Spoilers ahead for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2.
Years after Game of Thrones' finale, audiences continue to be treated to new stories in Westeros thanks to spinoffs like House of the Dragon. Those with a HBO Max subscription were recently tread to Season 3's first two episodes, both of which ended in major character deaths. And actress Olivia Cooke spoke to CinemaBlend about what Alicent is thinking after seeing Rhaenyra on the Iron Throne... and her father Otto dead on the floor next to it.
House of the Dragon Season 3 has been a doozy so far, especially tragic moments like Jace's death in Episode 1. I had the chance to do some round table interviews with the the HOTD cast ahead of the season's premiere, where Cooke was asked what Alicent is thinking after seeing her father's dead body in the Throne Room. As she told me and other journalists:
I think, um, just white hot anger really. 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. She's got no idea. And she doesn't know if the bargain that she made Rhaenerya has been fulfilled on her side either, has she just been another pawn in someone else's game? So I think, yeah, I think she's just like, okay, well f–ck you. It's on.
Well, suddenly I am in dire need of Episode 3 to drop. Because while Alicent spent much of the first two episodes of Season 3 helping to make it easier for Rhaenerya and The Blacks to fly into King's Landing, the fact that her former best friend has now killed her father Otto Hightower is going to complicate things. Not only because of his death, but because of how much Alicent doesn't know about how/why he ended up imprisoned and decapitated.
While Rhaenerya and Alicent worked together to try and end their conflict with minimal bloodshed, that was before Otto was so brutally killed. There are clearly a ton of thoughts and questions going through the head of Cooke's character, and it should be fascinating to see if things go from bad to worse now that Alicent's father has been executed.
Alicent has really been going through it in Season 3 so far, starting from her wild kiss with Aemond and now walking into the Throne Room to see Otto's dead body. I have to assume that her uneasy alliance with Rhaenerya is officially over, especially since she's the one who beheaded her father. We'll just have to wait and see how Olivia Cooke's character is treated now that she's (presumably) a prisoner of Team Black.
New episodes of House of the Dragon air Sundays on HBO as part of the 2026 TV schedule. I was only given the first two in advance for my interviews, so I'm ready to tune in like every other fan and see how things shake out in the ongoing war.
