Warning! Spoilers ahead for House of the Dragon season 2, episode 4.

House of the Dragon star Eve Best explains why Rhaenys turns back in season 2, episode 4. Returning for its sophomore outing last month, the hit Game of Thrones spinoff show gave audiences the first major action sequence of the season with the Battle at Rook's Rest. Rhaenys plays a major role throughout the sequence, supporting those inside the stronghold on her dragon, Meleys. House of the Dragon season 2, episode 4, sees Rhaenys and Meleys meet their end, however, after they heroically turn back to take on Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) on Vhagar.

In a recent interview with Variety, Best explains why Rhaenys turns back to fight Aemond and Vhagar, despite knowing how it would end. Check out her comment below:

I spoke with [episode director] Alan Taylor. We’d had a session where we talked about what was going on with her emotions, because I felt very strongly that there were these really important beats that we needed to mark. In particular, the knowledge of the fact that it’s very likely a kamikaze mission.

It has to be, because effectively, she’s starting a nuclear war, and she has been the one character throughout who’s done everything she can to stop them. Because she’s the one that knows from bitter experience, and all the younger generation are running around, saying “Send in the dragons!” She and Corlys are really the only adults left in the room who know, who’ve been there and seen it — what they’re facing.

The context of nuclear war was very, very helpful, because that’s the equivalent for us. And I knew that when she had proposed herself, that she knew she had to take that responsibility, if anyone was going to have that weight. It couldn’t be Rhaenyra. She had to do it. I think she knows that she has to sacrifice herself for the team.

Another journalist described her as Lancelot, Rhaenyra’s Lancelot, in many ways. I felt like that was very apt. There’s such a deep reluctance. In the end of Season 1, she makes that conscious decision not to start a war, not to nuke everybody. Everyone ever since has been saying, “Why didn’t you nuke them?” Everybody’s taking it personal, and she’s all the time looking at the bigger picture. All the time rising up, putting the personal aside, and rising above.

The point is, ultimately, whatever we feel, however attached and however devastated we may be, the bigger picture is we must not send dragons into war, we must not go nuclear at all costs. So for her then to say, “I will be the one to do this,” she knows that there’s no living after that. The choice to go, that second return to plunge in with Vhagar — that’s an absolute kamikaze mission.

To me, that was when she felt very samurai. It was that last stand of the noble warrior. She could have just about escaped, and they could have maybe left everybody to deal with it. But she turns because she knows that’s what she has to do, morally and spiritually.