Entertainment
5 ‘Fire & Blood’ Endings ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 4 Could Actually Use
The fourth and final season of HBO’s House of the Dragon, expected to premiere sometime in 2028, will have to cover a lot of ground in eight episodes. The just-concluded penultimate season marked the end of the road for many beloved characters and was bookended by two major conflicts: the Battle of the Gullet and the First Battle of Tumbleton. If following the war record outlined in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, Season 4 will be even more chock-full of dragon-on-dragon conflict and gutting character losses. Doom and gloom (and spoilers) ahead!
As much as House of the Dragon has caught some heat from fans for breaking from the source material, it bears mentioning that Fire & Blood is a tricky book to adapt. It’s a dense history tome, with pretty sparse dialogue. Events are chronicled through conflicting accounts. Characters sometimes disappear into the historical record, leaving room for the show to take some creative liberties while filling in the gaps. With the Dance of the Dragons hurtling toward its bloody conclusion, House of the Dragon has several available exits for its sprawling saga of war-torn Westeros. Here are five possible book-sourced endings that could round out the brutal Game of Thrones prequel.
5
“The Hour of the Wolf”
When Lord Cregan Stark (Tom Taylor) made his debut in Season 2 Episode 1, book readers were pumped, knowing how key a role he plays in the fallout of the Dance. The Hour of the Wolf is explored in the Fire & Blood chapter titled “Aftermath.” The ominous name refers to the brief period of Stark leadership in King’s Landing after Aegon II (Tom-Glynn Carney) is poisoned.
Fulfilling his promise made to Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett) and his loyalty to Rhaenyra and Team Black, Cregan arrives with an army that “swaggered through the city like so many armored bears” to declare one thing: “The North remembers.” For six days, the Lord of Winterfell served as Hand of the King, protecting the child monarch, Aegon III. It is noted that Stark never sat the Iron Throne, but on a wooden bench beside it. Throughout the six days, he worked to restore justice, overseeing trials and doling out punishments. This is perhaps the most immediate, satisfying, and natural epilogue to the Dance. The dragons are all but wiped out, House Targaryen is in shambles, and a formidable, loyal Stark arrives to clean up the mess and remind us that, yes, winter is coming.
4
The Dowager Queen Meets the Stranger
House of the Dragon has both expanded and diminished Alicent’s character throughout the course of three seasons. Her and Rhaenyra’s bond is kept at the heart of the conflict, for better or worse. By the end of the war, she is left with nothing and no one. If the show wanted to take the hallucination route to tie up loose ends, this haunted survivor would be the best vehicle for it.
Although Alicent does make it through the Dance, none of her children do. Confined to the Red Keep, succumbing to a madness of grief and isolation, she eventually catches the Winter Fever and subsequently passes away from the illness. Fire & Blood sums, “The Stranger came for her on a rainy night, at the hour of the wolf.” Before her death, she confessed her sins to her septa, and talked of her sons, her sweet Helaena, and even old King Jaehaerys, but never her husband, Viserys I (Paddy Considine). To rest the show’s final moments on Alicent might be a polarizing choice, but given the Dance largely started because of a misinterpreted deathbed utterance, this might be a fitting point of symmetry.
3
Regency of Aegon III
The first season of House of the Dragon utilized multiple time jumps in order to cover the necessary ground to set up the Dance. Similarly, a time jump cannot be ruled out for Season 4. The ending of the civil war in Fire & Blood is marked by the beginning of “the melancholy reign of King Aegon III Targaryen.” Aegon III is Daemon and Rhaenyra’s first son together, who has only been briefly featured in the first two seasons, before being shipped off to Pentos with his brother.
Since Aegon III is significantly aged down in House of the Dragon, the only way this ending would work is through the use of a time jump to try and realign the book-show narratives. As Aegon is too young to rule after the Dance, a Council of Regents is appointed for him. One of the prominent survivors of the war, Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), becomes one of said regents for the boy king, as well as Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall). It would be a quieter, more politically detailed way to end House of the Dragon, but, if properly executed, it would rightly showcase the traumatized post-war future of House Targaryen, huddled around a catatonic young boy who would come to be known as Aegon the Unhappy.
2
Battle Above the Gods Eye
This aerial dragon battle, six years in the making, is definitely explosive enough to serve as a grand finale. Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) and Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) both, in Season 2, became aware of their inevitable deaths. The latter through his sister, the dreamer Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban), and the former through a pivotal Weirwood vision at Harrenhal. Their long-awaited confrontation above the Gods Eye lake is an epic, fiery end for the two men and their dragons.
Of course, ending on this massive event would mean manipulating the timeline quite a bit, but House of the Dragon has already done just that by putting Helaena’s death in the Season 3 finale. If the show really wants to go out with a bang, this is certainly the way to do so, and it would keep two fan-favorite characters alive until the last possible moment. Not to mention, this ending creates an opportunity to weigh in on (or dispel) one of the biggest what-ifs mentioned in the book: Daemon’s body disappearing after the battle. Fire & Blood even notes that “the singers tell us the old prince survived the fall.” Regardless of whether the songs are true, Daemon Targaryen lives on as a legend.
1
“The Witch Queen”
Another Harrenhal-related ending is one that slips under the radar in Fire & Blood. After the Battle Above the Gods Eye, word slowly spreads about a sorceress ruling over the cursed castle. That sorceress is none other than Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), the self-proclaimed widow of Aemond Targaryen. When Tyland Lannister and a host of men from King’s Landing show up to reclaim Harrenhal, they find it armed with hundreds of men serving “the witch queen” and a young child she claims is Aemond’s son.
A skirmish breaks out at Harrenhal, and Alys’ band of loyal brigands and outlaws wins the fight. Alys is said to have raised a hand, and suddenly the head of Ser Regis Groves burst open, “spraying blood and brains.” The fear invoked by the powerful witch grows deeper still when a messenger returns from Harrenhal and says, “Seven save us all, she has a dragon. I seen it.” These tidbits from Martin’s book are all the more intriguing with the recent expansion of Alys Rivers’ lore in the Season 3 finale, including the reveal of dragon eggs left at Harrenhal by Queen Rhaena Targaryen decades earlier. Alys Rivers’ fate may be an alluring, ideal offshoot to end the series while also serving as a neat bridge to the next on-screen adaptation tackling Aegon’s Conquest — another prequel set in a time in which the supernaturally (un)aged Alys Rivers was alive.
There is certainly much and more for House of the Dragon to draw upon in shaping the final season. Whether the show opts to leave off with a grand dragon battle, a Stark-led reckoning, a haunted deathbed confession, or the supernatural hub that is Harrenhal, the possibilities are truly as numerous as the show’s casualties. Make sure to grab your tissues in two years time, as there’s no real happy ending in sight for the Greens or the Blacks, or their dragons, come Season 4.
- Release Date
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August 21, 2022
- Network
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HBO
- Showrunner
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George R.R. Martin
- Directors
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Clare Kilner, Geeta Patel
- Writers
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Gabe Fonseca
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Fabien Frankel
Ser Criston Cole
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