This post contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon season three, episode seven. If you want to avoid them for now you can instead check out our coverage of episode six.
House of the Dragon‘s third season has teased the death of Tyland Lannister, Aemond Targaryen, and Corlys Velaryon (twice). All of them turned up alive, but none with the panache of the show’s deus ex dragon-a return of Aegon’s Sunfyre. You know, the not-dead dragon who arrived exactly when his rider/the plot needed him.
House of the Dragon foreshadowed its Sunfyre fake out earlier in the season. Aegon visited his seemingly dead dragon at Rook’s Rest in episode four. That’s where Aemond bathed his brother in dragonflame, causing the King and his beautiful golden mount to crash into the woods below. Since then locals had started charging a small fee for people to look and touch the dragon, which was not breathing or generating heat/smoke, let alone fighting back. Aegon wasn’t convinced. “He’s alive. I know it. He’s alive. He must be,” he told an unconvinced Larys. No one seemingly had any reason to believe a desperate Aegon, but riders do have a special bond with their dragon, so Aegon couldn’t be dismissed entirely.
Everything we saw during that scene was a creation of the show. It was a big departure from the history told in Fire & Blood. Sunfyre never died at Rook’s Rest. He was greatly harmed and unable to fly in both versions, but despite his injuries, the Sunfyre of Fire & Blood was definitely not dead. Green soldiers brought it animals to eat after the dragon finished eating all the dead soldiers. It could also still breathe fire. Sunfyre used its tail and flame to protect itself from Rhaenyra supporters when they came to slay the stationary dragon. Those attempts ended when Sunfyre disappeared without a trace.
On House of the Dragon, Sunfyre left Rook’s Rest and showed up at the very last possible moment to save Aegon from the glorious death he wanted. It sure was luck for Aegon….
The best reading of the scene is that the spiritual connection between dragon and rider drew Sunfyre to Aegon’s side in the King’s moment of need. The worst is that this moment was the series pulling off another empty spectacle driven by plot convenience rather than logic. But no matter which side of those extremes you lean to, if you watched Game of Thrones, you knew Sunfyre was not actually dead.
Don’t worry if you can’t remember why, we won’t spoil anything by reminding you. All we will say is that on Game of Thrones Joffrey told a story about an infamous moment involving Sunfyre. House of the Dragon and HBO have maintained canon within its own televised version of Westeros. That would have shattered if Sunfyre had really died at Rook’s Rest. The prequel has not yet reached the event Joffrey described.
If you remember that tale, Sunfyre’s death wasn’t much of a fake out because it was obviously fake. But even if you forgot about it or never heard Joffrey talk about the Dance of Dragons, this dragon “resurrection” wasn’t exactly surprising. And at this point in season three, why would any return surprise us?
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He’s trying to trademark “Deus ex Dragon-a.” You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.