The season finale of House of the Dragon was full of dramatic moments. Another birthing scene, more precisely, Rhaenyra Targaryen’s miscarriage. Rhaenyra had previously given birth on screen in episode 6, but her stillbirth was a jarring portrayal after a series of brutal births on House of the Dragon.

Ryan Condal discusses the season finale in an interview with Deadline. The showrunner recognises the distressing childbirth scenes shared in the pilot episode and season finale. When questioned if the producers had always intended to begin and end the series with harrowing Targaryen birth scenes, Condal quickly dismisses the notion.

Let’s see what Ryan Condal had to say about the scene.

Ryan Condal Explains Rhaenyra’s Miscarriage

Although House of the Dragon’s vivid conception sequences has been criticised, the show’s creators have earlier stood by their decision, comparing distressing births to war and fighting for the series’ female characters. And as the writer of the show, Ryan Condal, in a conversation with Deadline, said this:

“No. I mean there’s a lot of beautiful symmetry in this season. It also began with a dragon ride and ended with a dragon ride. There’s a lot of symbolism to take from it. But yes, I think we realized in the domino-ing of events that happened in the final episode, one aspect was linking the horrific birth that goes terribly wrong in the pilot with another horrific birth that goes wrong in the finale. It’s mother and daughter. It’s the daughter of the woman who died in the pilot now having this very difficult birth. That was always her fear, birth is a battlefield and now Rhaenyra finds herself at war and this is her going through her own battle. She’s having a miscarriage, she knows she’s not far enough along in her term that she’s going to have a viable infant. It’s medieval times. There is no premature baby unit in the maester’s hospital. It’s a nice piece of symmetry that we did not see at the outset.”

Why Was Rhaenyra Pacing Back and Forth?

The House of the Dragon season finale ended with Rhaenyra surviving a miscarriage. Ryan Condal stated that Rhaenyra pacing back and forth was the idea of producer Sara Hess. Ryan Condal, on the House of the Dragon podcast, talked about this:

“She (Sara Hess) pitched that Rhaenyra was pacing around angry because Daemon was seizing control. Her female body was keeping her out of the act of agency in the beginning of her own fight for her claim. And she was frustrated with Daemon and certainly frustrated with her femininity and her womanhood holding her back from this thing. She’s like, ‘She should be pacing around and toss everybody away and just basically bring the baby out of herself.’”

Rhaenyra is partly motivated because she realises her baby will not survive. It was too soon, and her working environment made it impossible, so she just wanted to get it done.