i don’t make precise predictions about hotd’s future plots. i think that’s a part of what has made this fandom so frustrating. no one can meet the show where it’s at because they are judging everything by how it meets the season scripted in their heads during the hiatus or not. however, i think you can pull out general thematic territory from s2 to shape a picture of s3 in a broad way. i did this for s1; i said daemon’s main issue would be the eternal, irresolvable conflict between his desire to serve his house and rhaenyra and the psychic stresses of the lack of sovereignty and subsumption of self in another, that he would resist the full implications of crowning rhaenyra but finally give in, that s2 would be the process of reconciliation to this fate after some falling out between he and rhaenyra around the events of b&c. and this is exactly what happens, although the precise vehicle for that (harrenhal hallucinations) was a surprise.

the reason i made that call for daemon in s2 is that it was his structuring conflict in s1 and is the structuring conflict of his whole life. and it still is. everything will flow from what we saw for him in s2. he has finally truly accepted his destiny (in a grand, sweeping historical sense, even) is to serve rhaenyra and put her on the throne. he’s committed, and he will not turn back from this. characterization is a balance of change and continuity. characters on hotd truly change, and both daemon and alicent change over the course of s2 until both commit themselves to rhaenyra in the finale. this is true transformation, and yet all the ambivalence that makes that a true change remains for both as potential sources of conflict. daemon and rhaenyra face the same dilemma going forward: that the intimacy they want with one another is always in tension with the hierarchy that structures their relationship (one must rule, and the other obey). working this out in practice will still be a place of contention.

that is one s2 thread. it’s what sparked the breakdown on a practical level: rhaenyra is queen but wielded this power in ways daemon felt he could not accept; he acted without her full approval in a way that undermined her authority. this stress will remain. rhaenyra will give orders and probably ones he won’t agree with: how does he react? change and continuity: he has both changed, and accepted he must obey her as her father’s heir, but the continuity of this being a really hard relational dynamic to bear remains. where i don’t make predications is not knowing how that plays out. i just know it is going to be the terrain. i’ll meet the show at the specific story it wants to tell.

the second thread is related to the above, which is daemon’s relationship to magic and religion. he’s a skeptic in s1 (doesn’t think much of viserys’ dreams, doesn’t believe in harrenhal’s ghosts). s2 sees his shit ROCKED on that score. he gets a zoom call from a tree foretelling rhaenyra’s destiny as queen and how their incest progeny will save mankind from apocalyptic threat! at the same time, rhaenyra has been going on her own journey to embrace her messianic destiny as child of prophecy as both psychological and political justification for the violent course she must take. how will all this mix now they are reunited? rhaenyra finds daemon so changed on this score that she says he sounds like her father. but will his long resistance to what he sees as mystic obfuscation be so easily overcome? what happens the first time rhaenyra backs up an order with prophetic mandate? again no firm conclusions, could go multiple ways. daemon as fanatic true believer? or will there be lingering skepticism, despite how transformative his 2.08 vision seemed to be? an arc from belief to doubt?

the last thread from s2 is daemon and violence, both interpersonal and martial. s2’s harrenhal wake-up call was very concerned with the ways daemon has hurt the women in his life because of his own emotional baggage, and unpacking that baggage so he might relate differently going forward. his neglect of his daughters gets specifically called out. we know per condal and also just putting the pieces together on the way nettles’ and rhaena’s arcs are being combined that rhaena will be very important to daemon’s arc. we will get some movement here that flows from s2. daemon has been changed by his experiences. he was forced to reckon more deeply with how he harmed rhaenyra as a key part of an inner transformation. now he will have to grapple with these other intimate, interpersonal failures outside the weird harrenhal suspension bubble. what happened with him in s2 will now be put into action, in various ways.

the last is military violence. the fact daemon wields this on behalf of rhaenyra’s claim and it is horrifying is a part of s2, if a minor one. now he’s leading her armies, so it will be a major one. daemon has been raised from birth to serve the targaryen house with violence. it is all he knows how to do, and the reason for his existence. all the negative effects on both himself and others are laid out in s2. he murders children, violently lays hands on his wife in a way that destroys intimacy, alienates allies by allowing war crimes to take place with his permission to further his aims. and yet this is what he has to do, this is his place in life, this is what he has to give rhaenyra. the tension there will probably deepen over the course of s3’s many battles.