The penultimate episode of House of the Dragon season 3 wrapped up a number of important plotlines, but first and foremost among them was Rhaena Targaryen's dangerous stint as the rider of the wild dragon Sheepstealer. Rhaena bonded with this mercurial beast in the season 3 premiere, and promptly lost control of him at the Battle of the Gullet, where he burned Velaryon ships and caused the death of Rhaena's step brother, Jacaerys Velaryon. Oops!
Since then, Rhaena and Sheepstealer have been hiding out in a cave in the Vale, where the wayward princess has gone more and more feral over time, wearing hides and covered in dirt and soot and blood. Rhaena decided on this self-imposed exile because she believes Rhaenyra Targaryen would take violent vengeance on her for her role in Jace's death. At least, that's the reasoning presented; really it seems more like Rhaena is afraid of facing down her own guilt over her part in the tragedy.
This storyline has been one of the most controversial of season 3 among fans of George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, because in the novel Rhaena doesn't ride Sheepstealer at all. Instead, she stays at the Vale with Lady Jeyne Arryn for most of the war, while a commonborn bastard named Nettles befriends the wild dragon through sheer guile and determination. Nettles is a favorite for many readers — as well as George R.R. Martin himself, who once said that she's a character he would love to explore more one day.
As much as I've missed seeing Nettles in the show, Rhaena's unique storyline has been compelling enough at times that it's been easier to go along with than many of the show's other deviations from the source material. That changed in the penultimate episode, however, because House of the Dragon seemingly capped off this arc for Rhaena in a way that I found extremely disappointing.
Who needs character development when you can have a dragon fight?
Yes, I'm talking about the big ol' dragon fight that happens in the middle of episode 307, where Sheepstealer is cornered by Syrax, Seasmoke, and Caraxes and nearly killed. This scuffle takes a few key ideas from the book, such as Nettles and Daemon's search for Vhagar and the fact that Rhaenyra mistakenly believed her husband's betrayal was far worse than it really was, and used them to spin up a new scene that went heavy on the special effects to give the show's titular fire-breathing lizards a chance to shine.
This scene shook out in dramatic fashion, with Rhaenyra finally learning the identity of Sheepstealer's rider before seemingly "rescuing" Rhaena from the wild dragon. As Rhaena cries out for her wounded mount, Daemon's dragon Caraxes delivers a lethal blow. We don't see if Sheepstealer succumbs to his wounds, but either way, I wouldn't count on the wild dragon flying again anytime too soon. As for Rhaena, she ends up back at King's Landing in the garb of a princess, where her sister Baela assures she'll "start anew."
While we can debate whether the dragon fight itself was up to House of the Dragon's previous gold standards for dragon scenes, such as the Battle at Rook's Rest or the Red Sowing, I think it's even more important to take in what this means for Rhaena's "Nettles" arc. If this truly is the end for it, that means that we essentially got one big spotlight for the duo at the start of the season, before they all but faded into the background until this showdown.
Rhaena's "Nettles" arc is a study in missed opportunities
House of the Dragon is a show with a sprawling ensemble cast, and I'm sure that juggling all those characters and actors is always a challenge, but it's wild to me that the series gave Rhaena this extremely interesting storyline and then spent as little time as possible actually exploring it. Between the Battle of the Gullet and the dragon fight in episode 7, Rhaena has less than eight minutes of screentime. We don't get a single scene that shows us what her relationship with Sheepstealer is like, or how it changes over the course of their time together.
This makes the payoff where Rhaena is separated from the dragon feel completely hollow. It's not that this is a bad way to cap things off, but without actually exploring what that experience was like for Rhaena, we miss the larger emotional impact of this separation. Does she care about Sheepstealer? Does the dragon care about her, presumably the only living thing he's ever bonded with? Was she the beast's unwilling prisoner, like Ann Darrow was to King Kong? We don't know any of this stuff, because House of the Dragon never bothered to give Rhaena and Sheepsealer more than the barest minimum amount of screentime — unless they were in a big battle scene, of course. Rhaenyra Targaryen isn't the only one treating the dragons and their riders as though they're just tools this season.
In an interview with IGN, showrunner Ryan Condal said that "pairing a wild dragon with a lady of noble blood that then becomes somewhat feral herself" was a compelling idea to the show's writers. And I agree, it does sound like a cool idea! But there is just so much missed opportunity to explore here, which the show essentially ignored in favor of costume changes for Rhaena every episode that are meant to convey her current mental state and how well she's got things together.
In the end, the thing that surprises and frustrates me most now about the fact that House of the Dragon cut Nettles isn't that this beloved book character was left out of the show, but that the show's fairly decent substitute turned out to be such an underbaked story that it didn't do justice to the characters at the heart of it, let alone the character who was erased to service it.
Rhaena's conclusion creates a future problem for Daemon Targaryen
There's another element to this equation that has the potential to cause House of the Dragon even more headaches in its fourth and final season. In Fire & Blood, Nettles and Daemon Targaryen become close enough that Rhaenyra becomes suspicious they're having an affair — a paranoia which Daemon's ex-lover, Mysaria, gladly stokes. The book leaves the truth ambiguous; some theories posit they were, in fact, having a romance during their search for Aemond, while others claim Nettles was secretly a bastard daughter of Daemon's.
Either way, the result is the same: Rhaenyra puts out an order for Nettles' death, and once Daemon finds out, he and Sheepstealer's rider part ways. Nettles and Sheepstealer fly off into the sunset, though they do turn up again hiding in the wilds of the Vale after the civil war has ended, a beat the show drew on by having Rhaena and Sheepstealer hide out in a cave. Daemon decides the time has come for him to end his part in the war; he goes to Harrenhal to challenge Aemond to single combat, leading to one of the most iconic scenes of the entire story as the two most dangerous fighters for the Greens and Blacks battle it out in the sky over the Gods Eye lake.
Now that Rhaenyra knows that Sheepstealer's rider was Rhaena, and Rhaena has been brought back to court, it's pretty much guaranteed that the show will have to handle Daemon's motivation for the Battle Above the Gods Eye differently. So not only did this diversion with Rhaena fail to live up to Nettles' story or the potential of the show's version of it, it also created possible plot holes for another crucial sequence still to come.
One silver lining to it all is that at least we finally got to see Daemon act like a father. Whether that was worth the sadly disappointing mess that the show made of Rhaena, Nettles, and Sheepstealer's story, only time will tell.
The House of the Dragon season 3 finale premieres this Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.
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