‘House of the Dragon’ Star Phia Saban Opens Up About Helaena’s Devastating Season 3 Send-Off
‘House of the Dragon’ has never been shy about killing off characters audiences grow attached to, and season three proved no exception. The HBO prequel spent its latest run pushing Helaena Targaryen further into isolation, grief, and quiet desperation, setting the stage for a finale that fans had been bracing for since the season began.
Much of the season built toward Helaena’s prophetic visions, including glimpses of her baby being taken from her and darker images bleeding into otherwise peaceful moments with her children. Things only grew worse when Rhaenyra ordered Mysaria removed from her inner circle, and Mysaria used the moment to tell Helaena bluntly that the queen would never let her leave King’s Landing. That confrontation, paired with Rhaenyra forcing guards to end Helaena’s hunger strike, pushed the sisters in law’s already fractured relationship past the point of repair.
By the finale, Helaena’s story reached its breaking point. A newly ousted Mysaria issued Helaena a stark warning about never being freed, information Helaena then used to speak painful truths directly to Rhaenyra before walking to an open Red Keep window. The season closed with Rhaenyra discovering Helaena’s empty chambers, while Helaena’s body lay below, impaled on spikes outside the castle. It was a brutal echo of Game of Thrones history, and it marked the end of Phia Saban’s run on the series, an ending the actress has now called a genuine bucket list moment.
Saban has said that season three handed her several bucket list items at once, from finally filming Helaena’s dragon riding sequence on the production’s mechanical rig for the Dreamfyre scene, to shooting her character’s death, prosthetics and all. She described feeling honored to die on the show, joining a long line of Thrones universe actors whose exits became iconic in their own right.
Saban has also opened up about what was going through Helaena’s mind in her final moments. She told Variety that Helaena felt her body and her baby had already been forsaken for as long as she’d lived, and that she no longer wanted to live the way she’d been living, choosing instead to protect the children she still had. Before her death, Helaena left behind a tapestry she had been embroidering all season, one that Rhaenyra finds afterward, depicting herself on the Iron Throne with blood dripping from her crown and dragon flames surrounding her.
The weight of Helaena’s death is already being framed as a turning point for the whole series. Emma D’Arcy, who plays Rhaenyra, called Helaena the moral heart of the show during a press event ahead of the finale, noting she was one of the only characters with proximity to power who remained uncontaminated by it, and that her death effectively condemns Rhaenyra to the path she has chosen.
With ‘House of the Dragon’ now heading into its fourth and final season, Helaena’s absence leaves a noticeably different Red Keep behind. Do you think Rhaenyra can come back from what happened to Helaena, or has the queen already crossed a line there’s no returning from?
