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One major issue I’ve had with the show, especially since the weirwood vision in the Season 2 finale, is that the prophecy has become a lazy plot driver.

Jace's death at the Gullet should have been the direct cause and effect that motivates Rhaenyra to go and take King's Landing. It should trigger a demand for retribution, and she should be feeling like Alicent's peace talks at the end of Season 2 were a complete sham. But instead, Rhaenyra's motivations were changed from emotionally charged human choices to being part of some cosmic homework assignment to preserve the realm for a savior born 200 years later. It is Daemon reminding her of the ~Song of Ice and Fire~ prophecy that gets her to act. Now, maybe to be charitable to her character, you could say she is actually acting out of some profound loyalty to Viserys, who is the one who passed that prophecy down to her, but even then, that waters down Jace's death. It really feels like the showrunners are treating Jace and the Gullet as some item on a checklist that needed to be crossed off to keep up with events in the books. Rhaenyra isn’t allowed to act out of her grief as a mother, but she is forced to act because Daemon’s weirwood vision validated her father’s omen.

The reliance on prophecy erases who these characters are. Let’s look at Daemon for instance. At the end of Season 1, when Rhaenyra tells Daemon about the prophecy, he reacts by saying something along the lines of how Viserys was weak for chasing dreams and prophecies, and it establishes that Daemon believes in self-determination, he isn’t like his brother. But at the end of Season 2, when he is shown his fate and the “truth,” his entire character and character arc were hijacked by divine intervention. He doesn’t choose to bend the knee to Rhaenyra out of any organic internal growth or genuine loyalty; he does so because he is shown Rhaenyra being on the throne in his vision and his takeaway is “welp, can’t fight fate,” and now he is some submissive believer acting purely because he can’t fight the script. His entire character now just boils down to “God is real and has a plan for me.”

The showrunners have fundamentally misunderstood how prophecy actually works in ASOIAF. In the text, prophecies are a dangerous, deceptive mirror, defined by human error and misinterpretation. For example, in the books, Cersei is ruining her own life and pushing her children toward death because she is so paranoid about the valonqar prophecy. Or we can tie this into the Game of Thrones show since it exists in the same timeline as HOTD. Melisandre misreads her flame visions, and it causes her to burn a little girl alive because she believes Stannis is Azor Ahai. In the books and the TV show, when humans interact with prophecies, it can cause self-fulfilling tragedies. It is the ultimate exploration of free will vs. doom. But in HOTD, the prophecies aren't warnings or tests of character; they are absolute certainties. They are active plot movers that hijack characters' motivations and make them cosmic puppets that are following a track laid down for them by some kind of time-traveling Bran/Three-Eyed Raven/Bloodraven-esque master.

I don't think the showrunners realize how insanely overpowered they made Helaena in the Season 2 finale. Think about how she went from a Patchface kind of character at first, making very vague assertions like "he will have to close an eye." Her visions were always accurate, but she obviously couldn't make sense of them or articulate them perfectly. She was just a vulnerable girl burdened by static she couldn't tune out. But then in the Season 2 finale, she is suddenly completely cogent and lucid. She confronts Aemond and tells him the exact manner of his death in a very fatalistic, doomer way, and she asserts that what she is saying cannot be changed even if he tried. She is basically a doomer like Jojen Reed, entirely convinced that fate is a closed loop. She has somehow maxed out the psychic skill tree without the guidance of some Bloodraven or Quaithe-type mentor; she's some kind of horrendous mix of dragon dreamer and greenseer. She can astral project her consciousness across Westeros into Daemon’s weirwood vision, and she tells him to play his part of the story.

This also makes me think about Helaena's own part in the story and what part she has to play. We know her death leads directly to the Storming of the Dragonpit. In Season 2, Episode 3, she tells Alicent "I forgive you" completely out of nowhere, while almost being magnetically drawn to the window.

Obviously the showrunners did that to make book readers think of her fate in the books, but I think her death is going to be some sort of tragic, "Hold the Door" style event where Alicent is directly involved in some way, which is why Helaena preemptively forgives her. Maybe, and this is super tinfoil, Alicent pushes her, but in an unconscious, brain-hijacked "Hold the Door" type way because Alicent needs to "play her part" in the script. Helaena needs to fall from that window for her part in the Westerosi story, because the dragons all have to die for the future to happen. It makes me think of Bran getting pushed out of the window in order to awaken his third eye and "learn to fly."

Also, in Season 2, Episode 2, during the Jaehaerys funeral procession, we see Helaena focus on the smallfolk throwing petals, and I think that this might have unlocked her deeper consciousness, making her see Daenerys 200 years later burning down King's Landing with dragonfire. What she is in reality seeing is flower petals falling from the sky, but in her vision, she is seeing the ash of King's Landing being laid to ruin by Dany and Drogon.

Now as for Daemon’s fate… I think he is surviving the God’s Eye.

The introduction of Daemon’s weirwood vision, with Bloodraven revealing himself to him, alongside the show explicitly showing the existence of the Green Men in both the Season 2 finale and the Season 3 premiere, makes me think that Daemon will play his part in killing Aemond and Vhagar, but will then be saved by the Green Men on the Isle of Faces.

From there, Daemon will go beyond the Wall and take up a Bloodraven-esque position. I think he is going to get fully integrated into the weirwood net and then wait centuries to recruit his great-grandson, Brynden Rivers, aka Bloodraven, acting as Bloodraven's original mentor so that Bloodraven can eventually mentor Bran. It completely turns all these characters into pure slaves to a script, and it sucks the humanity out of the story.