House Of The Dragon Season 3 Says A Brutal Goodbye To One Of Its Best Characters

Don't pick up any swords to get revenge if you haven't seen Season 3, Episode 2 of "House of the Dragon." You've been warned; spoilers to follow!

In the Season 3 premiere of "House of the Dragon," the Targaryen-focused spin-off and prequel to HBO's massively successful fantasy saga "Game of Thrones," we lost one huge character: Prince Jacaerys "Jace" Velaryon (Harry Collett) and his massive fire-breathing dragon Vermax. In the second episode, we lose another great: Otto Hightower, the clever, scheming former Hand of the King to Jace's grandfather King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine).

Otto, played to perfection by Rhys Ifans throughout the first two seasons of "House of the Dragon," meets a bitter end (which, to be fair, is a pretty standard fate in the extended "Game of Thrones" universe). After the self-proclaimed Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy), leader of the Black faction of the Targaryen family and Viserys' chosen heir, retakes the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms, her uncle-husband Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) brings her a gift. After joking that the "rats in the Red Keep" have grown quite large, Daemon produces a disheveled, wan Otto, who asks that Daemon be the one to decapitate him because it'll be faster.

Unfortunately for Otto, Rhaenyra has something to prove. Despite the fact that the queen is not particularly well-versed in swordsmanship or non-dragonback combat at this point, she grabs her massive sword, swings ... and just hacks at Otto's neck. Thankfully, the second blow takes the guy's head clean off — and for afters, she lops off the head of Paul Kennedy's evil Ser Jasper Wylde — but this botched execution is definitely a rough way for Otto to say goodbye to "House of the Dragon." 

We don't see Otto Hightower at all during the Season 3 premiere of "House of the Dragon," but during the very last moments of the Season 2 finale, "The Queen Who Ever Was," we saw him in a Red Keep cell — so to be fair, we knew exactly where he was all along. But how did Otto get there in the first place?

Otto is initially introduced in Season 1 of "House of the Dragon" as the Hand of the King, as I previously mentioned, and the father of a then-teenaged Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey in her younger years). When Viserys' wife dies horribly in childbirth, Otto cravenly sees an opportunity and convinces Alicent to pursue the much-older monarch, driving a permanent wedge between Alicent and her best friend turned stepdaughter Rhaenyra (played as a teenager by "Supergirl" star Milly Alcock).

After Alicent and Rhaenyra grow up (and become Olivia Cooke and Emma D'Arcy in the process), Otto keeps working behind the scenes to ensure that his daughter stays on top — and, more crucially, that her sons have a shot at becoming the heirs to the Iron Throne. Naturally, this edges out a furious Rhaenyra and is what ultimately begins the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons in earnest. On some level, all of this is Otto's fault, so maybe he sort of had it coming.

In any case, Otto Hightower is no more. And right after Rhaenyra lets his head roll around like a marble, Alicent and her daughter Helaena (Phia Saban) burst into the throne room and are horrified at the sight of Otto's free-roaming noggin. Rest well, Otto, you conniving, fascinating jerk.

Everyone who's ever heard of Henry VIII knows he beheaded his wives, right? To be completely fair, he only beheaded two of them (Anne Boleyn and her cousin Katherine Howard, his second and fifth wives), divorcing two others and dying before he could torment the last one, with his third wife, Jane Seymour, dying in childbirth. All of this is to say that Henry, that massive and deranged monarch, had a penchant for beheading, and there's a historical parallel between Otto Hightower and one of his victims.

"A Song of Ice and Fire" author George R.R. Martin famously used the British War of the Roses as inspiration for that novel series, and even though "House of the Dragon" takes cues from an earlier skirmish called The Anarchy, I can't help but think he lifted Otto's brutal death from Tudor history. After years of imprisonment, Henry's former nanny — and the cousin of his mother, Elizabeth of York — Lady Margaret Pole, who was in her late 60s at the time, was unceremoniously dragged from her quarters in the Tower of London. Margaret, a descendent of the royal Plantagenet family, represented a threat to the increasingly paranoid Henry, who may have believed that she wanted to usurp the throne. Regardless of his motives, he did order her to be beheaded — but he hired an inexperienced axeman with a dull blade. Reports have persisted, across centuries, that Lady Poole crawled away as the guy hacked at her neck. It may have taken as many as eleven blows.

With that considered? Otto got off lucky. "House of the Dragon," which is not based in historical fact, airs new episodes on Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.