Warning: This article contains spoilers for the House of the Dragon season 3 finale, now streaming on HBO Max.

House of the Dragon said goodbye to another major character.

The season 3 finale of the HBO series marked the end for Queen Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban), who died after intentionally falling from an open window in the Red Keep. Saban, 27, admits she had long known her character’s devastating fate was coming.

“When I got the job, I spent a lot of time Googling and searching the Wikis, so I’ve always known this was coming,” Saban told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published after the finale. “Plus, there are so many fans out there in the world, and I know so many people who knew and would make a point to tell me about what was going to happen to me.”

With little chance of avoiding spoilers surrounding Helaena’s fate, Saban joked, “It was never an option not to know. I’m just happy I made it three seasons!”

Helaena’s final moments come after Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) — newly cast out by Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) — visits the imprisoned queen and warns her not to trust Rhaenyra. Mysaria tells Helaena that Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) has returned and his dragon is alive, while warning that Helaena’s unborn child could be used as leverage against her.

Helaena later confronts Rhaenyra, delivering some difficult truths before ultimately taking her own life. Rhaenyra discovers Helaena’s empty quarters at the end of the episode, while Helaena is shown below, having fallen onto spikes.

“Objectively, it’s very sad. The story is sad. I love Helaena. I feel for Helaena,” she said. “I try to find hope, by thinking she felt as though she had been killed already in many ways, but … it’s very sad.”

The actress was, however, able to find levity in filming such a dark moment. “But for me? Kind of a bucket list thing: I got to die on TV!” she said with a laugh. “I got to do the thing where you keep your eyes open … everyone wants to do that!”

Saban’s final scene also gave her the opportunity to work closely with the show’s prosthetics department as they created the gruesome aftermath of Helaena’s fall.

“The prosthetics were amazing. It made me want to do a thing where I’m entirely in prosthetics,” she said, praising the show’s crew. “I sat there while they created my neck, which had this incredible spike, and they painted it on me in a way that was so lifelike. It was so fun.”

Before Helaena’s death, Saban shares one final pivotal scene with D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra, a moment the actress said grew out of conversations she had with executive producers Ryan Condal and Sara Hess.

“I felt a lot of ownership over Helaena and have loved building that character,” Saban explained. “And I felt it was important to get across some of the things that I had always had as Helaena mantras in my mind in that moment. And I felt like that was the justice for Helaena.”

Saban said those conversations included discussions about Joan of Arc and “this idea that there’s more to life than not being dead,” as they explored Helaena’s desire to reclaim something that had long been taken from her.

“And that’s truly what she wants to get back to: having a relationship with the world and not being kept and silenced and used,” she added.

Saban joined House of the Dragon during its first season in 2022.

“It’s very hard in the moment to take in the finality of it,” she said. “This is something I’ve been working on, and a character I’ve been caring for, for five years now.”

Still, Saban said her goodbye to Helaena wasn’t solely defined by sadness.

“But there is joy in this. There’s pride and there’s excitement,” she said. “It will probably hit me once I see the full episode and it’s out there, or perhaps when they all get back to work without me.”

House of the Dragon season 3 is now streaming on HBO Max.