House of the Dragon Season 3 Premiere: Rhaena Claims Sheepstealer, Takes Over Nettles' Role

House of the Dragon's Season 3 premiere delivered a major character moment for Rhaena Targaryen, as the previously dragonless princess successfully claimed the wild dragon Sheepstealer—a pivotal development that appears to mark her assumption of the character arc originally belonging to Nettles in George R. R. Martin's source material Fire & Blood.

After spending much of Season 2 caring for her younger cousins and struggling with her lack of a dragon, Rhaena seized her opportunity in the Vale. The premiere showed her mounting Sheepstealer for the first time and proving herself a capable rider when the dragon hunted food for her. This moment confirmed longstanding fan theories that Rhaena would replace the character of Nettles in the show's adaptation of the Dance of the Dragons civil war.

Rhaena's first combat experience with Sheepstealer came at the Battle of the Gullet, where the dragon's unpredictable nature proved consequential. While Rhaena intended to support her sister Baela and step-brother Jace against Triarchy forces, Sheepstealer began attacking their dragons instead. When Jace commanded his dragon Vermax to retreat to avoid harming Rhaena, the maneuver left Vermax vulnerable to enemy ships, which pierced the dragon with a grappling hook and dragged it underwater. Jace himself was subsequently killed by crossbow fire as he attempted to escape, demonstrating the brutal consequences of the dragon's disobedience.

In the original Fire & Blood source material, Nettles was a lowborn dragonseed who befriended Sheepstealer through daily offerings of fresh sheep rather than through traditional dragon-bonding. She remained the only female dragonseed and a canonically Black character in the book. In contrast, Rhaena is Targaryen nobility, though she had previously struggled to claim any dragon—her birth egg died as a hatchling, and her attempts to claim other dragons proved unsuccessful until Sheepstealer.

The substitution of Rhaena for Nettles carries significant implications for the show's trajectory. Most notably, Fire & Blood depicts Nettles developing a close romantic relationship with Daemon Targaryen as the war progresses—a storyline that may now unfold differently or not at all given Rhaena's different character and family position. The change underscores House of the Dragon's willingness to substantially adapt its source material for television while maintaining key plot beats and character arcs.