House of the Dragon Finale: Tumbleton Burns, Helaena Falls

Spoilers ahead: everything that transpired in House of the Dragon S03E08, the final episode of the third season, is going to be revealed here. In case you have not seen it yet, this is your last chance before the dragon fire strikes!

All right, Westeros. The much-awaited war in season 3 of the show, which we’ve all waited for since the small council meeting and everything that was done as a result of it, has finally arrived at its grandest in the very last episode of this season. Episode 8 of House of the Dragon Season 3 is the complete destruction of a city and some key characters.

So, now, let’s go through each and everything that happened in this episode and analyze it, comparing it to George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood.

House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 8: The Recap

The news is out. As the scene opens, Grand Maester Orwyle bursts into the chambers of Queen Rhaenyra to break the news she has heard through the peasants at Rook’s Rest – that Aegon and his dragon Sunfyre are alive. Without offering more information, she rushes straight to the chambers of Daemon, struggling for breath. “He has risen,” she says. Opportunistic Daemon reassures her immediately in High Valyrian.

Rhaenyra’s comeuppance. And in this way, Rhaenyra dives right into crisis council mode. She begins hunting down Ormund Hightower and Daeron, declares that she wants to see both their heads on spikes, and promises to personally execute Aegon too once she has finished with that task, while telling Daemon “don’t make a monster out of me” all at once. It is an order that becomes increasingly difficult to fulfill with every scene. Amidst all of this, Baela demands that a rescue be organized to save her grandfather Corlys, who is captured, with one finger gone. Without giving it a moment’s pause, Rhaenyra tells Baela and Addam that they need to guard the city. And in response, Baela points out that the queen had put Corlys into such a position on her own account, and grabs her face in a physical show, calling her an “insolent child.”

The murder committed by Rhaenyra during Sept. goes beyond her own family. The High Septon refuses to acknowledge her reign due to Aegon’s reappearance, and as a result, Rhaenyra orders Alyn to murder him. He executes his order by stabbing him in the presence of witnesses, despite feeling deep remorse for doing so. This event, despite being a minor one, clearly shows how the moral high ground that Rhaenyra had when the war started is slipping away from her.

Ulf’s night of horror. In Tumbleton, Ulf the White is suffering through the worst pre-battle preparation in all of Targaryen history. Rather than riding his Silverwing and positioning himself for battle, Ulf spends the night drinking and boasting to random civilians that Daemon is such a coward he won’t even be using his own dragon in the coming battle. He blacks out completely drunk on the toilet, uncontactable while Ormund’s army prepares for a battle in which they rely on him to participate. This is genuinely one of the most hilarious moments the show has ever managed to pull off, especially considering what happens only hours later.

The peace that almost was. During Ulf’s snooze, Gwayne Hightower, who is obviously the only adult around from either side, convinces his nephew Daeron that committing suicide using the assistance of a dragon is unnecessary. Following which, Gwayne and Daeron make an effort to release Corlys from his captivity and return him to the Blacks unharmed. In return for this act of goodwill, Corlys returns with a legitimate deal from Gwayne and Daeron, according to which the kingdom will be divided such that Rhaenyra will be able to keep the crown and remain queen while Daeron will govern from Oldtown. However, Daemon is not convinced about the deal as it soon turns out to be invalid due to the news of the survival of Aegon and Sunfyre.

The battle begins. Since there’s no hope left for peace, Daemon rides Caraxes, burning down the gates of Tumbleton, and thus starts the battle of Tumbleton in earnest. Back inside the walls, Ormund discovers that Daeron had been conducting secret negotiations with the enemy and releases Corlys without letting him know. Outraged, he sends his second in command, Jon Roxton, to look for Ulf. In the meantime, Hugh Hammer’s wife, Kat, becomes trapped in the chaos of Tumbleton; Hugh does not turn against Rhaenyra in this instance, but the loss of Kat clearly implies future trouble for him.

Roddy gets his revenge. In the midst of the fray, Roderick “Roddy the Ruin” Dustin is able to catch up to Ormund Hightower. Roderick and Ormund engage in a bloody fight; Ormund is able to chop off Roderick’s arm, but not before Roderick’s sword finds its mark in an extremely sensitive area of Ormund’s body, resulting in death. It is quick, it is brutal, and for a moment, it seems that the battle might actually be coming to an end.

Ulf wakes up, and everything gets worse. Not really. Ormund’s guys eventually locate Ulf and force him on to Silverwing, but even when he takes to the air, the fight is well underway, and he does not have any loyalty to Ormund whatsoever. He strikes indiscriminately, making a mess out of Tumbleton: Blacks, Greens, and civilians alike, even Kat who dies among the chaos caused by her husband. Ormund and Roderick, who is seriously injured, are killed together with everyone else by Silverwing’s fire. By the time Daemon wakes up in the burning remains of Tumbleton, the place is pretty much ruined. It is Corlys who has to explain to him that Ulf has turned against them and is no longer loyal to anyone since the fight is over.

Aftermath in King’s Landing. However, back at the Red Keep, after Alicent’s return from Harrenhal, she becomes traumatized by the vision of butterflies, an allusion to Helaena’s journal entry regarding the Butterflies of Naath, which had occurred earlier this season. Alicent’s attempt at poisoning Aemond is foiled; this time, Alys prevents the tragedy, ensuring that Aemond lives to see what follows.

Brothers, reunited. And then comes what is probably one of the most surprising twists in the whole episode. Aegon and his dragon Sunfyre come looking for Aemond and initially seem determined to kill him for killing at Rook’s Rest. They don’t do that. Instead, they form a tenuous alliance against Rhaenyra, immediately altering the face of the war going into season 4.

Helaena’s choice. Following a season of having dreams in which she gives birth to a baby who was taken from her, flying on Dreamfyre as she incinerates a mob trying to break into the Dragonpit, and being stranded in a snowy farm, Helaena at last comes face to face with Rhaenyra. “You think that living is not dying,” she says. She is a prisoner of Rhaenyra, wasting away, barely eating anything, and pregnant with Aegon’s unborn child, which makes her even more of a hostage since Aegon is still alive. Mysaria’s final message, before being exiled by Rhaenyra in this episode, proves it. Helaena comes back to her quarters, completes the intricate tapestry that she had been working on for the entire season, which shows the death of herself and Rhaenyra sitting upon the Iron Throne among flames and dragons. It could well be seen as the last attempt of her to run away from a life of being a political prisoner. But when this is conveyed to Rhaenyra, her face shows no reaction at all. She goes to the window, but only ends up staring at the tapestry left behind by Helaena.

House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 8 Ending Explained

What then does all this portend as we head into the last season? Several things.

For one, Ulf’s treachery was not quite a masterstroke for the Greens; rather, it was just a disaster for both sides. He betrays Rhaenyra, but he is not loyal to the Greens. He annihilates Ormund’s troops together with the Black troops, loyal to nobody. All the forces were eliminated together with the entire town of civilians; so both sides cannot possibly declare themselves victorious at Tumbleton. Rhaenyra’s objective of eliminating both Ormund and Daeron while remaining a humane ruler in the eyes of her subjects partially succeeded (Ormund’s death), but the costs of civilian lives were just too terrible to explain.

Next, Aegon’s survival alters the landscape of the war entirely. All plans that were devised under the assumption that Aegon was dead, along with the peace treaty offered by Gwayne and Corlys, and Rhaenyra’s strategy of simply waiting for the Greens to die off become useless now. Aegon’s return to Harrenhal, where Aemond is severely shaken, and his decision to form an uncomfortable alliance with Aemond, rather than take his revenge as everyone thought he would at Rook’s Rest, makes the war even more divided than before, with Aegon allied with Aemond, and Ulf being loyal to neither side.

Third, and perhaps most poignantly, the death of Helaena robs us of the only character to recognize the contours of the impending catastrophe while everyone else was too distracted with their scheming to realize it. Rhaenyra’s order to exile Mysaria whose message to Helaena assured her she would never be free again is the immediate precursor to this ultimate stroll to the window. In a sense, the death of Helaena could be considered the last desperate measure to escape a life spent imprisoned for politics, but the death also robs Rhaenyra of her hostage, one that carried Aegon’s unborn child, no less, and that she was using to blackmail her brother.

It has already been stated that House of the Dragon will air its fourth and last season in 2028, meaning that this Dance of Dragons is at its endgame, and it looks like “endgame” means a lot bleaker than anyone could have imagined.

Comparing House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 8 and Fire & Blood

Readers of the book will see that this conclusion takes some of its most drastic changes to date. There is no Arrion Baratheon in the original material of Fire & Blood, and Rhaenyra never dispatches assassins to Tumbleton to assassinate Ormund and Daeron; both are TV inventions designed to increase the visual stakes. In the book, Gwayne is not Ormund’s son at all; rather, he is Alicent’s brother and the son of Otto Hightower. Lyonel, Martyn, and Garmund are Ormund’s real sons in Fire & Blood, but none of them take on Gwayne’s sensible, mediating position.

The TV show created the entire scenario of releasing Corlys, offering him peace, and then attempting to murder Aemond. In the novel, after being taken prisoner in King’s Landing, Alicent will be the one to suggest to Rhaenyra that the kingdom be divided, and she won’t be compelled to attempt to murder Aemond.

In the TV show, the fight of Tumbleton is greatly shortened. The Two Betrayers, Ulf and Hugh Hammer, who work for Rhaenyra, betray her and burn the Black forces and the Greens on fire as retaliation during the two battles of Tumbleton that take place over time in Fire & Blood.It’s fascinating that both men’s paths are intentionally divided: Hugh doesn’t betray Rhaenyra despite his wife Kat dying in the crossfire, giving him the freedom to choose in Season 4, while Ulf betrays her in Episode 8 of House of the Dragon. This is a major departure from the novel, in which Hugh and his dragon Vermithor play pivotal roles in the Second Battle of Tumbleton, a massive disaster.

Thankfully, Helaena’s demise, one of the few moments the show did not deviate much from the source material, also takes place after her falling off of the spikes that were under the window of her chambers in Fire & Blood. However, her death in the book is surrounded by many contradictions since the causes are grief of her kids, including her son Maelor, and the horrors of being held captive in the books. The show does provide Helaena with an easier path to her death since her death happens after a confrontation with Rhaenyra, a pregnancy which is never mentioned in the book, and an exact cause for jumping, which makes her death more dramatic on TV, but much simpler than it is in the book. Kat, Hugh’s wife, does not even exist in the books and is a complete TV creation.

However, just as before, the main plot points of Martin’s chronicle have been preserved Ormund is dead, Tumbleton goes up in flames, Ulf betrays Rhaenyra, and Helaena jumps out of her window; yet the series continues to rewrite its connections and relationships, creating those which do not feature in the book (such as Corlys and Daemon, Gwayne and Daeron) for the TV audience to cheer on or against. It will be up to the next season whether this will pay off.

Season 3 of House of the Dragon is streaming now in its entirety on HBO and HBO Max. Season 4, marking the end of the series, is slated for release in 2028. That will give everyone time to recover from whatever just went down in Tumbleton.