What Happened to Aemond Targaryen in House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 2 Explained

Aemond Targaryen and Vhagar going to Harrenhal has been one of the key plot beats in the early goings of House of the Dragon Season 3. The season’s premiere saw him finally convinced to leave King’s Landing – though not before Aemond kissed his own mother, Alicent Hightower – which was the finally piece that needed to be removed from the capital for Alicent and Rhaenyra Targaryen’s plan to come to fruition. Warning: Major SPOILERS ahead for Season 3, Episode 2 from this point on, as well as for future events from George R.R. Martin’s book, Fire & Blood.

The much bigger events of the second episode come in King’s Landing, with Rhaenyra killing Otto Hightower and taking the Iron Throne, but we do also see Aemond take Harrenhal. He arrives on Vhagar and makes quick work of the men remaining at the castle, including killing Simon Strong and his family, but it is not without a cost. He suffers a serious knife wound, and we last see him bleeding out in front of Alys Rivers, begging her for help before before passing out, with his fate remaining up in the air by the time the credits roll.

Aemond Isn’t Dead In House Of The Dragon – And It Sets Up One Of His Biggest Relationships

Aemond may be badly injured, but don’t worry, or celebrate, just yet: he is not dead. This is confirmed not only by the books, but the House of the Dragon Season 3 trailers, which do feature more scenes of “One-Eye” in action, including him eating at Harrenhal and saying Rhaenyra is doomed to fail. As ironic as it would be for him to be killed by a Strong boy, he’s far too notable a character to go out in such lowkey circumstances.

Instead, we can expect that Alys Rivers will indeed come to the aid of Aemond. Actors Ewan Mitchell and Gayle Rankin have teased their relationship ahead of Season 3, and it’s set to be an interesting one. In the book, they become lovers, with it even said that Alys falls pregnant. In the show, I think it’s fair to expect something similar, but with even more to it.

There’s a chance we’ll see Alys giving Aemond some potions like she did Daemon, and perhaps he’ll get a few visions of his own. Though Aemond does later leave Harrenhal to go rampaging through the riverlands, he returns for Alys, so the two of them should be together for a lot of Season 3 going forward, and into Season 4 as well.

How Aemond Targaryen Dies In House Of The Dragon

After Aemond’s own campaign in the riverlands, and Daemon searching for him, the pair finally meet at Harrenhal, before taking to the sky on their dragons, Vhagar and Caraxes, for what’s known as the Battle Above the Gods Eye (named for the Gods Eye lake, where Helaena prophesied Aemond would die). It is one of the most spectacular, ferocious battles in the entire Dance of the Dragons, beginning as Caraxes “dove down upon Vhagar with a piercing shriek that was heard a dozen miles away.”

The two dragons claw and bite into each other with devastating effect, and then Daemon leaps from Caraxes to Vhagar. He plunges his Valyrian steel sword, Dark Sister, into Aemond’s blind eye, and the two men and their dragons all go down crashing into the lake and to their deaths. Given the current trajectory of the show, expect this to happen partway through House of the Dragon Season 4, and to be one of the biggest events of the entire series.

New episodes of House of the Dragon release on Sundays at 9 pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!