If TV shows were measured in terabytes, House of the Dragon would demand a lot of space on your hard drive. The HBO series might have fewer threads to follow than the show it spins off from, Game of Thrones, but it nonetheless requires plenty of homework for the casual viewer. There are so many characters, betrayals, and twists to remember as the prequel moves from one season to the next — and it doesn’t help that each season is separated by two-year gaps. That mostly leaves the audience to keep tabs on the many developments in Westeros. While that focus is mostly rewarded, there are other times when House of the Dragon (rightly) assumes that we have no idea who, say, Jasper Wylde (Paul Kennedy) is — and it’s forced to reach for storytelling shorthand to remind us that A) he is bad, and B) he deserves a painful demise.
In Season 3, that shorthand takes the form of a trope that Game of Thrones zealously abused: sexual assault. And, once again, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) finds herself bearing the brunt of it.
