We're only one episode into House of the Dragon season 3, and it already feels like a lot is happening. The Battle of the Gullet is behind us, Sheepstealer has a completely different rider than in the source material, and Jace is dead. The civil war that two seasons of political chess built toward is finally, genuinely, here. And sometime very soon, the Fall of King's Landing is coming.
WARNING: Fire & Blood spoilers are below.
We know from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood that Rhaenyra's going to take the Iron Throne. She's going to sit in that awful chair and if the show gets it right, it will be one of the most emotionally devastating hours of television.
Now we've been here before. We watched another Targaryen queen finally reach King's Landing with her dragon, and we watched the show fumble it so badly that it became a cautionary TV tale. House of the Dragon has a chance to do this differently. To do it better. But only if it avoids these six mistakes.
- Don't repeat Daenerys
- Don't sideline Alicent
- Don't make Rhaenyra's victory feel like a triumph
- Don't paper over the missing characters (keep the executions)
- Don't skip the trap narrative
- Don't underplay the Gold Cloak betrayal
Don't repeat Daenerys
The whole point of the Fall of King's Landing, as Martin wrote it, is that it's less a battle and more a surrender of morale. The Gold Cloaks turn and the gates open. Rhaenyra and Daemon circle above on their dragons and the Green resistance collapses.
That's some fascinating storytelling if the show trusts it. But there's a real danger of adding spectacle that doesn't belong. The show shouldn't turn this into a dragon-fire action sequence. The power of this moment is in what it doesn't destroy.
The shadow of Game of Thrones season 8 hangs over everything this show does, and it will be absolutely suffocating once we're watching Targaryens and their dragons descend on King's Landing again. Rhaenyra wants to rule here. She's been restraining herself from burning the place down precisely because she knows a queen of ashes rules no one. If the show starts blowing things up to make it feel "epic," it will miss the entire point.
Don't sideline Alicent
Alicent Hightower has been going through some awful and borderline humiliating experiences since the beginning of House of the Dragon. But Alicent's arc this season cannot just be a series of things happening to her. She needs to be an active participant in the Fall.
What's fascinating, and what the premiere shows us, is that Alicent is still desperately trying to hold this deal together despite everything collapsing around her. She sends a letter to her cousin Lord Ormund Hightower, ordering him to hold his army outside the city rather than march on it. She even frames it as if the command came from Aemond to keep Ormund compliant without tipping her hand.
In the book, Alicent actively tries to resist the Fall. She commands the defenses, argues for a Great Council and only surrenders when she has no choice. In the show, she's supposedly cooperating with Rhaenyra's plan, which means her role needs to be even more carefully written, because a passive Alicent standing on a parapet watching the city change hands would waste one of the show's best characters and best performers at a very important moment.
Don't make Rhaenyra's victory feel like a triumph
This is the one I feel most strongly about, and I suspect it's where the show will either soar or stumble badly. Rhaenyra will sit on the Iron Throne, the thing she's wanted since she was a girl and the thing she's lost sons and dragons to reach.
And she sits on it, the book says she cuts herself. The Iron Throne draws blood. Rhaenyra's "victory" is the midpoint of a tragedy. She inherits a starving city that doesn't particularly want her. She rules under the constant knowledge that Aemond is still alive, and that her own dragonseeds may not be loyal. She's a queen with no peace.
If the show lets the audience exhale here and we get swelling music with Rhaenyra looking regal and satisfied, it will have misread its own story. We should feel her hollowness and the awful weight of finally getting what you wanted and realizing it doesn't feel like winning.
Don't paper over the missing characters (keep the executions)
In the book, the Fall of King's Landing eventually sees some crucial captures including Alicent, Helaena, Otto Hightower, Grand Maester Orwyle, and Tyland Lannister. Otto is executed, and Tyland is tortured to find out where the crown's gold was hidden. These moments define who Rhaenyra is becoming under the pressure of ruling.
In the show, several of those characters are either missing or presumed dead. Otto's whereabouts are genuinely unclear. Tyland appears to have drowned at the Gullet. The show needs to find some way to fill those gaps. These confrontations are the ones that prove Rhaenyra is capable of cruelty in victory. Otherwise her character arc in the aftermath of the Fall will have no teeth. You can change the who as long as you keep the what.
Don't skip the trap narrative
The Fall basically starts with a trap Daemon set. He wanted Aemond to leave King's Landing. The moment Aemond flies toward Harrenhal to meet with Criston Cole's army, something Daemon had set his spies to gather word of, he makes his move on the capital. That cause-and-effect is elegant and satisfying with Daemon playing the long game in a way that suits his character perfectly.
In the show, Aemond's departure from King's Landing in episode 1 is motivated partly by strategy but also heavily colored by a deeply weird scene with Alicent. The next episodes need to make sure that when the Fall happens, viewers understand that Daemon played the Greens like a fiddle and that Aemond, for all his terrifying competence, walked right into it.
Don't underplay the Gold Cloak betrayal
In the book, the reason King's Landing falls so quickly, almost bloodlessly, is because the Gold Cloaks switch sides. Daemon was once their commander and their loyalty never fully left him. When he and Rhaenyra circle overhead on their dragons, the City Watch turns on the Green loyalists from within. The seven gate commanders are imprisoned or killed the moment Caraxes appears in the sky.
That's rich, genuinely interesting political drama, and it would be very easy to flatten it into a background plot point while the camera chases dragons. It shouldn't be.
We've been rooting for Rhaenyra since she was a girl on a dragon being told she'd never be the queen. I think most of us still are, even now, even knowing how this ends. The tragedy of her story is that she wins and then discovers that winning was never going to be enough.
House of the Dragon has built something genuinely great over these seasons. The Fall of King's Landing is its chance to prove it knows what kind of story it's been telling all along.
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