Season three episode one deals with the Battle of the Gullet, and it’s a return to form for the show, which spent much of the previous chapter setting up the burgeoning war between the Greens and the Blacks.

Alicent (Olivia Cooke) realises her mistake and makes a deal with Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) to open King’s Landing to her forces and offer up Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) for her to take back the throne.

The timing is ideal, as Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) is set to be away finding Daemon (Matt Smith). Alas, when Alicent arrives home, she finds Aemond is still there, and so she does her best to convince him to travel to Harrenhal.

During their interaction, she holds his face in a motherly sort of way. But Aemond, out of nowhere, leans in and kisses her. It’s clear by the look on her face that she’s horrified, but she keeps up appearances to get him to leave.

There’s been a lot of backlash to the scene, especially as this doesn’t even happen in George RR Martin’s books. “This mf Ryan Condal is ruining George RR Martin’s story,” wrote one on X.

Another joked, “If I had a nickel for every time Ryan Condal added non-canon mother-son incest to the show, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.”

The kiss nobody needed

But there’s something even more troubling that I can’t stop thinking about: the fact this scene feels designed to shock rather than actually develop either character.

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal and actor Ewan Mitchell have both explained the kiss as an extension of Aemond’s trauma and his confused feelings towards Alicent, as well as his need to assert power.

But we already knew these things about him. Similarly, Alicent’s horrified reaction tells us nothing we didn’t already know about her relationship with her son.

It’s why it feels shoehorned in as shock value. The show and its predecessor has dealt with incest many times, but it’s always stemmed from the books and served as key elements to the characters’ arcs.

In season one, for example, the moment between Daemon and Rhaenyra was gross, yet it established their early relationship and what Daemon’s questionable intentions were, setting up their later marriage.

I’m struggling to find what the point of this new development is. The irony is that the moment arguably lands harder because of changes the show has already made to Alicent.

In Fire & Blood, she is a far more politically ambitious and calculating character who despises Rhaenyra from the start. HBO’s version, however, has spent the past two seasons emphasising how little control she has over her own life.

We’ve watched her father Otto push his teenage daughter towards Viserys for political gain, enduring an unhappy marriage to a much older king. And she later became the target of Larys Strong’s (Matthew Needham) deeply uncomfortable foot fetish, another plot point that was made up for the show.

Alicent’s story has repeatedly involved other people exerting control over her body and sexuality, but whether you agree with this change or not, the kiss is frustrating because of the simple fact that House of the Dragon didn’t need it.

The Battle of the Gullet is one of the biggest and most devastating events in the Dance of the Dragons saga, and the episode was already packed with death and spectacle.

Aemond and Alicent’s kiss didn’t add anything complex or new to the storyline, nor was there any warning whatsoever. It just left me once again feeling bad for a character I’m not sure I should, and, most of all, like I need a break – and we’re only one episode into season three.

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Featured images credit: HBO