House of the Dragon season 3 ended in fiery fashion this past weekend, with a massive 70-minute finale that featured the show's biggest battle yet. "The Treasons at Tumbleton" was a masterful episode, combining compelling character moments with showstopping action, shocking twists, and horrifying betrayals.
But at the heart of it all is the Targaryen duo who form the core of the series: Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and her uncle/husband, Daemon (Matt Smith), or "Daemyra," as their called by fans. This power couple steers many of the major events of the series; in the finale, Daemon leads the assault on Tumbleton, while Rhaenyra gives in to her dark side and murders the High Septon in an attempt to better secure her rule over to King's Landing.
Daemon and Rhaenyra give the finale its initial push of momentum when the queen storms into her husband's room after getting news that her half-brother Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) still lives. Rather than rise to Rhaenyra's level of frustration, Daemon is solid as stone. He calms his wife, urging her to rise to this moment and use the absolute power that's within her grasp.
The back-and-forth between Rhaenyra and Daemon is charged in this scene; I doubt I'm the only one who wondered if they were going to kiss by the end of it, amidst all their talk of murdering people by the thousands. While that didn't happen in the show, a promotional photograph shows that a kiss was in fact filmed for the season 3 finale, before seemingly getting left on the cutting room floor:
Let's zoom in, just to make sure there's no confusion about whether or not the kiss happened:
House of the Dragon cut a kiss between Daemon and Rhaenyra from the season 3 finale
House of the Dragon has a consistent history of cutting scenes in the edit, so on the surface this is pretty standard practice for the series. But the exclusion of this intimate moment is intriguing, because it continues a somewhat perplexing trend for the show's leading couple. As hard as it may be to believe, we haven't seen Daemon and Rhaenyra kiss on screen since season 1, when they were married on Driftmark.
To frame this another way, Aemond Targaryen has kissed his mother Alicent more times in season 3 than Rhaenyra and Daemon have kissed since their literal wedding episode in season 1. I'm not sure what to make of that, but there it is.
House of the Dragon has generally been much lighter on sex and intimacy than Game of Thrones, often to its benefit. But done well, those sorts of scenes can tell us important things about characters and their relationships; that's been true for Aemond's admittedly cringeworthy Oedipus storyline, as well as Mysaria's attempts to seduce Rhaenyra. Other shows, like Outlander, are certainly much better at handling that sort of content, but House of the Dragon doesn't have a bad track record either — on the rare occasions when it chooses to delve into those intimate moments.
Ultimately, while I do think this Daemyra scene worked just fine without the kiss, knowing that the show has made an intentional decision to exclude those sorts of moments for them leave me curious about the reasoning. Getting this sort of window into Daemon and Rhaenyra's intimate life could tell us quite a lot about where they are, both as characters and as a couple, at this crucial juncture in the story. I know I felt that in episode 307, when Rhaenyra dismissed Daemon from her chambers so that they would sleep separately after their spat over Sheepstealer and Rhaena. It'd be nice to get a bit more insight into their inner workings, as the Seven Kingdoms they're trying to rule burn around them.
Perhaps season 4 will be the one to break the trend; we'll find out in 2028. For now, you can watch Rhaenyra and Daemon not kiss in House of the Dragon season 3, streaming in its entirety on HBO Max.
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