The missing Otto Hightower finally returned during House of the Dragon‘s season two finale, but his brief appearance raised even bigger questions about where he’s been. Some unknown person has the former Hand of the King locked up in some unknown dungeon. Who would keep Alicent’s father hidden away in a dark cell? Otto has many enemies in the Realm who know his worth as a prisoner, but only one prime candidate had both the motive and the means to capture him without anyone in his family knowing. And if that’s who kidnapped Otto Hightower, he’s probably still in King’s Landing.
In House of the Dragon‘s “Rhaenyra the Cruel,” only the second episode of season two, Otto Hightower told his daughter he couldn’t stay in King’s Landing. King Aegon had just stripped his grandfather of his position as Hand of the King. The disgraced, frustrated Otto told Alicent he’d instead return to Oldtown where his family rules. It would not only be a safe place for him, he thought he’d be able to do some good there. Alicent’s other son Daeron lives in Oldtown. Otto believed the young Prince would “take more kindly to instruction” than his older brothers. He also thought the young dragonrider Daeron “may yet help” the Greens in the coming weeks of the war.
Alicent told her father he should go to Highgarden in the Reach instead. “The Tyrells must be taken in hand,” she said of the region’s ruler. “Their bannermen are wavering.” Alicent hoped her persuasive, dignified father showing up in person at Highgarden would secure yet another powerful army for their side.
Otto did not tell the Dowager Queen if he was ultimately leaving for Oldtown or Highgarden. She never found out which destination he settled on, either. In the season’s sixth episode, a concerned Alicent told both Grand Maester Orwyle and her brother Gwayne her many ravens to Oldtown, Highgarden, and all the Great Houses in the Reach had gone unanswered. Her father had essentially vanished and no one knew where he was.
Orwyle also seemed worried in House of the Dragon, but Gwayne assured his sister “Otto Hightower is ever-resourceful” and would “send news when there is news to send.” Only the season finale revealed it has been impossible for Otto to send or receive any messages. He’s not a guest of any castle. He’s a prisoner in a dark, unknown dungeon. We don’t yet know who captured him and where are they holding him, but those questions could have many answers because Otto has many enemies.
The one place he doesn’t is the one place we can rule out entirely. The former Hand did not make it to Oldtown and his family. He wouldn’t be imprisoned there. And if he had arrived home, for even a day, someone would have told Alicent.
He very well might have been trying to get there or Highgarden when he ran into foes in the Reach. With the Tyrells sitting out the war thus far, the region is a perilous one for any Greens. Many powerful houses who either support Rhaenyra or hate Otto are fighting there. House Beesbury is angry over their Lord’s murder by Criston Cole the night the green council usurped the Iron Thone. The family and their allies are attacking the Hightower forces in the region. If any Rhaenyra supporter in the Reach found Otto, they would, at least, recognize his value as a prisoner. Not only could they use Otto as leverage, they would also be keeping an experienced, wise foe from contributing to the war. If someone hates Otto personally, they would also want to see him suffer.
This is a very plausible explanation for why Otto is currently rotting away in a cell in the Reach, but there are obvious issues with this possibility, too. It seems totally improbable Otto left King’s Landing in the middle of a war to travel through unfriendly lands on his own. If others traveled with him they would also be marked as missing. It’s harder to take a prisoner of war when he travels with a retinue, but even if you do it’s even harder to keep his imprisonment a secret. The abduction would mean more people involved. And the more people involved the harder it becomes to keep a secret. With spies everywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, it’s likely word would get out that someone had taken Otto hostage sooner than later.
The circumstantial evidence surrounding his disappearance also points to something far more intriguing: Otto never actually left King’s Landing. That alone would explain why no one in the Reach or Oldtown has seen him. It would also explain why his daughter never even knew where he was going exactly. There was no logical reason for Otto to leave the capital without telling his daughter his plans. During their last meeting they both agreed they needed to work together to keep Alicent’s reckless, blood-thirsty sons in check. The simplest, and therefore most likely, explanation for why Otto never let his daughter in on his plans is that he never made them.
If he has been locked up in a cell in King’s Landing this entire time, the two most obvious candidates as his jailer are obvious. Only two people could have wanted to pull off the kidnapping and had the means to actually do it. The first is the Master of Whispers himself, Larys Strong. The Clubfoot seemingly always knows everything going on in the capital. He almost certainly would have been aware Otto was about to leave. That would have provided Larys the perfect cover to eliminate someone more powerful than him. Larys already proved himself an enemy of Otto’s. Lord Strong quietly manipulated Aegon into replacing his grandsire as Hand of the King. It makes sense he would have first weakened Otto so he could then exploit those vulnerabilities.
Prince Regent Aemond tasked Larys with finding his missing grandfather so he could reinstall him as Hand. The spymaster did not do that. Instead Larys—who mistrusts Aemond (the feeling is mutual)—fled the capital with Aegon. Each man worries Aemond might try to finish off his brother once and for all. Was Larys’ concern for the King partly self-preservation because he was the one who had Otto Hightower locked up? (And that’s why he couldn’t “locate” him?) Did his gambit to imprison Otto in the black cells of the Red Keep—-which Larys often frequents and knows well—blow up in his face when Aemond bathed his brother in dragonflame?
(Larys’ own castle Harrenhal has been under Daemon Targaryen’s rule all season. Otto can’t be locked up there.)
With Larys Strong nothing is impossible, and he is surely a major suspect in the abduction of Otto Hightower. He hired mute assassins from the black cells to murder of his own father and brother, which he got away with. His loyalties are never totally clear, either. He’s truly an enigma. But the risk of a Green loyalist or Hightower family member in King’s Landing learning Larys locked up Otto seems especially risky for someone who operates so well in the shadows. It’s a bold move with so much downside and so little upside. It would make more sense for Larys to have had Otto killed on the road to Highgarden.
But there is another, much like Larys Strong, who knows the secrets of King’s Landing. Like Otto’s enemies in the Reach, this person also hates the former Hand. And this mysterious figure would not only have the means to capture Otto, they would know Otto’s value as a prisoner in a brutal civil war.
Mysaria, the White Worm.
Like a dragon, Otto burned down the house of Rhaenyra’s new, most trusted counselor. It’s why she fled King’s Landing. But Mysaria still has many loyal servants in the capital, a place where the Gold Cloaks of the City Watch also hate the Greens and remain loyal to their former Commander, Daemon Targaryen. Those allies of Mysaria still feed her secrets. They wander the streets in secret raising the support of the smallfolk for Rhaenyra.
Mysaria, more than anyone, had both the desire and capability to capture Otto Hightower without anyone knowing, not even the Queen she now serves. The White Worm has friends in King’s Landing who could not only have taken Otto, but kept him locked up somewhere under a brothel (or nearby boat) no one knows about. But Mysaria is also wise enough to know the former Hand is too valuable to kill, even for someone who truly loathes him like she does.
Is the White Worm definitely the person who locked Otto Hightower away in the darkness in House of the Dragon? No, but she’s the best suspect in all of Westeros. And if she is the person who has him locked up, it will mean one of the last things Alicent told her father turned out to be wrong, but not for the reason she thought. Alicent told Otto “in time you may yet return” to King’s Landing. The truth might be he never left it.
And with Alicent offering up the city to Rhaenyra, that could mean he never will.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who loves to hate Otto Hightower. You can follow him on Twitter and Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.