Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2.
Two weeks into House of the Dragon‘s return, Season 3 has already dropped more than a few shocking twists. While the premiere began with the devastating Battle of the Gullet, which saw several characters’ fates either sealed or left up in the air, Episode 2 sees Alicent (Olivia Cooke) quietly making moves in King’s Landing to pave the way for Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) bloodless takeover — only for the queen of Team Black to ascend the Iron Throne after carrying out the devastating execution of a surprising prisoner who’s been held within the Red Keep this entire time: Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans).
While the death is shocking on its own, it’s rendered even more horrifying because it doesn’t go according to plan. Not only is Otto a somewhat spontaneous substitution for Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), both of whom are nowhere near King’s Landing despite Rhaenyra and Alicent’s previous agreement, but Rhaenyra’s execution of her father’s former Hand of the King is painfully botched, with the queen forced to take more than one swing to finally separate Otto’s head from his body. It all culminates in a cliffhanger that likely had fans screaming at their televisions last night, when Alicent walks into the Great Hall just in time to bear witness to the bloody aftermath of her father’s death.
Collider Exclusive · Game of Thrones Personality Quiz Which Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To? Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Baratheon · Tyrell
Five great houses. Five completely different answers to the same question: how do you hold power in a world that will take it from you the moment you stop paying attention? Eight questions will determine where your loyalties — and your nature — truly lie.
🐺Stark
🦁Lannister
🐉Targaryen
🦌Baratheon
🌹Tyrell
01
Someone powerful is acting dishonourably and everyone knows it. What do you do? In Westeros, the answer to this question has ended more than one great house.
02
What is the source of your power? Every house endures because of something. What is it for yours?
03
Who do you truly fight for? Strip away the banners and the words. The honest answer tells you everything.
04
How do you deal with your enemies? A house’s method reveals its character as clearly as its words ever could.
05
What kind of ruler do you believe in? Westeros is full of answers to this question. Most of them end badly.
06
You suffer a devastating loss. How does your house respond? How a house handles defeat tells you more about it than how it handles victory.
07
Which of these truths about Westeros do you most believe? Every house has a philosophy. This is yours.
08
The Iron Throne is within reach. What do you do? The answer reveals not just your ambition — but your character.
The Maester Has Spoken Your House Is…
Your answers point to the great house whose words, values, and way of surviving in Westeros match your own. Bend the knee — or don’t. That’s very much up to you.
Winterfell · The North
🐺 House Stark
Winter is Coming — and you have always known it. You prepare not out of fear but out of duty, because the people who depend on you deserve someone who takes the long view.
You lead with honour even when it costs you, because you understand that a reputation built on integrity is the only one worth having.
Your loyalty to family and people runs deep — not as sentiment but as a code that doesn’t bend when things get difficult.
The North endures because Starks endure — not by being the cleverest players in the game, but by being the kind of people others are willing to follow into the cold.
You are that kind of person. The pack survives. The lone wolf dies. You already know which one you are.
Casterly Rock · The Westerlands
🦁 House Lannister
You understand the game — its rules, its exceptions, and exactly when the rules become the exception. You play it without illusions and without apology.
You are sharper than most people realise, and you have learned to use that gap to your advantage.
A Lannister always pays their debts — and you always keep your word, because your word is an instrument of power, and instruments must be kept in working order.
You love your family with a ferocity that sometimes blinds you, and you know it, and you do it anyway.
The lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep. Neither, in the end, do you.
Dragonstone · The Iron Throne
🐉 House Targaryen
You carry a sense of destiny that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore — the feeling that you are not simply participating in the world but meant to reshape it.
You are capable of extraordinary things, and you know it, and that knowledge is both your greatest strength and your most dangerous quality.
Fire and blood are not just words to you — they are a philosophy about what change requires and what it costs.
The Targaryens at their best were transformative rulers who broke chains and defied the limits of what anyone thought possible.
At your best, so are you. The dragon has three heads. You are one of them.
Storm’s End · The Stormlands
🦌 House Baratheon
You are a force — direct, powerful, and difficult to ignore when you enter a room or a conflict. You do not negotiate with challenges. You meet them.
Ours is the fury — and yours is a kind of intensity that commands attention, respect, and occasionally fear from those who underestimate what’s behind it.
You value strength and straight dealing. You’d rather know where you stand in a fight than navigate a web of courtly whispers.
The Baratheons built their house on the back of one of the greatest military victories in Westerosi history — and then struggled with what came after.
The lesson of your house is that winning is not the end of the story. Governing is. You are learning that too.
Highgarden · The Reach
🌹 House Tyrell
You understand that power does not always announce itself — that sometimes it arrives with flowers, good wine, and a smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.
Growing strong is your house’s motto, and you live it: patiently, strategically, always investing in the relationships and resources that will matter most when it counts.
You are charming by choice and calculating by nature — a combination that makes you one of the most effective players in any room you enter.
The Tyrells fed King’s Landing and shaped its politics without ever sitting on the Iron Throne — and they were arguably more powerful for it.
You know that the person who controls the food controls the kingdom. And you always know where the food is.
How Will the Hightowers Respond to Otto’s Execution in ‘House of the Dragon’?
Ahead of the Season 3 premiere, Collider spoke with several House of the Dragon cast members about Episode 2’s brutal Great Hall cliffhanger, including those who play members of House Hightower, about how Otto’s surviving descendants will react to his execution. While we don’t yet know what will play out in the coming weeks, Cooke didn’t hesitate to confirm whether Alicent perceives the act as Rhaenyra going back on her word, given their truce about a bloodless takeover:
“Yeah, I think it does. It’s not only a very public political act, but it’s also her own father. I know Otto and Rhaenyra didn’t have the best relationship, but it’s Alicent’s father, who — for all intents and purposes, Alicent doesn’t know where he’s been for this whole time, so he could have been Rhaenyra’s prisoner, and this is the first thing that she’s enacted as ruler. So, yeah, it’s a big slap in the face for Alicent, and I think for her, it’s just like, ‘Okay, we’re playing it like that.’ I think she’s just like, ‘Well, all bets are off.'”
While Alicent’s brother Gwayne has been somewhat occupied on the frontlines of battle, there’s no doubt that word of his father’s death will ultimately reach him, and it turns out he’ll have an immensely complicated response to it. Speaking with Collider, Freddie Fox teased how Gwayne might react once he learns about what Rhaenyra did to Otto in the service of the pursuit of power — and how it’ll actually inform his character’s overall arc in Season 3:
“It’s difficult with his relationship with his father — because, of course, he never really had a relationship with his father, and it’s the [absenteeism] of Otto that is the greatest figure in Gwayne’s life and gives him a great deal of reason to be the kind of mentor figure that he becomes to another character in the story, that you will soon meet. And yet [Otto] is also his dad, and there are elements of his father, his approval, and his style that Gwayne desperately wanted to covet or recreate. So, I think… pain, and the sort of inertia that comes with losing somebody like that who was never really present in his life.”
New episodes of House of the Dragon Season 3 premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max. Stay tuned at Collider for more!
