Daemon’s worst nightmare comes true in House of the Dragon’s latest episode. The Season 3 midpoint delivers a shocking ending that changes the war for King’s Landing forever.
Daemon discovers more deaths in House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 5 ending
Daemon Targaryen arrives at the City Watch barracks to find a horrifying scene in House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 5. His men sit dead around a long table with their eyes scratched out. Ser Luthor Largent, the head of the City Watch, sits among them. The wall behind the bodies reads “A Feast for Traitors,” written in blood.
The gruesome display caps off a season-long pattern of Gold Cloak murders across King’s Landing. Earlier in the episode, Daemon promises the City Watch their sacrifices will be repaid “twice over.” He also tortures a captured graffiti artist who reveals he did his work for “the King.” However, that king is not Aegon II but Daeron Targaryen, Alicent and Viserys’s youngest son.
A coin bearing Daeron’s likeness connects the murders directly to Ormund Hightower’s operations in Tumbleton. Ormund has been orchestrating the killings from a hundred leagues away as part of his broader campaign. He reads updates about the murders as entries in a personal ledger. The Gold Cloak deaths serve his strategy of destabilizing Rhaenyra’s hold on the capital from within.
Daemon drops the coin on Rhaenyra’s book and delivers the grim news about her half-brother. “We should have burned them when we had the chance,” he tells her before leaving. Rhaenyra had sensed the threat earlier, telling Daemon she felt “something crouched, something formless” working against her. He dismissed her concerns as mere exhaustion at the time.
Ser Luthor’s death marks a major departure from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood source material. In the book, Luthor dies during the Riots of King’s Landing rather than in an orchestrated assassination. His murder now gives Ormund’s shadow war a deeply personal cost for Daemon, who commanded the City Watch for years.
House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 6 streams next Sunday on HBO Max.
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