‘House of the Dragon’ Enters Its Woman War Criminal Era
In an otherwise anticlimactic season finale, Alicent and Rhaenyra reunite one more time, and both emerge as more ruthless versions of themselves.
Photo: HBO EntertainmentTV
Welp. With Sunday’s irritatingly anticlimactic House of the Dragon Season 2 finale, all we really have to tide us over for the inevitable two-year gap before Season 3 are enduring queer sexual tension and an abundance of Reddit conspiracy theories. (My favorite is that Aemond Targaryen’s reanimated corpse is the Night King.) The finale sees Aemond fully fly off the deep end after being bested by Rhaenyra; the physically and mentally broken King Aegon flees King’s Landing with his ever-sneaky ally Lord Larys; Tyland Lannister mud wrestles a gal in Essos; and in the episode’s climax, Rhaenyra and Alicent partake in one more reunion—the intimacy of which has surely already fueled no fewer than 10,000 Archive of Our Own fan-fics.
In the scene, Alicent—who recognizes Team Green is squarely defeated now that Rhaenyra’s in possession of three more dragon riders and a land army—sneaks onto Dragonstone to offer a semi-apology, concede the game of thrones, and asks only for safe passage for her and her daughter Helaena to flee King’s Landing. “Come with me,” she even asks Rhaenyra, in a clip that is currently dominating my Twitter feed alongside captions calling it, and I quote, “gayer than actual lesbian sex.” Alas, Rhaenyra reminds Alicent that she can’t truly win the war without very publicly taking Aegon’s head—“a son for a son”—to which Alicent responds that Rhaenyra is “much changed.”
This—Aegon’s execution—is, indeed, a brutal demand from Rhaenyra, but to be clear, she and Alicent are both “much changed” from the hapless children and perennial victims they were at the beginning of the series. As the two women begin their reunion by bitterly venturing down memory lane, the finale similarly prompts the audience to reflect on the last two seasons, and what it took for a show stacked to the brim with male war criminals to inspiringly enter its woman war criminal era.
alicent & rhaenyra’s final shots.
alicent, previously bound to duty and not knowing what she wanted, choosing freedom vs rhaenyra, whom alicent envied for knowing and doing what she wanted, now bound to a destiny she cannot escape. the roles are reversed & their fates are sealed pic.twitter.com/bFOT7f0ioi