The third season of House of the Dragon is at an end, but like the poor residents of Tumbleton, we'll be sifting through the fallout for weeks to come. The latest installment of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series dialed up the drama, bloodshed, and action to new heights, with bigger battles, more deaths, and more dragons than ever before. It's hard to look at it as anything other than a success, especially given its impressive viewership numbers.
All that said, there is one group of viewers in particular who seem to have had a harder time swallowing House of the Dragon season 3 than the rest: fans who have read the source material, George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood. While House of the Dragon has largely touched on the major beats for the story from Martin's book, it oftentimes jettisons many of the details that made them work in the text — and at other times, it goes so far afield that it may as well be telling a different story entirely.
The reality is that adapting a story as complex and intentionally opaque as Fire & Blood presents all sorts of challenges, some of which make direct 1:1 adaptation all but impossible. Yet while we can debate all day about whether these changes from the book are better or worse for the show's version of the tale, there's one particular aspect of this adaptation that has fallen well short of its source material: the shocker twists.
From the deaths of Eddard Stark and Oberyn Martell to the birth of Daenerys Targaryen's dragons and the Red Wedding, George R.R. Martin's work is known for these jaw-dropping moments that re-contextualize the story and leave fans reeling. House of the Dragon has certainly included some of those twists that Martin laid out in Fire & Blood, but others were changed to the point where they became pale imitations of the author's work. And others still were cut entirely, leaving a void where some of the biggest gut-punch moments of the book occurred.
Of all the changes House of the Dragon has made, leaving out or altering these moments are the ones that have baffled me the most. It feels like the equivalent of an adapter looking at the Red Wedding and deciding it would have played better if Robb Stark had tripped and stabbed himself with a butter knife, instead of being betrayed by his own allies and bannermen.
Let's not simply gripe about this in broadstrokes though; especially since, if you're reading this and haven't read Fire & Blood, you probably have no idea what you've even missed out on. Let's get into six of the biggest Game of Thrones-style shocker twists that House of the Dragon has either cut or crippled through its strange decisions.
1. The death of Laenor Velaryon
In many ways, the fate of Laenor Velaryon is House of the Dragon's original sin, at least in terms of how the adaptation mindset behind the series could go wrong. Showrunner Ryan Condal has spoken at length over the years about how House of the Dragon is adapting a "history book," and therefore has to fill in a lot of blanks. While that's true, we're not talking about a real history book here; it's still a novel written by George R.R. Martin, and whether or not Fire & Blood leaves some things ambiguous, there are plenty of instances where Martin clearly lays out what happened in his own version of Westeros' story.
Laenor's death is one such instance. House of the Dragon opted to have Rhaenyra Targaryen's first husband skip out on his duties to his house and family so he could go live across the Narrow Sea with his lover, Ser Qarl Correy. They fake Laenor's death and sail off into the sunset with none but Rhaenyra and Daemon the wiser, opening an unnecessary can of worms about how Laenor's dragon Seasmoke could eventually bond with another rider in the process. As best we can tell, it seems like Laenor died off-screen during season 2.
The book takes that death fakeout and instead makes it a truly shocking moment, where Laenor is knifed to death by his former lover in the middle of a crowded marketplace on Driftmark. Due to the very public nature of Laenor's death, there's no room for misinterpretation here; even in Fire & Blood, the only thing left a mystery is the murderer's motive, not the death itself.
Laenor sailing off into the sunset was still a surprise — perhaps even more of one for book readers — but in retrospect I think it's safe to say it was nowhere near as impactful of a twist in the narrative as Laenor's very real death in the novel, which is strongly implied to have been ordered by none other than Daemon Targaryen to clear the way for him to marry his own niece. Suffice to say, the book's version is much darker.
2. Blood and Cheese
Our next twist is another that the show did include, but excluded several elements that were so important their loss drastically undercut the power of the scene. Blood and Cheese's incursion into the Red Keep is one of the single most horrific scenes in the entirety of Fire & Blood, and its execution is one of the few moments in the entire novel that packs a similar sort of punch as the Red Wedding, with unfathomable cruelty that makes the whole sequence feel like a nightmare. The show's version simply doesn't come close.
Martin himself has talked about the changes to this twist at length; they're the main ones he took aim at when he broke with House of the Dragon in 2024 in his now-famous blog post decrying how the show's changes would create a butterfly effect of other, "more toxic" changes to come. But we can't talk about twists House of the Dragon broke or excluded without touching on it.
In the show, Blood and Cheese — a vicious member of the City Watch and a rat catcher, respectively — make their way into the Red Keep at the behest of Daemon Targaryen to murder his nephew Aemond, as a response for the one-eyed prince's killing of Rhaenyra's son, Lucerys Velaryon. Their mission goes awry and they find Queen Helaena and her twin children, Jaehaera and Jaehaerys, instead. Blood and Cheese decide to fulfill their directive of "a son for a son" by killing Jaehaerys, and make Helaena tell them which of her twins is the boy so they can cut his throat. Helaena grabs her daughter and runs from the room, barging in on her mother Alicent Hightower while she's in the middle of having sex with Ser Criston Cole, the Kingsguard knight who's supposed to be defending the lot of them. And there we leave them, with Helaena murmuring that "they killed the boy."
The book's version is drastically changed by the inclusion of Helaena and King Aegon's youngest son, Maelor, who is only two years old during this scene. Instead of making Helaena reveal the gender of one of her twins — something the assassins realistically could have just figured out themselves in seconds — they make Helaena choose which of her two sons will be killed. Their mission is never about Aemond; it's a straight up act of vengeance, killing one of Aegon's children for one of Rhaenyra's. Helaena chooses Maelor, thinking it would be kinder because he's too young to know what's going on; instead Blood and Cheese murder the elder, Jaehaerys, and tell the infant Maelor to remember that his mother chose him to die.
On top of it all, Alicent Hightower is actually involved in this scene in the book. It's known that she visits Helaena and the children each night, so Blood and Cheese ambush her, tie and gag her, and force her to watch while all of this occurs.
The changes to Blood and Cheese are numerous, and range from huge ones like the exclusion of Maelor and Alicent, to small, borderline non-sensical ones like Helaena offering the assassins a necklace to spare her children, as opposed to offering her own life in their place in the book. The show still portrays a child's murder, and that is horrific — and something that shouldn't have been shown directly on screen regardless. But the details for how Blood and Cheese went down in Fire & Blood make it a top tier moment for the entire Dance of the Dragons that the show utterly fumbled.
3. The mob at Bitterbridge
We now get into the butterflies, and the twists which were removed outright. During Rhaenyra's takeover of King's Landing, both of Helaena and Aegon's remaining children, Maelor and Jaehaera, are spirited away from the capital by loyal Kingsguard knights, saving them from captivity at the hands of the Black Queen. Jaehaera is taken to Storm's End, where she waits out the war in relative safety. Maelor, however, is not so lucky.
The young heir to the Iron Throne goes on the road with his protector, Ser Rickard Thorne, who hopes to bring him to Ormund Hightower's army where he can be defended. They travel in disguise as father and child, and make it as far as the town of Bitterbridge before their true identities are discovered by a stableboy. This discovery leads to a mob attempting to capture the child, since Rhaenyra has placed sizable bounties on his and Rickard's heads.
Ser Rickard Thorne takes Maelor up into his saddle and tries to ride from the town, but they don't make it. Thorne is slain on the bridge leading out of the village, defending his prince to the last. Maelor is killed as well on accident, and then torn apart as people argue about what to do with him. This is one of the most depraved acts of the entire war, and it has huge consequences for Helaena, Rhaenyra, and the town of Bitterbridge itself. Let's just say there's a reason we never see the location in Game of Thrones.
4. The sack of Bitterbridge
After Maelor's death, Lady Caswell of Bitterbridge took quick action to try to minimize the damage. She hanged the people most directly responsible for killing the boy, sent his remains and Ser Rickard Thorne's head to Rhaenyra, and sent Maelor's unhatched dragon egg to Ormund Hightower, all in hopes of staying in the good graces of both the Greens and Blacks.
Suffice to say, she does not get her wish. When Ormund Hightower's army eventually reaches Bitterbridge, Lady Caswell asks for terms. Prince Daeron gives her the chilling reply: "You shall receive the same terms you gave my nephew Maelor." He then uses his dragon Tessarion to burn down the town, while Ormund's soldiers kill everyone in sight.
Knowing all is lost, Lady Caswell begs Ormund to spare her children before hanging herself from the gatehouse in a terrible attempt to provide justice for Maelor's death. Ormund ultimately does take Lady Caswell's children back to Oldtown as prisoners — but only after every soldier and citizen of Bitterbridge is slain.
Obviously, without Maelor and Ser Rickard's death at Bitterbridge in the show, we also don't get this terrible war crime from Daeron and Ormund. That's almost as big a loss, considering how House of the Dragon mostly just kept Daeron and his beautiful blue dragon confined to a handful of rooms for the entirety of season 3.
5. The death of Gwayne Hightower
Not every change House of the Dragon has made has been for the worst. A great example is Gwayne Hightower, the brother of Alicent and son of Otto. Gwayne is already dead by this point in the book; in the show, he's taken on a whole new life and become much more of a fan-favorite character, thanks in no small part to the fantastically charismatic performance of actor Freddie Fox.
In the book, Gwayne is a casualty of the Fall of King's Landing. He's placed in the command structure of the City Watch by his father Otto, in part because the old schemer knows some of the guardsmen have deep-rooted loyalties to Daemon Targaryen — as well as questionably brutal tendencies — and wants his son to keep watch over them. Gwayne discharges this duty honorably, right up until Rhaenyra and Daemon arrive at the capital, and the City Watch turns on him.
Led by Ser Luthor Largent, the Gold Cloaks murder every captain loyal to the Greens, including Gwayne. It makes for a bloodier coup that takes even more family members from House Hightower, and in that way, it holds an extra shock that's missing from the show. Ultimately though, it may have been a worthy trade to keep Gwayne around, since his presence has been an undeniable boon for the show's third season.
6. The Treasons at Tumbleton
The House of the Dragon season 3 finale was a showstopper, featuring the epic Battle of Tumbleton, where the dragonrider Ulf the White betrayed his allies and set both the Black and Green armies ablaze along with the entire town of Tumbleton. But in the book, these betrayals go much, much deeper.
The major change to the set up of Tumbleton in the book is that the Blacks control the city, while the Greens are attacking it; in the show it's the opposite. Ulf is far from the only person to defect in this terrible First Battle of Tumbleton. There are a few minor nobles who flip sides in the chaos of the battle, but most prominently, Ulf's fellow dragonseed Hugh Hammer also turns on Rhaenyra. With their dragons Silverwing and Vermithor, Ulf and Hugh join forces with Daeron Targaryen and Tessarion, and all three dragons burn Tumbleton and the Black army within.
In Fire & Blood, the burning of Tumbleton is described as "the Field of Fire writ small." This is in reference to the single most devastating clash of Aegon's Conquest, when the Conqueror and his two sister-wives used all three of their dragons in one battle for the only time of the war, burning the combined armies of the Reach and the Westerlands and leaving thousands dead in their wake.
The show can't quite claim the same title, because it's only one dragon burning Tumbleton. Instead, Hugh's "betrayal" is that he abandoned his post in King's Landing to come down to Tumbleton in the first place. It's a massive change that essentially robs Hugh Hammer of arguably his single most important moment in the entire Dance. While Ulf and Hugh are much more three dimensional characters in the television show, the choices surrounding Hugh's betrayal are underwhelming by comparison.
With one more season left of House of the Dragon, there will undoubtedly be even more shocking moments to come. Which will the show keep from Fire & Blood, which will it change, and which will it cut altogether? Only time will tell.
House of the Dragon season 4 is due to start filming sometime in early 2027, and premiere in 2028. The first three season are available to stream on HBO Max.
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