It’s becoming clear how much of the action in House of the Dragon will be driven by Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) going forward. This character and her mysterious powers are throwing some fans for a loop – especially those that watched Game of Thrones without reading George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. However, she’s also helping to connect those two continuities in ways that will be important for the franchise going forward.
Since her introduction, Alys Rivers has been shrouded in mysteries that are mostly unspoken or lightly implied, but but if you boil them all down there are essentially two superpowers she seems to have: compulsion and telepathy. She seems to be able to read Daemon’s (Matt Smith) mind and perhaps even see what’s in his dreams and visions, and she also seems to be able to compel the prickly prince to do things others wouldn’t be able to do. For example, Daemon refused to eat the food at Harrenhal in Episode 3, saying it might be poisoned, but he he drank the potion Alys handed him in Episode 4 without a second thought, even though it looked like she had mixed it with blood.
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That contradiction came up again in Episode 6 when Daemon complained: “something’s wrong with me.” He theorized that it might be the food, or that someone had poisoned him, or even that the damp air in the Riverlands had disagreed with him somehow. However, he’s still never asked a single question about the potion Alys gave him, even as he seems to be trusting her more and more. That likely goes hand in hand with Alys’ other power.
Alys has already shown more insight than a low-born stranger should have into Daemon’s past, his relationships and even his psyche. Back in Episode 4 she succinctly summed up his issues with Rhaenyra and his reasons for coming to Harrenhal, but in Episode 6 she took it even further by explaining Viserys’ (Paddy Considine) motivation to Daemon as if she knew the late king personally. He didn’t dispute this either, indicating that he has been somehow conditioned to trust Alys and listen to what she has to say.
This is an exciting aspect of House of the Dragon‘s adaptation of Fire & Blood because it is all new material not covered in the historical perspective of the book. However, the heavy use of symbolic dreams, telepathy and compulsion are very familiar to readers of Martin’s books, even if they were sadly lacking in Game of Thrones. That’s because Alys is mimicking the abilities of the greenseer Bloodraven – the old man in the cave north of The Wall who taught Bran Stark to harness his powers. By writing Alys this way, House of the Dragon is simultaneously correcting an oversight in Game of Thrones and signaling her significance to the fandom, leaving big clues for those who want to see them.
For those that haven’t read the books, they demonstrate Bloodraven’s ability to influence or implant dreams many times, and he uses these visions as his primary tool to compel people the same way Alys seems to be doing. It is heavily implied in the writing that Bloodraven send the direwolf puppies south intending for the children of House Stark to bond with them, and that he continued to influence Jon Snow’s wolf Ghost throughout the story. He also seemed to have influence of a particular raven living at Castle Black, helping Jon to get elected as Lord Commander and warning him of imminent danger. Bloodraven’s influence casts such a wide net that it has becomea bit of meme within the fandom, with fan theorists often saying “When it doubt, blame Bloodraven.”
These signals that Alys is operating the same way are one of the reasons I wrote that House of the Dragon is handling the magic of the old gods and the weirwood trees better than Game of Thrones did overall. It’s extremely vindicating to see it done right on screen, especially as the show insists on finding way to connect its story to that of Game of Thrones. It’s also a brilliant move for the franchise, since future spinoffs can now rely on fans to understand this type of magic better than they might have at the end of Game of Thrones. It could become particularly important in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, which takes place when Bloodraven was the Hand of the King. That series is filming now, and it premieres next year.
As for House of the Dragon, it has at least one more season greenlit, meaning more time to sink its roots into the world of Westeros. Season 2 continues on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max. Martin’s books are available now in print, digital and audiobook formats.
