The House Of The Dragon Season 3 Premiere's Most Disturbing Moment Is Not In The Book At All

Contains spoilers for "House of the Dragon" Season 3, Episode 1

When you're dealing with Targaryens, incest is sort of inevitable, but one particular moment in the opening episode of "House of the Dragon" Season 3 is especially unsettling, even in the context of the platinum-blonde family. This is a show where lead protagonist Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) marries her uncle Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) and where King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) marries his sister Helaena (Phia Saban). What could be worse than that? How about an adult son kissing his mother — in this case (and hopefully no others), Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke).

The scene comes midway through the Season 3 premiere as Alicent is trying desperately to persuade Aemond to take his dragon, Vhagar, and leave King's Landing to aid in the war in the Riverlands. She needs him gone so that her secret pledge to surrender the city to Rhaenyra can go through, and she makes an earnest plea to him to leave, playing on his own fears and declaring that if he stayed, it would be a death sentence. He responds, as you do, by, uh, kissing her on the mouth.

As one might expect, the scene has stirred up a fair bit of controversy, especially as it's not in the book — yes, this skin-crawling moment was invented for the show. There are a lot of differences between "House of the Dragon" and "Fire & Blood," and even George R. R. Martin himself as criticized the show for veering away from the source material. Of course, adapting "Fire & Blood" is more tricky than the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, as those books were traditional novels. "Fire & Blood" is instead presented as a fictional history, with different accounts of certain events and a more pulled-back narrative style.

HBO and the "House of the Dragon" team clearly anticipated some shock at the Aemond/Alicent kiss, and several members of the cast and crew have already discussed the scene in interviews. For Ewan Mitchell, the moment was directly connected to Aemon's taking of the Iron Throne after his older brother flees King's Landing. "In Aemond's head, it's like he's assuming control of the family," the actor told Entertainment Weekly. "I kind of saw it coming with everything that I've explored with Aemond and his relationship with Alicent."

Olivia Cooke referred to an "Oedipal undercurrent — unbeknownst to Alicent" in a similar interview with People. Her reaction in the moment is deeply loaded, even as her face seems frozen. The combination of shock, disgust, and terror combine to form another unforgettable moment from one of the show's top performers. "She knows that one wrong facial expression, one perceived rejection, will cost her her life," Cooke added. "But I do think she's sort of stupefied in that moment."

Some fans have called the scene a bridge too far. Though it's objectively less explicit than some of the other onscreen and implied examples of incest on the show, the particular combination of characters and the disturbing tenderness with which Aemond kisses his mother make it especially difficult to watch. That said, this is ultimately a story about the drive to acquire and possess — a drive that comes to supersede all moral boundaries for many characters. Under that thematic lens, the scene is still shocking, but it also, as Mitchell said, fits. And, unlike the relationship between Rhaenyra and Daemon, which the show often seems to be rooting for, this new dynamic is at the very least treated with the horror it deserves.

Showrunner Ryan Condal explained the Aemond/Alicent kiss to Entertainment Weekly by tying it to deep emotional scarring and a disturbed upbringing. "He's somebody that was traumatized at an early age by his brother by taking him to a brothel long before his brain could probably process what was happening," Condal said. "As these things do, that trauma then manifests a certain way in his behavior as an adult. While I don't think that Aemond is necessarily in love with his mother, I don't think he's able to separate the feelings that he has for her from these other male feelings that he experiences."

The performance of gender has been a core facet of the series from the start, and in fact could be called the show's foundation. Rhaenyra once again repeated the refrain in the Season 3 premiere that though she was born in a woman's body, she has the spirit of a king. In a deeply uncomfortable way, Aemond is pursuing the same thing as his half-sister — the reputation and image of a monarch in full control. But with that being the case, maybe we could have gotten Rhaenyra kissing Alicent instead? There's clearly some romantic tension between Rhaenyra and Alicent, and precisely nobody has been shipping Aemond and Alicent.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).