‘House Of The Dragon’ Season 3 Finale: Co-Creator Ryan Condal And Star Emma D’Arcy On Rhaenyra’s Dark Path, The Battle Of Tumbleton And What’s In Store For Season 4

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details from Season 3 episode 8 of House of the Dragon on HBO.

“I AM THE PRINCE THAT WAS PROMISED.”

These are the words Queen Rhaenyra screams in the Season 3 finale to the people of King’s Landing as she unveils the future prophecy and sets the stage for what is sure to be an eventful final season.

Sunday’s episode starts with the news of the return of Aegon’s dragon, leading Rhaenyra to not only put a search out for it but also have Daemon move forward with the the attack on Tumbleton.

Rhaenyra also makes the drastic decision of relieving Mysaria of her duties as master of whispers and banishing her from King’s Landing. This comes after the the two shared an intimate moment in previous episode.

As Ormund Hightower and Daemon Targaryen prepare for the battle of Tumbleton, brothers Aegon and Aemon reunite at Harrenhal to discuss plans on how they will take back the Iron Throne.

Even after delivering imprisoned Sea Serpent, Daemon denies peace talks from Gwayne Hightower setting the stage for the siege of Tumbleton, living up to the hype for which fans have waited weeks.

The bloody battle not only leaves the city in ruins but also sees fiery end to Hightower ironically at the hands of Ulf the White and his dragon, who in the previous episode he had persuaded to cross lines and fight for his side. Ulf ultimately turns on both sides burning the city to the ground as Daemon is force to flee.

Back in King’s Landing, Rhaenyra comes to find that her prisoner Helaena has taken her own life but left a parting gift for the queen that foreshadows a potential prophecy of Rhaenyra’s path towards madness.

When it came to mapping out not just this season, but Season 4 as well, co-creator and showrunner Ryan Condal said he and the writers mapped out a “superstructure” that gave them an idea of how the series would end, and once that came together plotting the rest of Season 3 was seamless.

“We were lucky enough in the breaking of Season 3 because we knew at that point that for sure it was going to be a four-season show that essentially when Sarah [Hess] and I sat down with all the writers, we essentially broke the back of seasons 3 and 4 together, at least in the sort of superstructure of it,” Condal said. “So it was really planning out kind of from here to the end and trying to structure it in a way that had all the peaks and valleys of drama and to keep the pacing and to hit all the big set pieces that we have to hit. Once we kind of laid it all out, it felt like it would be really fun to bookend the season with the two biggest sequences we had ever done. So episode 1, Battle of the Gullet, episode 8, the Battle of Tumbleton.”

Rhaenyra makes several decisions in this week’s episode that are establishing a path of no return for the upcoming final season. and it’s hard not to see a similar trajectory to another famous Westeros character whose dark choices led to a tragic end. Emma D’Arcy, who plays Rhaenyra, understands how fans could see parallels between Rhaenra and Daenerys Targaryen from the original Game of Thrones and believes their paths has a lot to do with what the Iron Throne represents for all that seek it.

“I think the parallels do call to the greater themes of, of the song of ice and fire universe, which is pride and power and how power corrupts and how far it corrupts — it can change good people into corrupted people,” D’Arcy said. “It can take corrupted people and make them real villains. And other people like this era, it can simply just destroy them.”

As for the anticipated battle of Tumbleton, Condal says he drew comparisons to when “the Nazis invaded Paris” while ultimately wanting something that looked and felt like a traditional medieval siege.

“So all season long, we’re kind of setting up this, this classic medieval siege, which is really where we wanted to get to,” Condall says. “The concept of that battle was that Ormand had basically done all he could to blunt the threat of Rhaenyra’s greatest power, which is that she has, or had, six dragons under her command at that point. He sees his army as better trained and better suited than the river men that are coming to attack. He knows the ground, he’s inside the city. They have to come over the walls, sacrifice a bunch of their men. So that’s where we all started, and then it was like, ‘OK, well, we need to set to do this in a big location, to build it on, and who are POV characters?’ It was a very, very, very complex thing to fold all together, but we just wanted to do the classic medieval siege. [That was] the elevator pitch for the finale.”

With the fourth season also marking the final season of House of the Dragon, Condal says while he saw Game of Thrones as an epic story, he always viewed House of the Dragon as more of tragedy. While he won’t say much about what’s to come, he does hint that the final season will be even bigger then the one we just watched Sunday.

“We have we have an incredible season coming, as crazy and big as Season 3 was,” Condal said. “I think Season 4 is going to be even bigger. It’s a great privilege to be able to tell a story and to be able to write the ending and to control when and where that ending happens. This is not a given in making television, certainly. So we’re very excited to get back in and we have new characters and new dragons and new locations that I think are gonna make it a very worthy final season.”