House of the Dragon Foreshadows Rhaenyra’s Dangerous Final Enemy

Spoilers follow for both House of the Dragon and Fire & Blood. Between Daeron’s impostor, feeding rats to the nobles, and a falling out with Corlys, Rhaenyra’s challenges trying to govern Westeros just kept mounting in this week’s episode of House of the Dragon.

Between Daeron’s impostor, feeding rats to the nobles, and a falling out with Corlys, Rhaenyra’s challenges trying to govern Westeros just kept mounting in this week’s episode of House of the Dragon. But the worst omen of trouble ahead might be the warning she received from the High Septon: “Do not make an enemy of the Faith. It exhorts and comforts and binds together your people. Underestimate it at your peril.”

The High Septon also admonishes Rhaenyra when she mentions a dragon: “My gods do not deal in dragons. They are a profane magic created in darkness and pride and lust for power, for impunity. They destroy, but they do no create. There is no good that can come of them.”

The High Septon’s words appear to foreshadow the Shepherd, a key figure near the end of the Dance of the Dragons who has yet to appear on House of the Dragon. In George R.R. Martin’s Targaryen history book Fire & Blood, the Shepherd and his following ultimately wreak bloody havoc in King's Landing.

The Shepherd is analogous to John the Baptist, the desert preacher and prophet who heralded the arrival of Jesus Christ during the era of Roman-occupied Judea and Galilee. Like John the Baptist, the Shepherd is the proverbial voice crying out in the wilderness. He is a rail-thin, one-handed old beggar in raggy clothes whose origins are disputed and whose real name remains unknown.

As war and ruin consume much of the Seven Kingdoms, this mad street prophet preaches against Queen Rhaenyra and warns about the end times. He develops a growing following among the smallfolk who have suffered so much during the Dance of the Dragons. His disciples embrace his teachings that dragons are demons – echoing the High Septon’s damning of them as “a profane magic” – and believe his doomsday ravings. In these terrifying times where dragons breathe fire down on people and have laid waste to much of Westeros, the Shepherd’s message makes sense to the frightened and enraged smallfolk.

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal was coy about whether the High Septon’s warning means that fans can expect to see the Shepherd appear on the show sometime this season or during its fourth and final season. “I think you'll just have to keep watching to find that out. But look, I mean, that is a major thread in the book and it's something that I think plays into a lot of the themes that we play with,” Condal recently told me.