House Of The Dragon Fixed A Jon Snow Plot Hole 5 Years After Game Of Thrones Created It
After much speculation, Game of Thrones’ season 7 finale revealed Jon Snow’s Targaryen name: Aegon. Though it seems an obvious choice - it is, after all, the Targaryen name - there was one catch: Rhaegar already had a son called Aegon. While he was killed as an infant during Robert’s Rebellion, it was still confusing as to why Rhaegar would give his second son the exact same name, and the show itself offered up no kind of explanation whatsoever.
At that point it seemed like a big mistake but, intentionally so or not, House of the Dragon fixed it. It had long been known that Rhaegar was obsessed with the Prince That Was Promised prophecy, believing his child to be the heralded savior. House of the Dragon directly connects that with Aegon’s dream, turning the two prophecies into one and the same. And given Rhaegar heavily researched the prophecy and Targaryen history, then there’s a good chance he knew that too.
House of the Dragon subtly reframed Jon Snow’s story, and made his Targaryen heritage more important than Game of Thrones ever managed to. The house’s entire purpose was to bring together the people of Westeros and defeat the White Walkers, and while Jon Snow is not the one who sat on the Iron Throne or even the one who killed the Night King, there wouldn’t have even been a fight against them without him. He was the product of ice and fire who rallied the realm together, and crucial in saving it.
To this end, then Jon Snow could be considered the Prince That Was Promised. Daenerys too, of course, had a claim: a pure Targaryen, she was actually styled as Queen, brought dragons back to the world, and also proved instrumental in the fight against the White Walkers. The prophecy is vague enough that you could argue for either, or both, but Jon Snow being the person who made it his entire mission to beat the army of the dead, while also being the last Aegon Targaryen, certainly fits the criteria.
This then leads into Jon Snow’s Game of Thrones ending, where he goes back beyond the Wall. He never embraced his Targaryen identity anyway, but this was fully renouncing it: choosing ice over fire. Having killed Daenerys and then left the most inhabited parts of Westeros behind, he essentially removes the Targaryens from the board, their purpose completely fulfilled. What started with Aegon the Conqueror, as revealed by House of the Dragon, was completed by Jon Snow, aka Aegon Targaryen.
Credit: ScreenRant: https://screenrant.com/house-dragon-game-thrones-jon-snow-aegon-targaryen-name-dream/
