House Of The Dragon Season 2 Finale’s Battle Above The Gods Eye Tease, Explained

Warning: This article discusses major spoilers for the “House of the Dragon” season 2 finale, the book “Fire & Blood,” and potentially future episodes of the series. Seriously. Here are more bold words to warn you about spoilers.

“House of the Dragon” has been a slow push and pull of violence. Much like how “Game of Thrones” was about the return of dragons and magic to the world, so is “House of the Dragon” about the return of war and bloodshed to Westeros. The first season was mostly spent in council rooms where backstabbing and political scheming planted the seeds of conflict and war, but not much fighting took place — except for when the Crabfeeder mounted a formidable resistance against the corruption of Westeros and nearly brought the continent to its knees. Rest in peace, king.

This current season, however, has fired on all cylinders. Season 2 showed us both the eagerness of some people to jump to bloody warfare, but also the reluctance of others to let things cross that line. Daemon has committed several war crimes, while Rhaenyra flew all the way to King’s Landing to try and avoid a war in a fantastic scene invented for the show. Still, it’s not like “House of the Dragon” season 2 was completely devoid of action, as we got the thrilling and quite bloody Battle at Rook’s Rest, which gave us plenty of fire-breathing dragon action.

All this season, “House of the Dragon” has teased another giant fight, a battle at Harrenhaal where Teams Black and Green would meet with all their forces. So far, Ser Criston Cole has avoided that confrontation, diverting his forces to Rook’s Rest and facing off with a much smaller force. However, the season 2 finale sets the table for the most epic fight in the Dance of the Dragons and all of “Fire & Blood” — The Battle Above the Gods Eye.

In the season 2 finale of “House of the Dragon,” Helaena sheds any doubt that she is a greenseer, as we see her in Daemon’s vision, fully aware of her surroundings within another person’s dream. Then, when her brother Aemond tries to force her to aid him in battle, she declares ominously that Aemond will die, “swallowed up by the Gods Eye.” Granted, this could just be a creepy attempt to scare her brother, who she actually confronts for trying to kill her husband, the king, but maybe it isn’t. Again, the episode all but confirms that Helaena can actually see future events, or at least gets eerie visions.

There’s also everything creepy that has been going on in Daemon’s own “Luigi’s Mansion” storyline at Harrenhal. Aside from just being a rather entertaining, unnerving, weird, and at times funny subplot, there are hints of prophecy in Daemon’s dreams and his dealings with Alys Rivers, who has ominously teased Daemon’s own doom. In the season 2 finale, Daemon has yet another vision after touching the weirwood tree at Harrenhal.

Taken on their own, these things don’t necessarily mean anything, and “Gods Eye” could mean many things. But book readers know that Helaena just spoiled another massive part of “Fire & Blood.”

More than any other location, “House of the Dragon” season 2 really wanted the audience to know that Harrenhal is a special and very important place — and it is. In the books, this is the site of Aegon the Conqueror’s first monumental victory, when he roasted Harren Hoare (known as Harren the Black) and his entire house alive in the tallest tower of Harrenhal, originally meant to be the biggest and most majestic of castles in all of Westeros. But as seen in “House of the Dragon,” the ruins of Harrenhal seem to bring nothing but trouble to whoever takes up residence there, as if cursed by Harren the Black.

In “Fire & Blood,” this culminates in the Battle Above the Gods Eye, a battle which took place above Harrenhal and the nearby Gods Eye, the largest lake in the Seven Kingdoms. When Daemon challenged Aemond to a duel, he waited at Harrenhal for the current King Regent to stop burning the riverlands and come face him. When the two finally started fighting, it was a battle that lit up the sky, and both the two riders are believed to have perished in the fight along their dragons — Caraxes and Vhagar — as they fell down to the lake below.

Besides the prophecies and omens, “House of the Dragon” has done something interesting to tease the two dragonriders as being on equal footing. We’ve seen Aemond as kind of bad at commanding old Vhagar. Meanwhile, Daemon is an excellent fighter and dragonrider, but Caraxes is simply half Vhagar’s size. This means that the two are likely to be equally as strong when facing each other, resulting in the death of the two coolest anime characters in “House of the Dragon.”

“House of the Dragon” will return for season 3 at a yet-to-be-announced date.