House Of The Dragon Season 3 Finale Finally Explains Who Alys Rivers Really Is

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the “House of the Dragon” Season 3 finale.

“House of the Dragon” packs an entire season-worth of events into its Season 3 finale (itself predominantly focused on the events of the Battle of Tumbleton), but at least it found time to answer one lingering mystery. Ever since her first appearance in Season 2, the identity and motivations of Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) has remained in doubt. She guided Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) through a series of frustrating (and Freudian) dreams that culminated in his vision revealing Daenerys Targaryen centuries before she would ever be born. Then, this season, she pulled a similar stunt on young Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) in what felt like a repeat of the same plotline. But, thankfully, the mysterious Alys has finally dropped all pretenses and given us some major clues into her real identity.

This one’s likely to light a fire under “A Song of Ice and Fire” nerds everywhere, to put it mildly. When Alys finally clues Aemond in on where she comes from and how she ended up the unofficial warden of the ruined castle of Harrenhal, it plays out as a haunted monologue of someone remembering things they’ve long since tried to forget. She tells the tale of how Harrenhal ended up the way it did at the hands (er, wings) of the dragon Balerion and its rider, Aegon the Conqueror. A century prior, the Targaryen invader put an end to the threat of Harren the Black, a self-styled king from the Iron Islands known to be a tyrant. But one infant from the line of Harren apparently survived for a brief time — along with his mother.

Yes, Alys appears to be that same mother, somehow cursed to linger on 100 years later in Harrenhal.

Leave it to a show set in the “Game of Thrones” universe to answer one mystery and create approximately a dozen new ones at the same time. “House of the Dragon” has been building up to some sort of a big reveal regarding Alys Rivers for years now. Is she truly a witch who can transform into a barn owl or bats whenever she so chooses? Did the reveal regarding those dragon eggs in her possession hint at something far more mystical? Or is she something elemental, perhaps an entity meant to represent the cursed halls of Harrenhal itself?

The Season 3 finale, surprisingly enough, aligns more closely to that last theory than anything else — but with one heck of a canon-altering twist. According to Alys’ (admittedly vague) confession, she may very well be the wife of Harren the Black himself — or one of them, at least, considering the Ironborn traditionally take several “salt wives” as prizes of war. Either way, her son appears to have been one of Harren’s own, though he didn’t live long enough for that to matter. Alys tearfully recalls how she tried everything to save him, including “incantations” and other “older cures.” None helped, however, and she strongly implies she tried to die by suicide to join her son in death. In a neat parallel to Aemond calling himself cursed for the sin of (attempted) kinslaying, she reveals that she’s similarly cursed to remain near Harrenhal and sentenced to serve any lord who seeks to claim the castle.

None of this is found in the show’s source material, “Fire & Blood,” but this certainly explains a lot about her abilities, motivations, and actions.

That’s all well and good for the resolution to Aemond’s somewhat circular storyline in Harrenhal this season, but what about the rest of “House of the Dragon” moving forward? Alys is meant to play a fairly significant role in what’s to come, so it stands to reason that knowing this new backstory for the character will change our perception of her the very next time we see her. In the Season 3 finale, she and Aemond are rudely interrupted by the arrival of Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) on the back of Sunfyre. That leaves Season 4 to pick up where this subplot left off.

The only question is how (or even if) Alys’ curse will be explored any further. She’s awfully light on the details of how her desperate attempts to save her son’s life resulted in her unnaturally long life and her witchlike abilities. Reading between the lines, it feels safe to assume she made some sort of Faustian bargain in exchange for the “older cures” she mentioned — and, though it didn’t work, the cost was to remain in the riverlands and serve whichever master takes command of Harrenhal. There’s really no precedent for this scenario in any of George R.R. Martin’s books. All “Fire & Blood” states is that it’s believed that Alys is an illegitimate daughter of Harrenhal’s previous castellan, Lord Lyonel Strong … but, as with many events in the novel, this conclusion is drawn from dubious sources.

That leaves us with more questions for when “House of the Dragon” eventually returns for its fourth and final season. Alys clearly has more to do in this story before it’s all over. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long to see it through.