*Warning: Spoilers ahead for the House of the Dragon season three finale* Book readers knew it was coming, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. Helaena took her life at the end of House of the Dragon season three episode eight, and her death has sparked the question: why did she do it? In George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, Helaena dies by suicide due to a chain of events that begin with Blood and Cheese. When the two assassins break in, they force her to choose one of her two sons to murder: Jaehaerys or Maelor. Helaena offers herself, but they say if she doesn’t choose, they’ll kill all of her children. Even though she names Maelor, they kill Jaehaerys anyway, before telling Maelor that his own mother wanted him dead. When Rhaenyra takes King’s Landing, Alicent sends Helaena’s children away to safety, but Maelor’s guard is intercepted and the boy is “ripped to pieces by the mob”. It’s a brutal end to one of the Dance of the Dragons’ darkest moments. Credit: HBO For Helaena, the pain is too much to bear. She jumps from her window at the Red Keep, landing on the sharp iron spikes of the dry moat below. Her manner of death is exactly the same in the season three finale – but the issue is her motive. As Martin himself complained in his now-deleted blog post in 2024, the decision to omit Maelor as a character and therefore from the Blood and Cheese incident in season two started a chain reaction. He claimed at the time that showrunner Ryan Condal’s outline still has Helaena dying “for no particular reason”. Yes, Helaena has struggled with her mental health, especially as she was pregnant (presumably with Maelor, although now we’ll never know) – but the events leading up to it are very different. Why did Helaena kill herself in the House of the Dragon season 3 finale? Credit: HBO Helaena actress Phia Saban has now explained that, despite the major changes from Fire & Blood, she believes her character’s decision was rooted in something much deeper than grief alone. “It’s a tragedy. That’s definitely the arc of Helaena’s story. But I think, as she says earlier, ‘This is my body, and this is my baby – and both of those things have been forsaken as long as I’ve lived,’” Saban told Variety. “And she doesn’t want to live the way she’s living anymore, and she feels that she wants to protect the children that she does have. She’s just trying her best.” Helaena has been struggling since being held at the Red Keep, and this has led to some tough conversations, including with her own mother Alicent (Olivia Cooke) about why she was married off to her brother Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney). Essentially, she’s been used as a pawn her entire life, never having agency of her own. In the finale, she gains her power back, exposing Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) “ugly” traits right to her face. Credit: HBO The finale also shows Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) warning Helaena that her unborn child is now a hostage – yet another tool for Rhaenyra’s benefit. Saban believes this wasn’t necessarily the reason for her suicide, but rather “another addition to the descent.” “There’s a confirmation of what Helaena already feels, which is that she is never going to live a life again in which she feels alive,” she continued. “And that’s kind of what Helaena says to Rhaenyra. She’s like, ‘There’s more to life than not just not being dead. Like, the bar is on the floor. I have higher dreams and hopes and feelings for the world than that.’ “In a sense, maybe some might say that she takes power from what she does. That she can, rather than being killed by a vision, she can choose that for herself.” Saban provided further context to The Hollywood Reporter, saying her statement to Rhaenyra felt like “justice” for Helaena. “We spoke a lot about Joan of Arc, and this idea that there’s more to life than not being dead,” she said. “I found it really delicious that Helaena could be like, ‘There are things in the world that you’ll never know how beautiful they are, and they’re not even beautiful.’ And that’s truly what she wants to get back to: having a relationship with the world and not being kept and silenced and used.” What did the tapestry mean? Credit: HBO When Rhaenyra finds Helaena’s room empty and sees her dead on the spikes below, she picks up the tapestry Helaena’s been working on throughout season three. As well as prophesying her suicide, the final scene shows Rhaenyra wearing a crown with blood falling down her, either hinting at the bloodshed the queen is responsible for in her fight for the Iron Throne, or a forecast of her downfall. Saban elaborated on what this means, suggesting it’s more like a bad omen, potentially for House of the Dragon season four. “I think Helaena’s embroideries blend a sort of dreamlike and literal,” the actress told Variety. “It’s an art form, so I don’t think she’s subscribing to necessarily always realism. But yes, it didn’t look like a great portent, did it?” For all the latest film and TV updates and hot takes, like our Facebook page. Featured image credit: HBO Post navigation Next storyPrevious story
