House Of The Dragon’s Major Targaryen Dragon Change Will Have Huge Consequences For Season 4

Warning! Spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3’s finale ahead!Helaena Targaryen’s story came to a close in House of the Dragon season 3’s finale, and while her death was largely how George R.R. Martin wrote it, the role of her dragon was eliminated. HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series has gained a reputation for its controversial changes to canon, but it’s hard to deny that a handful of these have paid off spectacularly. House of the Dragon took creative liberties with Helaena’s story, for example, and the result is something hauntingly beautiful.

In House of the Dragon‘s version of the story, Helaena Targaryen threw herself from the window of her bedroom in the Red Keep, just as she did in Martin’s Fire & Blood. There are some significant differences here, though. The motivations for Helaena’s suicide connect significantly to her abilities as a dragon dreamer, which wasn’t a mentioned factor in Martin’s works. Additionally, House of the Dragon completely left out the canon detail that, when Helaena Targaryen died, her dragon, Dreamfyre, wailed in sorrow from the Dragonpit.

There’s something painfully poetic about Dreamfyre’s inherent understanding that Helaena’s life ended. It is, therefore, no wonder that Fire & Blood readers were rather disappointed that this display of mourning wasn’t featured in the episode. Of course, Dreamfyre still has a role to play in this story, so it’s unlikely that she will be ignored indefinitely. House of the Dragon season 4 can bring us back to the dragon, but it was, in truth, far more valuable that the finale of season 3 kept us focused on Helaena and Rhaenyra.

Dreamfyre’s Absence Makes A Lot Of Sense With Helaena’s Season 3 Story

Image via HBO

In Fire & Blood, it’s noted that Helaena stopped riding her dragon due to her gentle heart and grief. The events of young Jaehaerys’ death were even more traumatic in the canon version of the story, and this ultimately leads to her suicide. The impression is that poor Helaena pulled away from her dragon in the same way she pulled away from her life. However, in House of the Dragon, Helaena maintains a love for life and living things even after she loses her son. She aspires to leave and, in peace, raise chickens with her surviving family.

Unfortunately, the future that Helaena hoped for wasn’t possible. We see that in her vision in House of the Dragon season 3, episode 7. Instead, Helaena was doomed to remain trapped in King’s Landing, where Rhaenyra would either use her gifts as a dreamer or put her on Dreamfyre’s back to join the war (perhaps using her children as leverage). Helaena loves her dragon, but she knows that the bond between these beasts and the Targaryens is corrosive. She has seen it, and so she keeps her distance.

Had House of the Dragon season 3 ended things by focusing in on the grief experienced by Dreamfyre, it would have undercut the whole idea here. Helaena refused to let Rhaenyra hold her there, and she took back her power. It was, therefore, far more valuable that all the attention be placed on Rhaenyra’s shifting reaction to her younger sister’s death. It wasn’t about the dragons, in this moment, but the humans. Helaena’s death was a message to the queen that the Targaryens aren’t gods or dragons. They don’t fly. They fall, and they burn.

Dreamfyre’s Grief Will Almost Certainly Play A Role In House Of The Dragon Season 4

Credit: HBO

Given the positions of all the characters in House of the Dragon season 3‘s ending, season 4 will likely pick up almost immediately where things were left off. So, while the finale focused entirely on Rhaenyra’s reaction to Helaena’s death, the upcoming premiere will dive right into the wider fallout. This young Targaryen woman will have shaken all of Westeros with her choice to jump from that window, but season 3 ends on the temporary silence that followed. When the storm begins, it will come off of Dreamfyre’s wings.

More likely than not, the moment that Dreamfyre wails in agony over Helaena’s death will arrive in House of the Dragon season 4. Even if it doesn’t happen just as it did in Fire & Blood, it will be all the more resonant thanks to the silence allowed by the season 3 finale. Things are going to get very bad for Rhaenyra as the people of King’s Landing rise against her, and the biggest event in her downfall will be the Storming of the Dragonpit.

This uprising will claim the lives of five dragons, including Queen Rhaenyra’s Syrax. Still, the central tragic figure of the Storming of the Dragonpit is Dreamfyre. The she-dragon who mourned the loss of Helaena to the point that she had to be restrained fights the hardest against those who come to destroy the Targaryens’ dragons, and it’s her death that brings the entire pit down. The ruins we see in Game of Thrones appear that way because of Dreamfyre, so it makes sense that House of the Dragon would save her agony until season 4.

House Of The Dragon Continues To Make A Powerful Statement About Game Of Thrones’ Dragons

It makes narrative sense for House of the Dragon to save Dreamfyre’s reaction to Helaena’s death for season 4. However, it’s worth considering the thematic value here as well. Another way Helaena differs between the book and the TV show is that she seems to have an inherent understanding of how damaging the bond between dragon and rider is. This queen loves living things, and she loves Dreamfyre as well. However, she senses in House of the Dragon that dragonriding changes the heart of the rider, and she didn’t want to be changed.

While this isn’t an opinion Helaena ever shared in Martin’s Fire & Blood, it’s hard to deny, while looking at the overarching story in Game of Thrones, that she is right. Targaryens believe that they are like gods because they have dragons. Riding them makes them feel invincible—untouchable. They easily forget how terrible these beasts truly are. We see this reality hit Daemon during the Battle of Tumbleton in the House of the Dragon season 3 finale. He has taken this power for granted, and now it’s too late.

Dragons have come to represent delusions of grandeur in the Game of Thrones franchise, and House of the Dragon spent a lot of time this season emphasizing that concept. Rhaenyra has allowed the power of her dragons to change her, just as, more than a century later, Daenerys will do the same. Targaryens and dragons alike are necessary to defend Westeros against the threat from the North, but who will defend Westeros from the Targaryens and dragons? It’s a vicious cycle of necessary evils, but Helaena, at least, found her way free of it.

Release Date

August 21, 2022

Network

HBO

Directors

Clare Kilner, Geeta Patel

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  Fabien Frankel

  Ser Criston Cole