As House Of The Dragon Casts Another Fierce Warrior From The Book, I Need George R.R. Martin's Funniest Easter Eggs To Make The Cut Next

As the one-year anniversary of House of the Dragon’s Season 2 finale looms, Season 3 isn’t expected to arrive on HBO until well past the end of the 2025 TV schedule. That said, there’s still news to get excited about as the weeks pass without any new footage, and readers of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood can take note of the latest casting.

None other than a fierce warrior from the riverlands has been added for Season 3 rather than another branch of the Targaryen family tree, and while I won’t get deep into spoilers for the sake of non-readers, I will say that it gets my hopes up a little higher that some very funny Fire & Blood Easter eggs make the cut in Season 3.

House Of The Dragon’s Newest Warrior

Red Skies actress Annie Shapero has been cast to play Alysanne Blackwood, a.k.a. the archer and warrior Black Aly, for Season 3 of House of the Dragon (per Deadline). Without getting too deep into spoilers from Fire & Blood, Black Aly is Team Black and fights for Rhaenyra in the Dance of the Dragons, and will forge an important tie with Lord Cregan Stark when the North becomes more heavily involved in the war.

While I would have automatically expected Black Aly to be cast if House of the Dragon was a faithful adaptation of Fire & Blood, the show has increasingly diverged from the source material, with George R.R. Martin himself listing his grievances with certain choices. This particular book character has made the cut (unlike a certain prince during Blood and Cheese), and Annie Shapero will reportedly appear in five of Season 3’s eight episodes, although she’s not billed as a series regular.

Depending on how faithfully HOTD adapts Alysanne’s story, I’d expect that she’ll have a role to play in the fourth and final season as well. Only time will tell, but I’m choosing to take her casting as a sign that we could get to see more of the riverlands in House of the Dragon Season 3. And more of that region could bode well for a wish of mine.

Historically in both Game of Thrones and HOTD, the riverlands are just not a place anybody would want to be during a time of war, but I’m hoping that the addition of Black Aly – a Blackwood of the riverlands – could be a sign that something funny is on the way with that particular area. (Funny for fans, at least!)

George R.R. Martin’s Riverlands Easter Eggs

In House of the Dragon just as in the earliest seasons of Game of Thrones, House Tully were the Lords Paramount of the riverlands region. The second season introduced Oscar Tully, the young lord of Riverrun after the death of his father and grandfather. In Fire & Blood, there are more Tullys recorded by George R.R. Martin, and their names are funny enough that I can forgive the author for naming so many characters “Aegon.”

Key members of House Tully in the Dance of the Dragons chapters of Fire & Blood include:

• Grover Tully
• Elmo Tully
• Kermit Tully
• Oscar Tully

War comes to the riverlands by way of Sesame Street in this era of the history of Westeros, apparently! In all seriousness, I don’t know that George R.R. Martin was deliberately trying to make readers associate Tully men with Muppets, or even wanted any readers to pick up the trend.

My theory has always been that the author was tired of coming up with Westerosi name after name after name for this section of Fire & Blood, and simply picked ones that came to mind just to cross these Tullys off of his list. I can’t confirm, but why else name a bunch of characters after Sesame Street icons?

Of course, Grover and Co. don’t really have much to do with Black Aly in Fire & Blood other than hailing from the riverlands, but if I can celebrate that she’s been cast for Season 3, why not hold onto some hope for the Seven Kingdom’s Muppets to make the cut too? With a little tweaking to the Blackwood family tree, they could all be included in the show with a different line of succession than in Fire & Blood.

Besides, without details about when to expect the third season other than expectations of 2026, it’s fun to latch on to something from Fire & Blood that could make it to HBO. For now, you can always revisit the first two seasons of House of the Dragon as well as the full run of Game of Thrones streaming with an HBO Max subscription.