Fans Are Already Trying to Figure Out How 'House of the Dragon' Might End

Warning: This post contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Episode 8 and Fire & Blood, the book the show is based on.

As House of the Dragon approaches the end of its first season, many are looking forward and trying to figure out how the show might end. Given how its predecessor, Game of Thrones, ended, it's understandable that some viewers might have anxiety about whether this show will end well or fizzle out like the original.

Here's what we know about the possible ending. We dug deep to find some clues.

We don't know how House of the Dragon will end, but Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin's tome about the history of the Targaryen family offers some clues. That book covers the entire history of the Targaryens in Westeros, beginning with Aegon the Conqueror. The book includes plenty of information about the Dance of Dragons, which is what House of the Dragon is about. As we've seen on the show thus far, Viserys I's reign leads to strife about who will succeed him.

He named his daughter Rhaenyra his heir, but his wife Alicent Hightower thinks that he actually wanted their son Aegon to take the throne. Although the war hasn't broken out in House of the Dragon yet, it's coming. When it does, a lot of the characters we've come to love or at least understand on the show will die. Next week, we can expect that Rhaenyra won't be told of her father's death, and Alicent will crown her son as king.

In the end, both Rhaenyra and Alicent's son Aegon II won't survive the civil war, and the throne will ultimately go to Aegon III, the child of Rhaenyra and Daemon that we briefly met in Episode 8 of House of the Dragon. That crowning will likely come near the end of House of the Dragon, as it marks the end of the Dance.

Because both sides of the Targaryen civil war had dragons, plenty of dragons were taken down in the conflict. What's more, Aegon III was famously anti-dragon, in large part because he witnessed his mother be killed by one. He presided over the dwindling of the Targaryen supply of dragons, and the weakening of his own family.

The death of the dragons began with this conflict, and the greatly reduced Targaryen family we meet in Game of Thrones is largely a result of the Dance.

Although Fire & Blood gives us a sense of the scope of Targaryen history, it isn't clear exactly where House of the Dragon will choose to end its story. Wherever it ends, though, we do know that most of the major families being depicted in the series aren't going to survive.

If you're familiar with Game of Thrones, you likely know that the Hightowers, Strongs, Velaryons, and other ascendant families in House of the Dragon are nowhere to be seen just a few hundred years later. Even the Targaryens, who survive through Game of Thrones, don't actually make it to the end of that series. The sweep of history will swallow these families, even if the moment to moment intrigue is exciting.