New Delhi, Aug. 4 -- LOS ANGELES - The dragon everybody thought was dead didn't come back quietly.

House of the Dragon's third season corrected an assumption about its own war in Episode 7, aired Sunday on HBO. Sunfyre, the gold-scaled dragon bonded to King Aegon Targaryen, had been written off since the catastrophic battle at Rook's Rest. He returned in "The Dragon in Winter," lunging from apparent oblivion into a crowd of enemy soldiers while Aegon watched from the side and laughed like a man who had never stopped believing his animal was alive.

The moment rewrites what audiences understood about the war. For the Green faction in the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of Dragons, Sunfyre had been a lost asset, a symbol of the dama...