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With House of the Dragon taking place over 150 years before Game of Thrones, the creators have a tough job of making the prequel has had a tough job making it feel connected to the original show. Characters don’t live that long in the setting and the landscape of Westeros changes massively after Robert’s Rebellion, so the writers had to lean on the power of prophesy in one moment from the House of the Dragon season two finale to tie the two shows together.

That is the reasoning behind Daenerys' surprise cameo in the House of the Dragon season two finale. Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen sees Daenerys in a vision of the future, though the meaning behind it seems to be lost on Daemon. Showrunner Ryan Condal, speaking to a group of journalists in a virtual press conference following the end of the second season, explained why the future Mother of Dragon's appearance (this time played by Imogen Ruby Little) was shoehorned into the finale.

“House of the Dragon is a prequel to a famous story, one of the biggest, if not the biggest television story of all time,” he said. “There needs to be some interconnectivity. And because so many years have passed, there are really no characters that would be alive from our time period that exist in subsequent series. So we were always looking for this interconnectivity between the two.”

Of course, there is another Targaryen in Game of Thrones that they could have used – Jon Snow. However, that wouldn’t have had the same thematic impact. “Remember that Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, House of the Dragon in many ways are warnings about the perils of power and people in power and absolute power,” Condal explained. Power, in House Targaryen, means dragons, and, in Game of Thrones, that means Daenerys. “The connectivity for us is specifically in and around dragons… We know who Daenerys is watching that image, but Daemon has no idea.”

We as viewers know what is coming at the end of House of the Dragon, of course – a world without dragons at all. They don’t reappear in the world for dozens of years when Daenerys steps out of the fire with her three “sons” at the end of season one of Game of Thrones. So, with that in mind, it does make sense that the producers would use her as the connective tissue between the two time periods – even if that idea wasn’t immediately clear to fans when they first saw it.

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