House of the Dragon‘s Season 2 Finale Put Emotional Warfare First

The end of House of the Dragon season two is here, and while most storylines were left unresolved—season three is coming!—the episode, “The Queen Who Ever Was,” did an admirable job focusing on its characters, with surprising evolutions, long-repressed emotional outbursts and confrontations, and deep soul-searching all coming to the fore. There wasn’t a ton of action, but the episode still felt both daring and satisfying in equal measure.

The first thing we see is a monkey strolling along, so we know we’re not in Westeros anymore. Indeed, we have traveled with Lord Tyland Lannister on his reluctant quest to strike a bargain with the Triarchy, which only Aemond thought was a good idea. But eventually, after some extreme awkwardness negotiating with the Free Cities’ top bosses (“it seems you need us more than we need you,” they correctly ascertain), and a mandatory mud-wrestling match with the mischievous yet intimidating fleet commander Admiral Lohar, he finds success. The price: allowing the Triarchy control of the Stepstones, which will surely come back to haunt someone in the future; enduring some public humiliation (including having his name mispronounced, repeatedly); and maybe impregnating some of Lohar’s wives. 

After realizing that Rhaenyra has out-dragonned him, Aemond, as petulant as he is dangerous, has ridden Vhagar to the unfortunate town of Sharp Point and burned it to the ground. He looks pleased with his handiwork, which has come at the expense of hundreds of innocent lives. We cut to Aegon, depressed in bed, in no mood for another visit from Lord Larys, but what choice does he have? This time, Lord Larys has an urgent directive: they must leave King’s Landing at once. When Aegon protests that he’s the king—if Aemond’s causing problems, he can just hobble to the Iron Throne and order him to be taken prisoner—Larys reminds him that Rhaenyra has enhanced her dragon fleet, and he’ll be doomed without Vhagar to protect him. 

Larys tells him he has plenty of gold stashed in the Iron Bank in Braavos, and though Aegon snorts at the idea of living “with the goat-fuckers” (and letting Larys, and by extension all of us, know that “my cock is destroyed… it burst in the flames like a sausage on a spit”), Larys says the best plan is to leave, let Aemond and Rhaenyra destroy each other, and then return in triumph. And it doesn’t take much more convincing: “Aegon, the realm’s delight,” the king murmurs, dreaming of this idyllic future.

In the Vale, Rhaena—having ditched her duties as a mommy surrogate for Rhaenyra’s youngest sons—is utterly alone, flailing around the rocky wilderness, clearly determined to change her fate and track down that wild dragon.

At Dragonstone, a pouty Jace comes upon Ulf and Hugh lounging around the Small Council table. Well, Hugh is standing stiffly; Ulf is in full lounge mode, and tells the prince “I’d rather not” when he snaps at him to take his feet off the table. Ulf doesn’t realize who Jace is, but even when he’s brought up to speed you get a very clear sense that acting deferential to royals is extremely low on his to-do list. It’s safe to say that the glib, unrefined Ulf is the embodiment of Jace’s worst fears about commoners, even before (but especially after) he makes a crack about Jace’s un-Targaryen-like dark hair.

At that moment, Rhaenyra and Corlys are having a related conversation. “We know little of who they are, and what is the strength of their character,” she worries, and she asks Corlys about the one new dragonrider he’s most familiar with: Addam, of course. Corlys says he’s known to be a man of integrity, but “I have had little to do with him… to my regret.” (Today is not the day Corlys owns up to being the kid’s father, apparently.) Then they talk strategy; Corlys advises striking quickly. Aemond now knows Team Black has more dragons, but that hasn’t been the deterrent Rhaenyra had hoped. Corlys also points out that Aemond could call upon his teenage brother, Daeron (who we’ve yet to meet), and his sister, Heleana, to join his death-from-above brigade; they both have dragons, after all. “Heleana is no warrior,” Rhaenyra insists, but as Corlys reminds her, “Aemond will not be denied.” 

Then, a touching moment when Corlys tells Rhaenyra he’s renamed his ship from The Sea Snake to The Queen Who Never Was. “What I do now, I do for her,” he says, remembering his late wife, before steering the chat back to the need for Rhaenyra to act as soon as possible. And as he reminds us, “there is, of course, another player that has yet to be revealed.”

That’s a reference to Daemon, naturally! At Harrenhal, reparations for battle are finally in full swing, but first, Ser Alfred Broome has arrived from Dragonstone with urgent business. Ostensibly he’s been sent there by Rhaenyra to check up on her husband’s army-building progress, but he’s got his own agenda to push: while he’s loyal forever to King Viserys, and his banners are pledged to Rhaenyra, he’d sure rather serve a king in this fraught time. In the moment, we can’t quite tell if this is music to Daemon’s ears or not; his reaction is to kind of chuckle as he walks off. Lurking in a doorway, Ser Simon Strong overhears every word. But the best part of this scene is when Ser Alfred swears he hears a sinister whisper hissing through the trees, and Daemon offers this affirmation: “This place will have you barking at the moon.”

In the Red Keep, Alicent (back from last week’s camping trip) and Heleana are having a moment. “What would you think about leaving this place?” mother asks daughter, but before they can really discuss the idea Aemond barges in. As Corlys predicted, the Prince Regent is full of bluster, insisting that his gentle sister saddle up her dragon and join him in his campaign of fiery destruction. She refuses, of course, and Alicent steps in to tell her furious son to back off. The next scene is Alicent going to the Grand Maester and asking for “passage… and your discretion.”

In the forest, Ser Gwayne is finally confronting Cole about his oath-breaking illicit affair with Alicent. But what at first seems like it’s going to escalate into a vicious brawl—a trademark reaction for Cole in the past—instead turns into a deeply reflective back-and-forth. Alicent saved his life twice, he tells Gwayne, and he thinks of her as his “beacon.” It also seems Cole has gained something resembling a conscience thanks to the horrors he witnessed at Rook’s Rest. “The dragons dance and men are like dust under their feet,” he says. “And all our fine thoughts, all our endeavors are as nothing. We march now toward our annihilation. To die will be a kind of relief… don’t you think?” To this startling speech, Gwayne has no response; he just takes it in, then silently sits down beside Cole.

Back to a pouting Jace. Always pouting. And finally, House of the Dragon has something to say about it: “It does not befit a prince to pout,” Baela tells him. As usual, she’s one of few voices of reason around these parts, telling him to get his crown prince head out of his ass, stop sulking about being called a bastard (fact check: he is a bastard), and take his rightful place at Rhaenyra’s side.

That leads us into a supremely awkward dinner, where an obnoxious Ulf once again shows off his lack of social skills. Rhaenyra, wearing her crown for once, toasts the three new riders and tells them if they serve her well, she’ll make them knights. And the time for serving is imminent: “You will fly in two days’ time,” she says, telling them they’ll be striking at Team Green’s strongholds in Oldtown and elsewhere. “You wish for us to kill innocents?” Baela (voice of reason) asks in disbelief. “We must break the will of our enemy, or more will die in a struggle that stretches on without end.”

Just then, a message from Harrenhal—Ser Simon, specifically, letting Rhaenyra know that Daemon might be about to stab her in the back. She picks Addam as her travel buddy (Jace, again, looks a wee bit pouty at that) and off they fly. And speak of the devil, we cut to Daemon snoozing at Harrenhal, at least until he’s awakened by Alys Rivers. She leads him to the Godswood, where the great tree at its center has a message for him. First, though, she commends him for coming around to the idea that as much as he wishes he could, he can’t bend the world to his will. And she tells him he’s finally ready to glimpse some truth, Old Gods-style. When he touches the trunk, he has a vision: a three-eyed crow, a blue-eyed White Walker, a fallen dragon, a battlefield covered in bodies, dragon eggs engulfed in flame, the Mother of Dragons (glimpsed from behind, so probably not an actual Emilia Clarke cameo), and Rhaenyra sitting on the Iron Throne. “You know your part,” an apparition of Heleana says. “You know what you must do.”

We find the real Heleana in King’s Landing, halfway between the spirit realm and the real world. Aemond has another crack at trying to get her to join the fight, taking a softer approach this time. But his faux-gentle whispers turn to angry hectoring when she tells him she knows he’s the reason Aegon was horribly injured at Rook’s Rest. “I saw it,” she says simply. When Aemond threatens her, she’s unruffled: “Aegon will be king again … and you, you’ll be dead. You were swallowed up in the God’s Eye and you were never seen again.”

He again threatens his sister after her prophetic words, but she tells him that killing her “wouldn’t change anything.”

Rhaenyra arrives at Harrenhal, but the greeting she receives is not at all what she’d feared. Though he has certainly flirted with the idea throughout season two, Daemon has not betrayed her. He’s caught a glimpse of the Song of Ice and Fire, knows “winter is coming,” and his loyalty is completely re-affirmed. It starts off tense, but it’s a tender reunion, incredibly. And if you didn’t get goosebumps when Daemon bent the knee, pledged his loyalty, and then led the assembled crowd in cheers for his queen, you must not have been watching House of the Dragon for the past eight weeks. 

Meanwhile, we go to another long-overdue confrontation: Corlys and Alyn. Corlys can’t understand why Alyn seems so unhappy with what most would consider a coveted promotion to the Sea Snake’s first mate. There’s incredible work by Abubaker Salim as Alyn in this scene, as he dresses down his estranged (and still not publicly acknowledged) father, telling him how agonizing it was to see Corlys out and about with his legitimate children, living a luxurious life while Alyn and Addam grew up barely scraping by. Corlys has no heirs left, Alyn says, and “now you remember I live? Now you wish to suddenly scatter the crumbs of your favor? I am an honorable man and I will serve you because I must. But if it is all the same, I will decline any offers of help,” he hisses. “If I survive this war, I will continue as I began: alone.” 

Back in the Vale, Rhaena spots the wild dragon! At Dragonstone, Rhaenyra and Mysaria have another one of their talks while gazing at Team Black’s tame (relatively speaking) dragons circle overhead. “The gods favor you. They put the means to victory in your hands,” Mysaria says. But Rhaenyra is feeling ill about having to slaughter innocent people to reclaim her throne. Her father certainly wouldn’t have wanted it that way. “Be strong,” Mystaria tells her. “You know you are just. You must not let the realm fall to those who care for power more than peace.” (Unfortunately, there’s no scene in this episode showing us what Daemon—still back at Harrenhal—thinks of the close relationship that’s developed between these two.)

But… speaking of Rhaenyra’s close relationships: here’s something nobody expected. Remember when Alicent asked her Grand Maester for another favor? It wasn’t for the purposes of smuggling Heleana out of King’s Landing. It was to sneak to Dragonstone and meet Rhaenyra, a reversal of Rhaenyra’s secret journey to talk to Alicent at the beginning of season two. It’s a fantastic and very necessary scene, with Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy showing just how conflicted their characters are on so many levels.

A contrite Alicent is seeking—absolution? Forgiveness? Rhaenyra isn’t here to give either and she’s disgusted with Alicent’s desire to take Heleana and her surviving grandchild and go live somewhere in blissful anonymity. As Alicent bites her nails, a bit of her childhood insecurity bubbling back up, she slowly gets to the point, telling Rhaenyra that in three days, after Aemond flies into battle and leaves Heleana in charge, she’ll arrange it so that Team Black can conquer King’s Landing without resistance.

Rhaenyra points out that there’ll be no claiming the Iron Throne with Aegon still alive. He will have to die as part of this. “If I am to take the throne, I must put an end to the opposition. I must take Aegon’s head and I have to do it for all to see. You know this,” she tells her former friend. It comes back to this: “A son for a son,” she insists. Alicent will have to make the ultimate sacrifice. She does know this. And she agrees. She just wants to be done with all this and “be free”—and she even impulsively invites Rhaenyra to come with her.

But there’s no being free for Rhaenyra. She has her duties laid out for her, and the Song of Ice and Fire must be sung. 

As the episode, and with it season two, comes to an end, we get a montage. The dragonriders suiting up. Rhaena face-to-snout with the wild dragon (which doesn’t incinerate her on sight, which seems promising, though we don’t see what happens next). Various armies on the march. Dragons screeching through the air. Ships on the sea; there’s Alyn and Corlys, looking very grim—and on the other side, Ser Tyland and his new buddy Admiral Lohar. We get a glimpse of the long-MIA Ser Otto Hightower imprisoned… somewhere. Alicent solemnly heading home.

And—uh-oh—there’s King Aegon and Lord Larys in a carriage that’s presently making its way out of King’s Landing, a situation that’s poised to make a mess of Alicent’s grim bargain with Rhaenyra.

The last shots are of Alicent and Rhaenyra, deep in thought, gazing off into the distance—toward season three, no doubt.

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