‘House of the Dragon’: Emma D’arcy & Matt Smith Explain That Otto Scene

The final scene of House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2 shows Rhaenyra (Emma D’arcy) in a moment of perceived weakness, but it proves that she should be ruling Westeros. Someone who’s not desensitized to violence and death is more equipped to care for a people. Rhaenyra doesn’t take killing lightly. Having to commit the act herself breaks something in her. This refusal to downplay the severity of this act on Rhaenyra’s psyche is, in part, an extension of her grief, according to D’arcy. Here, D’arcy and Matt Smith explain the execution that gave Rhaenyra the Iron Throne. Warning: House of the Dragon spoilers ahead.

House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2, “Queen’s Landing,” showed Rhaenyra’s return to the Red Keep with Daemon (Smith) and her dragon riders. Their show of force was met with open doors arranged by Alicent (Olivia Cooke). While Alicent accepted that one of her sons would need to die in order for Rhaenyra to end the war, her father, Otto (Rhys Ifans), was never on the table. She thought he was in Oldtown all this time he’s been absent. She walked into the throne room at the end of Episode 2 to find her father decapitated and Rhaenyra on the throne. Cooke told TV Insider that to Alicent, this “looks like Otto was potentially Rhaenyra’s prisoner and this has been her first political act as ruler. She feels betrayed by her and feels like, ‘I’ve been a pawn. I’ve let you have King’s Landing, and this is what you’ve done as your first order.’”

Otto was beheaded in Aegon (Tom Glynn-Garney) and Aemond’s (Ewan Mitchell) places. It’s fitting, given that Otto successfully plotted to dethrone Rhaenyra. But this was predicated by the death of Rhaenyra’s firstborn child, Jacaerys (Harry Collett), in the Battle of the Gullet in the Season 3 premiere. Episode 2 opened with the arrival of Jace’s body to Dragonstone, and D’arcy went to pieces as Rhaenyra collapsed into her grief.

“I found shooting the discovery of Jace’s body really painful, to be honest. Mostly what we did is pretending, and then occasionally there are days that are unpleasant,” they told TV Insider of the scene. “But I think there’s something interesting at play where I think his death is in part tragic because you can’t blame a teenager for being a teenager, and rebellion is the occupation of teenagers. On the other hand, Rhaenyra has been prevented from actions for two seasons, and to have that happen in the most acute way, to be locked in, which is also a crazy act of infantilization.”

“It’s presented as an act of care and protection, but you could also describe it as an act of control, and Rhaenyra has become very, very familiar with having her action controlled by male colleagues and supposed allies,” D’arcy continues. “And so I think there’s a lot to reckon with both as a leader and a political actor and as a mother who was prevented from doing a parent’s work of protecting her child.”

 

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This plunges Rhaenyra into action. She and Daemon’s arrival at Dragonstone has no choice but to succeed, and it ultimately does. But Rhaenyra was less prepared to cast the fatal blow she needed to take the throne than she expected to be. D’arcy shares their reaction to this story of Rhaenyra taking back the Iron Throne, but struggling to impress once she got there.

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“I thought that’s quite an honest rendering of starting a new job,” they explained. “It’s hard to walk into the role of CEO and nail it immediately. And as with, like, taking over any office, it’s only when you get in there that you learn the state of, for example, the finances. There’s something quite pragmatic and true to life about that rendering.”

“There’s also something interesting to me about finally, finally achieving a goal and aim and ambition and actually that moment of attainment causing a kind of identity crisis,” D’arcy goes on. “Rhaenyra feels incredibly unstable in her tenure. In truth, that feeling of instability may just be the work of grief. And she looks for mechanisms within the court to remedy a feeling that actually is about a different a different loss of control.”

Daemon used to want the throne for himself, and Rhaenyra spent much of Season 2 doubting if her husband would bend the knee and accept her as his monarch. Seeing the vision of the Song of Ice and Fire through Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) shifted Daemon’s priorities entirely. Now, he’s solely committed to seeing his wife on the throne. When Rhaenyra was fearful to execute Otto, Daemon encouraged her. Her vulnerability didn’t change anything for him.

“I don’t think his commitment to Rhaenyra has ever faded,” Smith tells us. “Perhaps it has in the eyes of others. But to my eye, deep down, I think he’s always known there’s this umbilical tie that will never fade and never change in his mind.”

Daemon is going to continue supporting Rhaenyra through this identity crisis now that she’s on the throne, according to Smith, because he knows that this was the “big political statement” they needed to cement their rule. “It moves the needle in the right direction for where we need to go, for what we need to do.”

They fought for the keys to the kingdom. Now comes the real work of actually ruling it.

House of the Dragon, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO, Streaming on HBO Max