Warning: This text comprises main spoilers for “Home of the Dragon” Season 3, Episode 6.
Should you’re ever going by way of an existential malaise and need to embark on a maddeningly circuitous journey that in the end reaches an enormous payoff, take into account staying on the ruined stronghold paradise of Harrenhal. In Season 2 of “Home of the Dragon,” Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) experiences a sequence of weird nightmares and basically sleepwalks his strategy to that final reveal concerning the Tune of Ice and Fireplace prophecy. In Season 3, it is his nephew Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) who finds himself repeating a really comparable plotline whereas recovering from accidents. The widespread strand linking each subplots collectively? The mysterious Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), a self-professed witch who’s clearly greater than she seems.
Episode 6 solely raises much more questions, nevertheless. About midway by way of, Aemond lastly calls for that Alys reveal the “recreation” she’s been enjoying all alongside. What comes subsequent is as stunning because it will get — particularly as a result of none of that is to be discovered within the supply materials, “Fireplace & Blood.” Alys exhibits him a treasure of previous dragon eggs, left behind on the fortress by the dragon Dreamfyre (at present bonded to Phia Saban’s Queen Helaena) centuries in the past within the years following Aegon’s Conquest. What is not instantly obvious is what she intends to do with these eggs. However then she makes her seductive overtures to younger Aemond and proposes a future the place each of them rule collectively — she because the “Woman of the Water” (possible referring to the close by lake referred to as the God’s Eye), and he because the dragonlord by her aspect.
With solely two episodes left within the season, “Home of the Dragon” is constructing to some kind of an exclamation level on this storyline, and we’ve got a number of theories.
Is Home of the Dragon Season 3 lastly going to clarify who Alys Rivers is?
Of all of the big-name gamers scattered all through Westeros in “Home of the Dragon,” probably the most enigmatic of all of them needs to be Alys Rivers. In “Fireplace & Blood,” creator George R.R. Martin defines her totally by what we do not learn about her and the specifics which were misplaced to historical past. Completely different sources within the ebook alternately describe her as a “serving wench who dabbled in potions and spells,” a “woods witch,” a “malign enchantress who bathed within the blood of virgins to protect her youth,” and presumably even the illegitimate daughter of the previous castellan Lyonel Sturdy (Gavin Spokes). The sequence adaptation has taken a extra cautious route, implying that it is a particular person of nice energy and skills who principally appears to take pleasure in enjoying thoughts video games with Targaryens (and not a hallucination or ghost, as prior theories instructed).
Are we about to search out out precisely what Alys’ deal is? From the way in which she talks, it is honest to conclude that she’s a lot older than she seems and has an agenda identified solely to herself. The introduction of the dragon eggs provides one other wrinkle to the combo, certainly one of which she apparently awakens with blood magic, to Aemond’s shock. Is she by some means linked to Rhaena Targaryen, the sister of Aegon the Conqueror and unique rider of the dragon Dreamfyre? Or would possibly she be one thing altogether extra elemental than that, maybe representing the cursed stays of Harrenhal itself and giving a voice to an historical fortress that has seen greater than its justifiable share of fireside and blood by the hands of ruthless Targaryens?
Regardless of the true reply could also be, these dragon eggs could also be a proof behind one of many ebook’s most head-scratching passages.
Home of the Dragon might have simply make clear a lingering Fireplace & Blood dragon thriller
Be warned: Spoilers observe for “Fireplace & Blood” and probably future occasions in “Home of the Dragon.”
Informal “Home of the Dragon” viewers, possibly take this as your cue to look away. The place issues begin to get actually attention-grabbing is within the aftermath of the Dance of the Dragons. All through “Fireplace & Blood,” Alys Rivers solely performs a tertiary function within the precise conflict, remaining at Harrenhal for the majority of the motion earlier than flying away with Aemond on the dragon Vhagar when he abandons the fortress. When he returns to participate in the epic Battle Above the God’s Eye, he does so together with his paramour Alys at his aspect — and visibly pregnant, apparently, with Aemond’s little one.
The ebook loses monitor of Alys Rivers after this, till years later when the Crown sends forces to analyze rumors of a “witch queen” who has apparently taken residence inside Harrenhal. In fact, Alys would not take kindly to those armed intruders and has her followers struggle them off (after committing what might or will not be probably the most supernatural homicide in the complete ebook, supposedly inflicting a person’s head to blow up with a easy gesture). When a survivor limps again house, he stories that Alys calls for that they bend the knee to Aemond’s “trueborn son and inheritor” … and, inexplicably, that she additionally has a dragon.
Alys is rarely talked about in “Fireplace & Blood” once more, however the questions surrounding her mysterious dragon stay. Perhaps the present simply supplied us with that reply by way of these eggs. It is unlikely we’ll ever really see Alys raining fireplace from above, however a minimum of we all know she may.
New episodes of “Home of the Dragon” air on HBO each Sunday.
