Did House of the Dragon just subtly confirm that Laenor Velaryon is dead?

We're into the thick of House of the Dragon season 2, and the revelations are piling up. As Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) vie for the throne, all the other characters in their orbits are moving to take advantage of the chaos — or run for the hills in hopes of avoiding becoming dragon food. The season's third episode, "The Burning Mill," brought the long-standing feud between Riverland houses Blackwood and Bracken into the mix, brought in new characters like Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) and Ulf the White (Tom Bennett), introduced Baela Targaryen's (Bethany Antonia) dragon Moondancer, and even brought back Milly Alcock, who played young Rhaenyra in season 1 for a cameo. There was a lot to digest!

Alcock isn't the episode's only deep cut tie to season 1. This episode may have subtly confirmed the fate of another character who we haven't seen in quite a while: Laenor Velaryon (John MacMillan).

Is Laenor Velaryon still alive in House of the Dragon?

In the seventh episode of House of the Dragon's first season, "Driftmark," Laenor Velaryon faked his own death in order to go live across the Narrow Sea with his lover, Ser Qarl Correy. This was all part of a plot to get Laenor out of the way so that Rhaenyra could go through with marrying her uncle Daemon (Matt Smith). In George R.R. Martin's novel, Fire & Blood, Laenor is killed in a marketplace in front of many witnesses; the show changed things by having Laenor slip away from his fate and get a happy ending.

On premise, that's nice for Laenor, but it created a major complication: Laenor has a dragon, Seasmoke, who has a role to play in the coming civil war in Westeros. We won't go too deep into the spoilers, but at some point this season Seasmoke will get a new rider. How could that happen if the dragon's bond to Laenor was never severed, because Laenor is still alive?

"The Burning Mill" may have quietly answered that question. Early in the episode, Rhaenyra meets with the information broker Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) on a balcony at Dragonstone. While the two women talk, Seasmoke flies around in the distance, making plaintive cries as he swoops through the air. Eventually, the racket interrupts the conversation enough that Mysaria asks if dragons are "always like this." Rhaenyra fills her in, saying that Seasmoke was her late husband Laenor's dragon and that he's "grown restless of late," although she has no idea why. "Maybe he's lonely," Mysaria muses.

And, yeah, I'm going to say that's completely on point. Seasmoke probably is lonely, because his rider abandoned him and went to live a dragon-free life around eight years ago. But I think House of the Dragon may be alluding to something deeper.

In Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, dragons have deep bonds with their riders. We saw this when Daenerys Targaryen was killed in the Game of Thrones series finale, and Drogon subsequently went into a rage of mourning that melted the Iron Throne. House of the Dragon expands on this by showing us many different riders and how they each interact with their dragons. That bond is something intense and primal that almost defies description, so I think it's safe to say that if anyone aside from Rhaenyra and Daemon knew that Laenor was still alive somewhere, it was probably Seasmoke. Laenor Velaryon may have put distance between him and his dragon, but we haven't seen anything in the show to hint that that would actually sever the connection between them.

Whether Seasmoke would even accept another rider with Laenor still alive has been a lingering question for House of the Dragon. Now, it seems there's a better than passing chance the show may have solved that issue for itself. Seasmoke becoming inexplicably agitated after years of peaceful solitude seems like a pretty strong hint to me that Laenor may have finally met his end somewhere out across the Narrow Sea. Now, Seasmoke is free to bond with another rider.

While this might seem so subtle that it strays into tinfoil hat territory, House of the Dragon has already established this season that it is willing to rearrange the board and get rid of characters who are no longer involved in the main narrative in quiet ways that reward close viewing. We already saw it do this once this season with Talya, Alicent Hightower's handmaid who was killed off-screen at the behest of Larys Strong (Matthew Needham). Now, it's looking very possible the show has taken a similar route with Laenor, which makes total sense since he causes way more complications to the narrative alive than he does dead.

The big question now is, will anyone in Westeros ever learn of Laenor's fate? Or will this be one more death lost to the fog of history? Perhaps we'll find out later this season.

House of the Dragon airs new episodes Sunday nights on HBO and Max.

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