The House of the Dragon season 1 ending ends in Fire & Blood.
House of the Dragon Episode 10
In Game of Thrones Season 1, Ned Stark’s offensive and unjustified end was a turning point in the show and set the circumstances in the series in motion. As a result, House of the Dragon has taken the drop—and we’re not articulating about King Viserys’ death.
Every moment, a little bit more of the historical narrative slips away into the ether, only to be replaced with a new hero, a new slight, a new disagreement, a new love, and a new war. And the stuff that’s “lost” to history isn’t lost. The forgotten moments are frequently encoded into our DNA or melted into the collective unconscious. The weight of history depends on whether we’re aware of it. And it bears down particularly heavy on the poor fools on House of the Dragon.
The first episode revealed House of the Dragon as an engaging historical drama about entirely fake history. Based on George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones prequel Fire & Blood, this show treated the mythical event known as the Dance of the Dragons as if it were an actual civil conflict somewhere in our timeline.
House of the Dragon Season 1 finale (Photo: Disney Plus Hotstar)
They say those who don’t look at the past are condemned to replicate it. But those who learn history understand we’re all doomed to repeat it anyway. Such is the human condition. Several times in “The Black Queen,” characters seem primed and poised to “break the wheel” as Daenerys Targaryen will one day put it and act in the best interests of the realm. But time and time again, they just become another cog in a grand historical machine of grudge-bearing and precedent-honoring that started long before them and will carry on long after.
We pick up with the soon-to-be queen and her court in their ancestral home in Dragonstone. Firstly, this could have been avoided if Rhaenyra and their friends had steadfastly never left the capital. Sure, she wanted to get her kids “home” after the traumatic events of episode 8, but that’s no excuse for the would-be heir to leave the throne behind while the current king is as close as any human being has ever been dead without actually being finished yet.
R.I.P., LUCERYS | It’s stormy when Luke arrives at Storm’s End… and he’s surprised to see another dragon already hanging outside. Inside, he learns that Aemond has come before him, and he’s standing next to Lord Burros Baratheon as Luke delivers the message from Rhaenyra. Baratheon is mad that Luke showed up empty-handed; at least Aemond brought a marriage pact. Dejected, Luke turns to leave… and then Aemond demands that the boy cut out one of his own eyes in exchange for what he did to Aemond years ago. Aemond rips off his eyepatch, and we see that he’s got a giant sapphire stuffed into the socket. Also? He’s super mad. As he comes after Luke, Lord Burros orders them to spill each other’s blood elsewhere.
So Luke hightails it out to Arrax and flies off in the thunderstorm. Luke seems to be getting away just fine… until Aemond flies over him on Vhagar, and you get a sense of how incredibly teeny Arrax is in comparison. There’s a lot of back and forth and a chase, but then Arrax goes rogue and breathes fire on Vhagar, and Vhagar counters by swooping down and biting Arrax’s head off. Unfortunately, he snags Luke in the process, and that’s all she wrote for Rhaenyra’s second-born. It’s clear that both dragons have stopped listening to their riders when all of this is going down; afterward, Aemond looks more gutted than I would have thought him capable.
Rhaenyra receives the news in her war room. We don’t see her face when Daemon tells her that her son has died, but we D.O. see it when she turns around. Though tears slide down her cheeks with abandon, the look is pure fury: This war is ON.
House of the Dragon Season 1 has ended, and Season 2 will come soon.
