Spoilers ahead for the House of the Dragon Season 3 finale.Franchise television rarely gets to end on a clean slate. Game of Thrones is still widely seen as having stumbled badly in its final season, and every finale in the wider Westeros universe has since been judged, at least in part, against that shadow. After a second-season finale that many viewers felt withheld the payoff it had been building toward, House of the Dragon went into its third-season ender with something to prove.

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