Warning: This review contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3.
In the blink of an eye, House of the Dragon Season 3 has come and gone. After the two-year gap between the second and third seasons of the Dance of the Dragons, fans were anxious to see how showrunner Ryan Condal would respond to the criticism directed at the show’s writing, pacing, and creative direction last season.
Thankfully, Condal seems to have gotten his dragon-filled train back on track. While it wasn’t a perfect return to action, House of the Dragon Season 3 brought the franchise much closer to its previous heights than Season 2, finally giving fans the payoff they’d been waiting for — and delivering Rhaenyra the Cruel one step closer to her destiny.
House of the Dragon Season 3 Bounces Back After a Rocky Sophomore Effort
House of the Dragon Season 2 was a victim of circumstance. HBO reduced the season from 10 episodes to eight before production began, with later reporting indicating that the decision was partly a strike-contingency measure and partly an attempt to preserve its planned summer 2024 release. Producer Sara Hess subsequently acknowledged that the shorter order “wasn’t really” the creative team’s choice.
None of that completely absolves Season 2’s storytelling problems, but it helps explain why the final product felt like a 10-episode season that suddenly stopped after Episode 8.
House of the Dragon Season 3 didn’t suffer the same fate, and it shows. While HOTD Season 3 was also eight episodes, it’s clear that the showrunners actually planned for that to be the case this time around, as the season moves at a much more satisfying pace than its predecessor.
The Battle of the Gullet and Rhaenyra’s seizure of King’s Landing — which constitute the first two episodes of Season 3 — effectively function as the two-episode climax that Season 2 never received. Condal has explained that the Gullet was postponed because of its logistical complexity and enormous resource requirements, but whatever the behind-the-scenes reasoning, its placement gives Season 3 a furious opening before the story moves into the early days of Rhaenyra’s reign.
Even if this season’s Harrenhal storyline still dragged at times, it was nowhere near as uninteresting as Season 2’s glacial pacing, which saw Daemon Targaryen — the series’ most charismatic character — trapped inside Alys Rivers’ vaguely magical machinations for the better part of the season.
Harrenhal still devours more screen time than any crumbling castle reasonably should, especially after Aemond arrives, but it doesn’t hold the entire narrative hostage like last season. Getting Daemon out of its confines and onto the battlefield was guaranteed to produce a more entertaining story, and almost every other storyline progressed more smoothly alongside him.
Corlys’ struggle to embrace his sons, Mysaria’s willingness to abandon her moral high ground, Ormund’s weaponized refinement and aristocratic superiority, Aegon’s surprising capacity for self-examination, Criston’s stubborn determination to die an “honorable death,” and Aemond’s inability to maintain his invulnerable facade all produce coherent, season-long character arcs.
That said, one arc clearly stands above the rest.
Officially Introducing: Rhaenyra the Cruel
Technically, House of the Dragon follows in the footsteps of Game of Thrones by exploring Westeros through the perspective of multiple characters. However, whereas Game of Thrones never featured a single true protagonist, House of the Dragon has been much more willing to place Rhaenyra Targaryen at the epicenter of its story — for better and for worse.
That Rhaenyra-centric approach undercut much of the succession conflict during Season 2. Instead of examining why different factions of Westeros might support either claimant, the series often leaned a little too heavily toward Rhaenyra as the moral compass of the series.
Season 3 finally corrects that imbalance by allowing Rhaenyra to devolve into paranoia, resulting in the long-awaited birth of Rhaenyra the Cruel.
Watching Rhaenyra justify her own rule from Dragonstone while more or less maintaining the moral high ground brought HOTD Season 2’s momentum to an absolute standstill. Watching her storm King’s Landing only to sabotage her political relationships as Aegon Targaryen rises from the ashes made HOTD Season 3 much more dynamic, due in no small part to Emma D’Arcy’s tremendous performance as Rhaenyra Targaryen.
House of the Dragon Season 3 features plenty of great acting performances — Tom Glynn-Carney as Aegon II, Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower, Phia Saban as Helaena Targaryen and James Norton as Ormund Hightower are only a few of the standouts — but none tops that of Emma D’Arcy.
An Emmy certainly isn’t out of the question, and regardless of what happens in the rest of the series, it will be hard for any House of the Dragon character to showcase more range than Rhaenyra did in the last eight episodes.
Even better, Rhaenyra’s fall from grace gives the rest of the cast more room to breathe. Once the show stopped insisting that its central character was in the right, the relationships around her became significantly more interesting.
That said, as enjoyable as HOTD Season 3 was compared to the previous season, stellar acting performances can only carry a franchise known for its writing so far. As George R.R. Martin warned, toxic butterflies can have disastrous effects down the line, and for Ryan Condal, Season 4 may finally reveal the cracks in his story.
Will George R.R. Martin’s Toxic Butterflies Come to Pass?
House of the Dragon has made no secret of its willingness to alter George R.R. Martin’s story, even while following the general outline of his novel, Fire & Blood. The book presents the Dance through contradictory historical accounts, giving Condal considerable freedom to interpret what “really” happened. However, some of those interpretations clearly struck a nerve with Martin.
In a since-deleted 2024 blog post, Martin focused on the show’s decision to remove Maelor Targaryen, arguing that the seemingly minor change would eliminate the event that motivated Helaena’s suicide and the subsequent uprising in King’s Landing. He then warned that “larger and more toxic butterflies” could emerge from additional changes being contemplated for Seasons 3 and 4.
As someone who hasn’t read the Fire & Blood novel, it’s not always obvious where Condal has chosen to part ways with the original story. What is apparent, however, is the fact that sometimes it feels like House of the Dragon is spinning its wheels.
For instance, take Corlys Velaryon. The Hand of the Queen shirks his political duties repeatedly throughout Season 3, whether through passivity or absence, yet he makes a somewhat important move every few episodes that pushes the plot forward.
Corlys’ desire to have Addam and Alyn legitimized makes sense, but the timing of that demand and his eventual kidnapping by the Hightowers feel contrived in the way they’re presented. Too often, the Sea Snake disappears until the story needs him. Alicent Hightower falls into a similar formula, whisking herself across Westeros whenever the next plot point requires her presence.
From Aegon and Larys’ oddly long trek between Rook’s Rest and Maidenpool to Jeyne Arryn’s curious handling of the Rhaena Targaryen-Sheepstealer debacle, there are enough hiccups in House of the Dragon‘s story to make viewers occasionally question why the events on screen are happening.
None of these problems is large enough to sink an otherwise strong season. However, with only eight episodes remaining in the fourth and final season, Condal will need to prove that he’s been in the driver’s seat this whole time, rather than piecing things together by the seat of his pants.
A few extra takeaways from House of the Dragon Season 3:
- In terms of costuming, props, and overall cinematography, House of the Dragon Season 3 earned stellar marks across the board. Special shoutout to Lady Jeyne Arryn’s wardrobe, which made the Vale a highlight of the season.
- Sheepstealer’s fight with Syrax, Caraxes, and Seasmoke was not the dragon-on-dragon confrontation I hoped to see this season. It was an absolute heartbreaker.
- Oscar Tully and Roderick Dustin nearly stole the show’s final stanza. Archie Barnes and Tommy Flanagan gave the Riverlands campaign exactly the combination of youthful steel and cold-blooded ferocity it needed. It’s easy to understand why Daemon enjoyed sharing a battlefield with those two killers.
- The unlikely trio of Aegon Targaryen, Larys Strong, and Tyland Lannister was one of Season 3’s most surprising successes. Sunfyre’s return was also every bit as badass as it could be.
- Poor Gwayne. On the other hand: no more Criston Cole!
- I cannot imagine how Harrenhal could become important enough to justify the amount of screen time this show has spent wandering its barren halls. After watching Daemon and Aemond experience Freudian fever dreams for two seasons, I barely batted an eye when Alys Rivers said that she was a centuries-old survivor of Aegon’s Conquest capable of wielding ancient magic.
- I’m not sure about Team Green, but Team Aegon is looking mighty enticing right now.
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