House Of The Dragon Season 3’s Big Dragon Reveal Only Raises More Questions – SlashFilm

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for “House of the Dragon” Season 3, Episode 6.

If you’re ever going through an existential malaise and want to embark on a maddeningly circuitous journey that ultimately reaches a huge payoff, consider staying at the ruined stronghold paradise of Harrenhal. In Season 2 of “House of the Dragon,” Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) experiences a series of bizarre nightmares and essentially sleepwalks his way to that ultimate reveal regarding the Song of Ice and Fire prophecy. In Season 3, it’s his nephew Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) who finds himself repeating a very similar plotline while recovering from injuries. The common strand linking both subplots together? The mysterious Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), a self-professed witch who’s clearly more than she appears.

Episode 6 only raises even more questions, however. About halfway through, Aemond finally demands that Alys reveal the “game” she’s been playing all along. What comes next is as surprising as it gets — especially because none of this is to be found in the source material, “Fire & Blood.” Alys shows him a treasure of old dragon eggs, left behind at the castle by the dragon Dreamfyre (currently bonded to Phia Saban’s Queen Helaena) centuries ago in the years following Aegon’s Conquest. What isn’t immediately apparent is what she intends to do with these eggs. But then she makes her seductive overtures to young Aemond and proposes a future where both of them rule together — she as the “Lady of the Water” (likely referring to the nearby lake known as the God’s Eye), and he as the dragonlord by her side.

With only two episodes left in the season, “House of the Dragon” is building to some sort of an exclamation point in this storyline, and we have several theories.

Of all the big-name players scattered throughout Westeros in “House of the Dragon,” the most enigmatic of them all has to be Alys Rivers. In “Fire & Blood,” author George R.R. Martin defines her entirely by what we don’t know about her and the specifics that have been lost to history. Different sources in the book alternately describe her as a “serving wench who dabbled in potions and spells,” a “woods witch,” a “malign enchantress who bathed in the blood of virgins to preserve her youth,” and possibly even the illegitimate daughter of the former castellan Lyonel Strong (Gavin Spokes). The series adaptation has taken a more cautious route, implying that this is a person of great power and abilities who mostly seems to enjoy playing mind games with Targaryens (and not a hallucination or ghost, as prior theories suggested).

Are we about to find out exactly what Alys’ deal is? From the way she talks, it’s fair to conclude that she’s much older than she appears and has an agenda known only to herself. The introduction of the dragon eggs adds another wrinkle to the mix, one of which she apparently awakens with blood magic, to Aemond’s shock. Is she somehow connected to Rhaena Targaryen, the sister of Aegon the Conqueror and original rider of the dragon Dreamfyre? Or might she be something altogether more elemental than that, perhaps representing the cursed remains of Harrenhal itself and giving a voice to an ancient castle that has seen more than its fair share of fire and blood at the hands of ruthless Targaryens?

Whatever the true answer may be, those dragon eggs may be an explanation behind one of the book’s most head-scratching passages.

Be warned: Spoilers follow for “Fire & Blood” and potentially future events in “House of the Dragon.”

Casual “House of the Dragon” viewers, maybe take this as your cue to look away. Where things start to get really interesting is in the aftermath of the Dance of the Dragons. Throughout “Fire & Blood,” Alys Rivers only plays a tertiary role in the actual war, remaining at Harrenhal for the bulk of the action before flying away with Aemond on the dragon Vhagar when he abandons the castle. When he returns to take part in the epic Battle Above the God’s Eye, he does so with his paramour Alys at his side — and visibly pregnant, apparently, with Aemond’s child.

The book loses track of Alys Rivers after this, until years later when the Crown sends forces to investigate rumors of a “witch queen” who has apparently taken residence inside Harrenhal. Of course, Alys doesn’t take kindly to these armed intruders and has her followers fight them off (after committing what may or may not be the most supernatural murder in the entire book, supposedly causing a man’s head to explode with a simple gesture). When a survivor limps back home, he reports that Alys demands that they bend the knee to Aemond’s “trueborn son and heir” … and, inexplicably, that she also has a dragon.

Alys is never mentioned in “Fire & Blood” again, but the questions surrounding her mysterious dragon remain. Maybe the show just provided us with that answer through these eggs. It’s unlikely we’ll ever actually see Alys raining fire from above, but at least we know she could.

New episodes of “House of the Dragon” air on HBO every Sunday.