In a season finale full of cliffhangers, perhaps no one’s fate seemed as uncertain as Otto Hightower’s. The scheming patriarch, played by Rhys Ifans in HBO’s House of the Dragon, appeared briefly at the very end of Season 2 locked up by an unknown enemy in an undisclosed location. Since then, we’ve been left to wonder what happened to Otto and how his current status will impact the events of House of the Dragon Season 3.
Now, speaking to Inverse to promote his new movie, Venom: The Last Dance, Ifans finally reveals what he knows about Otto Hightower’s situation at the end of House of the Dragon Season 2. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know much.
“I'm an actor, so we'll be the last people to know what's going on in our characters,” Ifans tells Inverse. “I haven't been told by anyone with any kind of conviction or authority where exactly he is at that point. All we know is that he’s still alive somewhere in that world, and that's as much as I know too. I know as much as the fans.”
House of the Dragon Season 2 saw Otto steadily lose power in King’s Landing even as his family maintained their grip on the throne. After being removed from his long-standing role as Hand of the King, he decides to leave the capital city entirely, though where he goes next is also a mystery.
Earlier in Season 2, Otto told his daughter Alicent that he wanted to go back to the Hightower stronghold of Oldtown where he would be safe and might be able to mentor his young grandson, Daeron. However, Alicent tells him to go to Highgarden instead, suggesting that he could help maintain their family’s weakening control over that pivotal region of Westeros. Ultimately, Otto leaves, but it’s never revealed which option he chose (or if he picked a third destination instead).
Based on his final appearance as a prisoner at the end of Season 2, it’s probably safe to assume that Otto never made it back to Oldtown. One popular theory is that he headed for Highgarden only to learn that the Tyrell family, who rules the city, had turned against him, which would explain why he was thrown into a jail cell. However, an even darker theory posited by Nerdist argues that Otto never actually left King’s Landing but was instead jailed by his enemies within the castle (or perhaps even by his grandsons).
Either way, we likely won’t find out what happened to Otto Hightower until House of the Dragon Season 3, which isn’t expected to premiere until 2026. In the meantime, stay tuned for the rest of our interview with Rhys Ifans and his role in Venom: The Last Dance as a very different type of father, coming later this week.
