Winter Is Coming: How the Starks Factor Into Season 2 of ‘House of the Dragon’

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that, five years after the Game of Thrones finale, the Starks are returning to our TV screens. At the end of Season 1 of House of the Dragon, Queen Rhaenyra sent her son Jacaerys on a trip to consolidate support for her claim to the Iron Throne. His first stop is the Vale, where he is to speak with Lady Jeyne Arryn and try to convince her to support the blacks. Then, he is to continue north to see the Starks. Not afraid to reveal that Jace doesn’t suffer the same fate as his brother Lucerys did in the Season 1 finale, HBO included scenes with Jace and Cregan Stark, the head of House Stark, in several trailers for this upcoming season. Plus, the network released this photo of the pair together:

The leather doublet. The fur pelt. The direwolf sigil. The dour look. Ice sheathed on his back. That’s a Stark all right!

Cregan is not actually the first Stark we’ve encountered in House of the Dragon. Rickon Stark—not the Rickon from Thrones—appeared briefly in the very first episode to swear fealty to Rhaenyra as Viserys’s heir. But that was around 112 AC in the show’s timeline. It’s now 132 AC, and Rickon has since passed away. Cregan is Rickon’s son and now the current Lord of Winterfell.

But who is Cregan Stark? What kind of reception might Jace expect? And how else might the Starks play into the story as a whole? Here’s a spoiler-free look at the role Cregan and the North could play in Season 2 of House of the Dragon.

Cregan is just 24 now in House of the Dragon, but he’s no inexperienced lord. Rickon died when Cregan was only 13, so Cregan’s lordship was put into a regency controlled by his uncle, Bennard Stark. When Cregan turned 16—the age of adulthood in Westeros—he found his uncle reluctant to give up that regency. After two more years of tense relations, Cregan threw Bennard and his three sons in prison and took control of the North for good. It’s this type of decisive action that would eventually earn Cregan the title “the Wolf of the North.”

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Cregan is also already a widower, if the show sticks with how events unfold in the books. Shortly after overthrowing his uncle, Cregan married Arra Norrey, a childhood friend of his. But she died while giving birth to their son, whom he names Rickon, after his father. This son should still be just a baby by the time Jace arrives in Winterfell.

Other than baby Rickon, Cregan may be the only Stark we see this season. Cregan’s only known sibling is a bastard half-sister named Sara Snow, who is not confirmed to appear in Season 2. And with Cregan’s uncle and cousins presumably in prison, I assume they’ll stay off-screen. That’s the known extent of the Stark family at this time in Westeros.

But what is Cregan up to when Jace comes to visit? Bet your life savings that we’ll hear Cregan utter “Winter is coming” at some point this season. Fire & Blood tells us that “autumn was well advanced” when Jace arrives in Winterfell, and Cregan’s focus will be on preparing his region for one of Westeros’s most bitter winters. Remember, climatic seasons can last for years in Westeros. The North has never been too concerned with the politics in the south of the continent, especially when it needs to focus on its harvest. It’s not exactly an opportune time for Jace to ask for the Starks’ support.

Still, as one of Rhaenyra’s lords says at the black council in the Season 1 finale, “There has never lived a Stark who forgot an oath.” But—as Borros Baratheon demonstrated in that same episode—many lords in Westeros feel no obligation to hold themselves to the promises of fealty their fathers made to Rhaenyra some two decades ago. Cregan will probably feel a bit differently, though. Especially considering the situation with his uncle—Cregan can relate to Rhaenyra and Jacaerys’s plight in being usurped by a relative.

If Cregan is so inclined to go to war, he could call his banners and put together a formidable host. But compared to the other great houses in Westeros, the Starks are not quick to mobilize. The North is huge—nearly as large as all the other regions combined. And it’s a long journey to King’s Landing from Winterfell. Don’t expect an army of Northmen to make an impact right away in Season 2.

Those are the nuts and bolts of how Cregan could factor into the realm’s civil war. But there is potentially an even greater role the North could play in the show. Take another look at that press image above. Jace and Cregan aren’t at Winterfell. They’re at the Wall.

Let’s back up a bit. It’s rare for a dragonrider to visit the North, but Jacaerys is not the first. Rhaenyra’s great-grandfather King Jaehaerys and his wife, Queen Alysanne, ruled over a long period of peace in Westeros and made many royal progresses exploring the continent as a result. One such journey saw Alysanne spend an extended period in Winterfell (while her husband was occupied with royal business back in King’s Landing). During that time, she flew to Castle Black to see the Wall.

The Wall took Alysanne’s breath away. But her dragon—Silverwing—didn’t like the North. Every chilly gust of wind made the dragon upset. And when Alysanne tried to fly Silverwing north of the Wall, the dragon refused. “Never before has she refused to take me where I wished to go,” she wrote to her husband. “It troubled me then and it troubles me still.” And this visit was in the summer. (This aversion to cold and hesitancy to go north of the Wall apparently did not apply to Daenerys’s dragons in Game of Thrones.)

Before leaving the North, Alysanne had agreed to pay for the construction of a new castle for the Night’s Watch. Another castle along the wall was renamed Queensgate after her. Alysanne also doubled the size of the land controlled by the Night’s Watch. While the Starks and their bannermen who controlled those lands were less than pleased about this, they went along with it.

Alysanne went to the Wall out of curiosity, at a time of peace when she could afford to wander where she wanted. Jacaerys, by contrast, lives during a time of urgency and conflict. Why is he that far north?

The in-universe reason will probably simply be that Cregan is stationed at the Wall for some vague reason when Jace arrives in the North. Jace won’t have time to wait for Cregan to return to Winterfell. Another explanation could be that Jace simply wants to witness the Wall. He wouldn’t be the first character interested in doing so: In addition to Alysanne, who could forget Tyrion’s frigid journey to the legendary wonder just to piss off of it?

But from a storytelling perspective, a trip to the Wall gives the show an opportunity to revisit the Song of Ice and Fire—Aegon the Conqueror’s prophecy that a bitter winter from the north would destroy the world. Viserys told Rhaenyra about the prophecy when he resolved to name her his heir. Jacaerys is Rhaenyra’s heir, so there’s good reason to believe she’s already told him about the prophecy as well. Alternatively, we could get an on-screen prophecy discussion between mother and son if Jace returns to Dragonstone for Lucerys’s funeral before continuing to the North (in what would be a departure from the books, though the entire prophecy itself is also a departure).

Thus, a Jace trip to the Wall could be about more than just curiosity. It could be for him to investigate one of the main reasons this war is unfolding in the first place—the duty Rhaenyra feels to occupy the throne and keep the realm united against the threat from the north.

The Starks aren’t just a bit of fan service for audiences who want HotD to feel a little more like Thrones. Nor will the house simply provide backup for Rhaenyra’s quest to claim the Iron Throne. The Starks connect this series to the wider Game of Thrones universe. I mean, they’re literally the “ice” in the Song of Ice and Fire. It will be welcome to see them return.