House of the Dragon S3: Cooke, D’Arcy on Alicent-Rhaenyra Reunion Fallout

Alicent Hightower’s fall from queen to prisoner takes centre stage in House of the Dragon season 3 episode 3, and the actors behind Westeros’ most fractured friendship say the reunion between Alicent and Rhaenyra Targaryen was designed to hurt. Speaking to Polygon in a virtual interview, stars Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy broke down why the pair can no longer pretend to be the girls who once shared a bed at the Red Keep.

The episode picks up the wreckage of the bargain Alicent struck at the end of season 2, when she agreed to hand King’s Landing to Rhaenyra in exchange for protection for her children. That deal collapsed the moment King Aegon II, played by Tom Glynn-Carney, secretly fled the capital, leaving Alicent and her daughter Helaena caught trying to escape with him. According to Polygon, episode 3 now follows Alicent as a captive inside her own former palace, forced to find some way of working alongside the rival she once called her closest friend.

Cooke Describes Alicent and Rhaenyra as Opposite Ends of a Seesaw

Cooke told Polygon that the two women remain bound together no matter how far apart their circumstances pull them. “They’re sort of at opposite ends of a seesaw or scales,” Cooke said. “Both of them can’t have power at the same time. But I think when Rhaenyra sneezes, Alicent catches a cold. No matter where they are, they can’t help but feel the ripple effects of each other’s actions and also recognize and see what each other are going through because they’ve been in these positions themselves.”

That dynamic gets tested in a very literal way this episode, as Rhaenyra takes the throne only to discover the practical misery Alicent endured while ruling in her ailing husband Viserys’ stead. Polygon reports that Rhaenyra now has to grapple with food and candle shortages and even a rat infestation inside the Red Keep, a burden made heavier by grief. Rhaenyra is still processing the death of her son Jace during the Battle of the Gullet, and D’Arcy suggested that loss now shapes every political move her character makes.

D’Arcy Ties Rhaenyra’s Reign to Her Son Jace’s Death

“Her journey to the throne comes so in the shadow of her son’s death that I feel like she’s sort of acting on his behalf,” D’Arcy told Polygon. “This is a political family whose personal relationships are so fundamentally enmeshed with this political ambition. If Rhaenyra’s name enters the history books, her son gains a kind of immortality.” That framing gives extra weight to the choices Rhaenyra makes once she’s holding power that Alicent’s family has occupied for generations.

One of those choices lands squarely on Alicent. Unable to execute Aegon, Rhaenyra instead has Alicent’s father, Otto Hightower, killed for conspiring to strip her of her inheritance and install Aegon on the Iron Throne. Polygon notes that the previous episode ended with Alicent confronting her father’s decapitated body, a moment Cooke says triggers “white-hot anger” in her character heading into episode 3.

Otto Hightower’s Death Reopens Old Wounds Between the Pair

Cooke explained to Polygon that Alicent’s fury is complicated by uncertainty over whether Rhaenyra ever honoured their original agreement in the first place. “Alicent doesn’t know if Otto has been Rhaenyra’s prisoner this whole time, and this is the first thing that she’s done as the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, this big showy political act,” Cooke said. “She doesn’t know if the bargain she’s made with Rhaenyra has been fulfilled on her side either. Has she just been another pawn in someone else’s game? I think she’s just like, OK, well fuck you. It’s on.”

That betrayal, layered on top of years of political manoeuvring on both sides, is what makes the imprisonment scenes so uncomfortable to watch. Cooke told Polygon that traces of the girls’ original bond still linger somewhere underneath everything that has happened since, but that the relationship is now damaged beyond any real repair.

“They Can Never Have a Simple Relationship Again,” Cooke Says

“There’s an element of her love for Rhaenyra that is preserved from when they were girls and from their best friendship, but I think there’s too much water under the bridge and I think [their relationship] is beyond saving,” Cooke said. “They can never go back to who they were. They can never have a simple relationship again. It’s marred by betrayal and death and too much time having passed.”

For a season built around the Dance of the Dragons splintering Westeros into the Blacks and the Greens, that quote lands as one of the clearest statements yet about where the show’s central relationship is headed. With Alicent now a hostage inside her old home and Rhaenyra ruling from a throne she can barely keep supplied, House of the Dragon is signalling that any peace between the two houses will have to be built without the friendship that once held them together.

According to Polygon, House of the Dragon season 3 episode 3 airs at 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 5 on HBO, with the show also streaming for subscribers through HBO Max. Australian and New Zealand viewers can catch the episode through Foxtel and Binge respectively, both of which have carried the series on a same-week schedule alongside its US broadcast in previous seasons.

Read also: House of the Dragon: How and When Does Helaena Targaryen Die?