhere in their ancestry. Nettles is unique in that she’s literally just a girl who’s clever and brave enough to tame a dragon, in this case one named Sheepstealer. Of all the dragonseeds in Fire & Blood, she’s the one I was most looking forward to seeing.
Although HBO hasn’t announced who will be playing the dragonseeds, fans have managed to ferret out some of their identities. So far as we can tell, Clinton Liberty is playing Addam of Hull, Tom Bennett is playing Ulf the White, and Warrior star Kieran Bew is playing Hugh Hammer. We even heard about minor would-be dragonseeds being cast, but haven’t heard of anyone playing Nettles.
That said, this picture of what appears to be the dragonseeds leaked a while back, and there’s definitely someone who appears to match Nettles’ description from the books standing next to (we think) Hugh Hammer. In Fire & Blood, Martin describes Nettles as young and dark-skinned.
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) June 22, 2023
We don’t know who that actor is. Again, just because there’s a rumor about Nettles being cut doesn’t mean she is. I certainly hope not, because she is a great character in the books. Also, even if Nettles is cut from season 2, it’s possible she could show up later; we’re not entirely sure how the writers will parse Martin’s story for TV.
Is Daeron Targaryen cut from House of the Dragon season 2?
Moving on, who is Daeron Targaryen? In Fire & Blood, he’s the fourth and youngest child of King Viserys I Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, a younger brother to King Aegon, Helaena and Aemond. Daeron did not appear in the first season of House of the Dragon at all, nor was he mentioned. In the books, Daeron is fostered in Oldtown, far away from King’s Landing, which could explain his absence. Still, I found it suspicious that he was not so much as mentioned.
Fans have held out hope that Daeron could show up in season 2. George R.R. Martin himself implied that would be the case when he wrote about House of the Dragon season 1 on his Not a Blog in October of 2022:
"Do I wish we’d had more time to explore the relationship between Rhaenyra and Ser Harwin, the marriage of Daemon and Laena and their time in Pentos, and birth of various and sundry children (and YES, Alicent gave Viserys four children, three sons and a daughter, their youngest son Daeron is down in Oldtown, we just did not have the time to work him in this season), and everything else we had to skip? Sure."
Alas, just because Martin wishes something is true does not make it so. As with Nettles, we haven’t heard of anyone playing Daeron in House of the Dragon season 2. Again, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t appear, nor that he’s cut entirely; he could always sit out season 2 and appear in season 3, although in that case we would definitely need someone to set up his existance.
So that’s the state of things right now. HBO has officially announced four new actors joining the cast of House of the Dragon in season 2: Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers, Freddie Fox as Gwayne Hightower, Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull (Addam’s brother), and Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong. For everyone else, it’s been reports from fansites and the like. There are very likely characters and actors we don’t know about yet. Are Nettles and Daeron among them? I hope so, especially with regards to Nettles. But I don’t think we should jump to conclusions until we learn more and see the season itself, which is due out sometime in the summer of 2024.
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