HBO‘s House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1 delivers everything we’ve come to expect from a Game of Thrones spin-off. There’s intense political intrigue, dragons galore, epic battles, brilliant acting, a million characters with extra vowels in their names, and, yes, incest.
**Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1, now streaming on HBO Max**
At one point in the House of the Dragon Season 3 premiere, Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) shocks his horrified mother Alicent (Olivia Cooke) by kissing her on the mouth. The moment is all the more messed up because Alicent only goes along with it to convince Aemond to flee King’s Landing so she can surrender the city, along with all of Westeros, to Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy).
House of the Dragon Season 2 ended with Alicent visiting Rhaenyra in secret to broker a deal to end the war. Alicent would open the gates to King’s Landing so Rhaenyra could take the Iron Throne. If Alicent gives Rhaenyra her eldest son, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), to kill in a final stroke of supremacy, Alicent, daughter Helaena (Phia Saban), and granddaughter Jaehaera will be able to leave the city safely. However, when Alicent arrives back in the Westerosi capitol city, she learns that Aegon has fled, leaving Aemond in charge.
Aemond is resolute that he will not leave the city, so Alicent has to appeal to her son in any way possible. When she finally expresses some maternal love — albeit out of strategy — Aemond responds by kissing his mother in a romantic way. He agrees to leave for Harrenhal, leaving King’s Landing undefended, and Alicent reeling.
Ironically, when DECIDER spoke to Ewan Mitchell last season about Aemond’s affair with an older brothel worker, he insisted that his character didn’t have “mommy issues.” This time around, he changed his tune.
“Oh, he’s got mommy issues,” Ewan Mitchell told DECIDER. “Yeah, I can confirm.”
“Can confirm,” Mitchell’s co-star Gayle Rankin, who plays Alys Rivers, Aemond’s older woman love interest in George R.R. Martin’s books, said in jest.
“Yeah, I don’t know why… Like, why would you kiss your mom on the lips like that, Aemond? Oh, my God,” Mitchell said. “Yeah, It’s not a good look, but I can kind of understand, like where he’s coming from it, weirdly enough.”
“You know, he wants to assume that like male dominant figure in Team Green, so to speak,” he continued. “He kind of might want to take a bride or like some sort of version of it. Yeah, just have some other figure who is that for him. I really hope it’s not Alicent.”
Olivia Cooke described the moment as “just pure shock and horror, really. Unexpected” for Alicent.
“I think she’s always been sort of confused by their relationship. I don’t think she quite understood that there was like, Oedipal undertones,” Cook said. “That’s not reciprocated on Alicent’s side at all.”
Cooke then went on to explain the logic driving Alicent in that charged moment.
“She’s in a really dangerous predicament because he sits atop the Iron Throne and he is not of sound mind and he’s very violent,” Cooke said. “And so her next steps have to be tread very carefully from there on out.”
“It’s sort of like the most dangerous situation she’s been put in, even though it’s her son. And it’s taken this very incestuous, intimate turn.”
“Like, why would you kiss your mom on the lips like that, Aemond?
Oh, my God!”Ewan Mitchell
Earlier in that same episode, Helaena tells Alicent that Aemond is scared for the first time in his life since claiming Vhagar as a little boy. Alicent attempts to use this to reach Aemond, but he rebuffs the idea that he’s scared of Rhaenyra and her new dragonriders. When DECIDER asked Mitchell if Aemond was lying, he immediately said, “Yeah, he’s scared. He’s really desperate. Desperate times, desperate measures.”
“Aemond, he might feel like he has to overcompensate going forward after the raising of the dragonseeds. He really is on the back foot. He knows he can’t beat this with brute force, and he can’t take all of those guys on with just Vhaegar,” Mitchell said. He’s probably terrified because at heart, he’s still that little kid that we got to know in Season 1.”
New episodes of House of the Dragon Season 3 come out Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.