House of the Dragon Season 2 left the realm divided, and so too its audience. Its Rotten Tomatoes score dropped from 90% to a (still good) 84% with critics, and a starker decline from 82% to 72% with viewers. Those numbers don’t tell the full story, though, as fans were left very frustrated by its cliffhanger ending, following a season building to a major battle, and more pertinently, there were George R.R. Martin’s critiques of the show. The Fire & Blood author wrote a now-deleted blog post that criticized some of the show’s changes to Blood and Cheese, calling out the “toxic” butterfly effect of cutting Prince Maelor, and has since revealed his relationship with showrunner Ryan Condal is “abysmal.”
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That’s the online backdrop into which House of the Dragon Season 3 releases two years later. Condal and his team have pressed on undeterred with their vision, for better and (occasionally) for worse. There are two different questions, then, when it comes to assessing the third season, of which I’ve seen the first four episodes. Firstly, is it good? That’s a pretty simple answer, because yes, it is, both in terms of its cast/characters and its spectacle. Will it fix the backlash? That’s a little more complicated. In some areas, certainly, but in others, I think a few choices will be just as divisive.
Rating: 4 out of 5
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| The Battle of the Gullet is absolutely spectacular. | It doesn’t (yet) do justice to all of its characters. |
| It finds the right balance between spectacle and story. | It’s slightly disjointed. |
| Emma D’Arcy is better than ever as Rhaenyra Targaryen, and the rest of the returning cast is great. | A few of the surprises and book changes will annoy some fans. |
| James Norton steals the show as Ormund Hightower. | |
| Episode 3 is an unexpected highlight. |
House Of The Dragon Season 3 Begins In Epic Fashion (& It Makes Up For Season 2)
HBO has made no secret about the fact that Season 3 begins with the Battle of the Gullet and Rhaenyra heading to King’s Landing. With the former, in particular, it’s been actively shouting about it, with Condal telling EW that it is “arguably the craziest episode of television ever made, just on the level of production ambition.” One of the biggest and bloodiest sea conflicts in Westeros history, the Gullet is an extended sequence in the first episode that puts the Velaryon fleet, led by Corlys (Steve Toussaint), against that of the Triarchy, commanded by Admiral Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn).
Suffice to say, the Battle of the Gullet absolutely lives up to the hype. This is truly epic, event television, the kind of stunning spectacle that feels almost wasted on the small screen. You can see why Condal said it was crazy, because the scale of the thing is rather astonishing, both on the sea and in the air (because, of course, dragons are involved).
There’s a sense of shock and awe in the fiery fury of the Targaryens’ greatest weapon, but it also plunges us directly into the ugly, gritty, chaos of the fighting as well. From a production and visual point of view, it rivals any battles in Game of Thrones. It doesn’t quite hit the character highs of something like “Blackwater,” but it’s still very well done in that regard.
That’s followed by what happens in King’s Landing in Episode 2, which is smaller in scale and yet still huge in terms of its story, packing a lot of character and narrative weight into a single hour and delivering some more moments we’ve long been waiting for. It combines for a staggering one-two punch to kick off the season in style
It’s also clear, however, this is what should have been the end of Season 2, which was originally supposed to include things like the Battle of the Gullet. Season 2’s loss is largely Season 3’s gain because of that, but it does mean it feels slightly disjointed, because I do think they would’ve played better as Episodes 9 and 10 rather than 1 and 2, allowing for much more time for those events to sink in.
House Of The Dragon’s Entire Cast Is Great – But Emma D’Arcy & James Norton Steal The Show
House of the Dragon‘s cast has long established itself as one of the best on TV this decade, but some parts of it just keeping getting better in Season 3. At the very heart of that is Emma D’Arcy, who is once again just incredible as Rhaenyra. It’s been so impressive how each year they keep finding new layers of the character, and we get to see so many different sides here. Rhaenyra’s anguish, fury, and righteousness all come out in fascinating ways, and D’Arcy is the center piece who brings everything together.
Episode 3, in particular, is a fantastic showcase for D’Arcy (there’s also a brilliant moment early in Episode 2), in what is a unique episode for the series. It largely follows Rhaenyra as she begins to learn what it really takes to rule, and we really get to see her struggle with that. D’Arcy plays it with an almost discombobulating effect, and for all the dazzling imagery this season conjures up, it’s the deeper focus on their character here and getting more into what being Queen actually means than we’ve seen before that I might actually have loved the most.
The rest of the returning cast are all very good, if somewhat imbalanced in their storylines. Admittedly, though, that’s just in four episodes, so with half the season still to come, that might even out, but I would like to see more for the likes of Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) and Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban), who simply aren’t given enough to do here. It’s always difficult for these shows to balance its storylines and characters, and that’s felt more keenly in Season 3, because things are now so spread out across Westeros. It does sometimes feel like we’re occasionally just checking in on certain elements that don’t have as much drive or purpose as others.
Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen and Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower are again great, and I love that we get more of Alicent and Rhaenyra together again because it’s the heart of the show, but it’s Tom Glynn-Carney who again deserves real praise. He became real favorite of mine in Season 2 as he elevated Aegon II Targaryen to unexpected new heights. While the character is now being taken to new lows instead, he’s once again fantastic, and makes him far more human and tragic than he would be in lesser hands. Meanwhile, though I’m not yet convinced by its Rhaena story, Phoebe Campbell does by far their best work yet to sell it emotionally.
In terms of the newcomers, while Tommy Flanagan as Roddy the Ruin seems destined to become a fan-favorite, it’s James Norton as Lord Ormund Hightower who makes by far the biggest impression. He’s the kind of unpredictable character that has always worked so well in the Game of Thrones universe, and Norton works the line between charming and conniving absolutely perfectly. It’s the kind of performance that not only always leaves you wondering what he’s going to do next, but absolutely desperate to find out.
House Of The Dragon Season 3’s Bold Swings Won’t Be For Everyone
This part inevitably has to be rather vague for the sake of not giving away major spoilers, but in terms of some of the complaints about Season 2, I don’t think Season 3 is going to fix some of that. Or put another way: I’m not sure George R.R. Martin would like all of the choices being made here.
There are some very notable deviations from the source material, which alone is sure to annoy book purists, and a couple of them are particularly bold decisions. Having read the book doesn’t even help in this regard, because it’s genuinely difficult to know where one of them is going, and thus hard to assess at this point, but I’ve no doubt there will be some major complaints.
Departing from the source material is not an inherently good or bad thing. In the case of House of the Dragon, it is necessary, because so little actually exists on the page given it’s presented as various historical accounts, but it needs to be what’s best for the story and characters. Some of the changes here definitely are, but there are question marks and TBCs over a couple of others, and it’ll be very interesting to see where it takes them.
House of the Dragon Season 3 premieres at 9pm ET on HBO and HBO Max on June 21st.
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