Olivia Cooke in 2026: is she single, dating, or keeping us guessing?

House of the Dragon did the thing Ryan Condal promised. The season 3 opener comes out swinging with the Battle of the Gullet, a proper meat grinder of a naval sequence that lives up to the hype. But what lit up my timeline was not the armadas or the dragonfire. It was a few seconds of pure discomfort: Alicent Hightower and her son Aemond sharing an inappropriate kiss. Yep, that happened, and yes, people noticed.

About that blink-and-you-wish-you-missed-it kiss

The episode spends a ton of money and time on the bloodiest sea battle in Westeros history, and then a tiny, loaded moment between Alicent and Aemond steals part of the conversation. The scene is quick, but the implications are messy enough to overshadow a sea full of corpses for a minute. Ewan Mitchell, who plays Aemond, has already weighed in on how awkward it was to stage.

"It is quite a difficult pill to swallow, isn't it? Kissing your mom on the lips, especially in that way. Aemond, growing up, he never felt like he was loved enough by his mom and his family around him, and a kid needs that unconditional love to develop a balanced view of the world."

Fans pounced on it. By mid-June 2026, posts on X were dissecting the dynamic and, naturally, pivoting to Olivia Cooke herself. Which brings us to the question I got asked more than once this week: who is Olivia Cooke dating right now?

Olivia Cooke's real-life romance, kept low-key

As of 2026, Olivia Cooke is dating Ralph Davis, who shows up in House of the Dragon season 2 as Ser Leon Estermont, one of Aegon II Targaryen's buddies. They kept things very quiet until Wimbledon 2025, when they were spotted kissing in the stands. That pretty much confirmed what had been bubbling under. Since then, they have stayed off the grid by choice. Cooke has said she deactivated her Instagram about six months ago, and Davis is similarly off social, so unless they turn up at a public event, there is not much to ogle or overanalyze.

• Ralph Davis on screen: House of the Dragon season 2 as Ser Leon Estermont, Channel 4's sitcom Big Boys, the BBC series Film Club alongside Aimee Lou Wood, and SAS: Rogue Heroes with Tom Glynn-Carney, who also happens to play Aegon II in HOTD.

Meanwhile, Alicent is playing with fire on the show

If you have not caught up on the politics, the season 2 finale dropped a grenade: Alicent secretly offered Rhaenyra a deal. Spare Alicent and her daughter and, in return, take Aegon's head and the Iron Throne. That is as treacherous as it sounds, especially coming from a mother. Season 3 picks up from there, and episode 1 shows Alicent working angles to make that promise real. Or maybe she is setting a trap. The episode keeps it ambiguous enough that you can argue it either way.

All of this unfolds under the shadow of the Gullet. Condal hyped the battle, and the show delivers the chaos, the bodies, and a hefty price for the Dragon Queen's side. For now, the story is balancing two kinds of shock: a massive wartime gut punch and a deliberately uncomfortable character beat that says a lot with almost no screen time. Buckle up for where this goes next, because neither thread looks ready to cool down.