After the epic conclusion of Season 3, House of the Dragon is heading into its final stretch. We saw Rhaenyra in an even more complicated position, Aegon back in the race for the Iron Throne, Helaena taking her own life and leaving major consequences behind, Tumbleton becoming the scene of a devastating battle, Aemond’s whereabouts finally being discovered, and so on. A lot went down over the course of the last episodes, but the fourth and final season needs to live up to what came before, especially considering that we’re talking about a spin-off of the legendary Game of Thrones. However, just making the war bigger because it’s the end of the story isn’t enough. More than ever, everything should make sense.
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Over the years, the series has gone through a pretty rough road, with some outstanding and widely praised episodes, while others made it feel like an entire season was just spinning its wheels. But now, it has reached the point where every single decision these characters have made needs to start coming back to bite them in ways that aren’t limited to another battle or death. Despite its ending, GOT still sits on the TV pedestal, and there’s still a chance for HOTD to at least come close to that level. How? We’ve put together 3 essential things the final season can’t afford to lose sight of.
3) Make the Conflict About More Than the Iron Throne
Even though it’s a GOT spin-off and, therefore, the Iron Throne is still at the heart of the whole thing, HOTD needs to stop treating it as if it’s the only thing at stake, because the situation has already gotten way too big for the story to keep working that way. The Season 3 finale showed this too: Rhaenyra was becoming more obsessed with proving that she’s the rightful queen, Tumbleton was destroyed, alliances started falling apart, and even some figures who had firmly picked a side began questioning the point of the war. So, the upcoming episodes should make better use of all this chaos and give the characters different reasons to keep fighting.
Need some examples? Corlys, who has already shown that he’s much more concerned about the cost of the war than winning; Daemon, who seems totally focused on destroying the Hightowers rather than finding a way to actually end the conflict; and Rhaenyra, who, on the other hand, is starting to see any opposition as a threat that needs to be eliminated. HOTD would be much more interesting if it made it very clear that, even though the Greens and the Blacks can still exist as opposing sides, not everyone is fighting for the same thing. Making that more explicit would make de the civil war feel even more intense than it already did. This hasn’t been just a family feud for a long time now.
2) Make the War Change the Characters
Well, speaking of the war, it obviously needs to have consequences, right? The final season needs to leave its characters almost unrecognizable, and not just because they lost someone or became more violent — Rhaenyra is the best example of this. In the beginning, she wanted to be recognized as the heir since she believed she had been wronged by the realm itself. Now, after losing her children and allies, learning that Aegon survived, and seeing her authority being challenged, she’s starting to rule through fear. That’s why she orders the High Septon to be killed after he refuses to acknowledge her as queen and treats Helaena as a necessary piece to winning the war (at least before her death). That should only be the start.
If we think about other characters, Aegon also needs to carry everything that happened to him, Alicent has to deal with the fact that her actions helped put her own children in this situation, and Daemon will finally have to face what his obsession with winning is costing those close to him. In fact, the goal isn’t to make everyone darker, but to make their previous actions have consequences that really affect the way they behave from this point forward. GOT did this very well: its characters rarely went through a major experience and came out of it exactly the same; HOTD should follow the same approach, especially because it would be weird to reach the end of such a brutal war and have none of its survivors go through some kind of character arc.
1) Show Why the War Matters to Westeros
This may be the most important part of the entire show: showing the audience why the Dance of the Dragons mattered to Westeros as a whole, rather than just being another chapter in the Targaryen family’s history. So far, we’ve seen some impact, but it often still seems to center around the protagonists. After the Season 3 finale, Tumbleton needs to be used to change that, since it made it clearer than ever that fighting for the throne can destroy an entire city, kill countless people, and still end without a meaningful victory for either side. It’s pretty important that the series doesn’t ignore this and actually explores it, as there are some fundamental questions that are genuinely worth looking at.
What do civilians think of the Targaryens after watching their dragons destroy everything? What happens to the houses that are losing their armies? How long will the lords keep obeying when they realize their own territories are being sacrificed? Of course, the show doesn’t need to give the entire population of Westeros a starring role, but the Dance of the Dragons is such a fundamental part of the continent’s history that focusing only on the perspectives of two sides of the same family fighting each other shouldn’t be the ideal approach. Scenes like Hugh Hammer losing his wife or children being used as human shields on the walls are exactly the kind of fallout HOTD should keep highlighting. When the war is over, it can’t feel like only the Targaryens lost something — Westeros as a whole should be in a worse place because of them.
