Around the halfway mark of “House of the Dragon” Season 3, Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) declares, “We must cling to honor, lest we become beasts ourselves.” It’s a loaded statement, one filled with a dragon’s worth of weight to it. While it’s a particularly rich sentiment coming from a character as self-righteously pious as Cole, it also serves as a fitting treatise on the series at this point in its story. If the Rubicon between honor and disgrace wasn’t already crossed, it certainly has now.
For two seasons, “House of the Dragon” was inherently methodical in its approach, sometimes to its detriment, in establishing the central conflict over which side of the Targaryen family deserved to rule some 200 years before “Game of Thrones.” As the wheel turns into the early stages of Season 3, the veritable niceties are aside and the pins well-set, it’s time for showrunner Ryan Condal and his fellow creatives to start knocking things down. As a result, “House of the Dragon” feels even more confident in itself, perhaps due to the fact that it is no longer saddled with so much jostling of these pieces around the chessboard.
In fact, the premiere throws viewers straight into the deep end (not a pun, despite its long-awaited and much-promised aquatic setpiece) with little recapping or rehashing of previous stakes. In this regard, the flagship “Game of Thrones” spinoff (said not to disparage “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” which is excellent but produced at a fraction of what it takes to make “House”) delivers in spades. By combining the horrors of war alongside the emotional weight of decades-long (manufactured by the show thanks to a savvy time jump) relationships and tensions between characters, “House of the Dragon” shifts into a new gear as Westeros continues to be besieged by familial squabbling. Across the four episodes provided to critics, chaos and grand change unfold for pretty much every single major character in the series’ vast ensemble, all to gripping effect.
Season 3 kicks off in the immediate aftermath of Season 2’s big finale. For Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), it’s whether or not she can trust the deal she made with Alicent (Olivia Cooke) at the end of last season: sparing the lives of her other children outside of Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) in exchange for King’s Landing. As she rallies her forces, including the return of her uncle and lover Daemon (Matt Smith), an ocean battle between the Triarchy fleet helmed by Captain Lohar (Abigail Thorn) prepares to meet the Velaryon fleet with Corlys (Steve Toussaint). The premiere spends little time rehashing these events; instead, it dives straight in, assured that those tuning in are along for what’s next to come.
And unfold it does, delivering on the promise the series set out to accomplish all those years ago. Viewers looking for follow-through on seasons’ worth of setup will find it here in spades, many of which come rather quickly. To wit: the long-promised “Battle of the Gullet,” one of the most brutal conflicts in Westerosian lore, lives up to its crushing reputation in a stunning execution by director Loni Peristere. The battle then forms the emotional backbone for the arcs of Rhaenyra and many of her supporters. The third episode, directed by Clare Kilner and written by Sara Hess (both of whose work over the last two seasons have established them as all-timers for this franchise), is a particular standout for how it visualizes and dives into Rhaenyra’s headspace in the wake of the Gullet.
But the series has always known how to handle the arcs of its leads quite well, while some of its supporting (and younger) cast remain underdeveloped. Season 3 continues to tweak this, too, adding nice depth to characters like Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell), and giving Tom Glynn-Carney a tension-filled arc as he and Larys (Matthew Needham) try to survive, incognito, outside of the safety of King’s Landing.
Even new additions have sturdier ground underneath them this go-round. The biggest beneficiary of this is the inclusion of “Happy Valley” star James Norton, who joins as Lord Ormund Hightower, cousin to Alicent. Norton immediately infuses Ormund with one flourish after another as the series compellingly sets him up as Rhaenyra’s latest antagonist. That comes at the expense of a reduced role for Ewan Mitchell and his diabolical portrayal of Aemond Targaryen, as the actor is more absent from these early proceedings, likely due to his time working on “Wuthering Heights” and to service Lord Ormund’s presence as a big bad. For all of its strides in fleshing out the next generation of Targaryens, specifically Alicent and her children, the series still stumbles in giving the same amount of texture to Rhaenyra or Daemond’s children, particularly Jace (Harry Collett) and Lady Baela (Bethany Antonia), both of whom feel short-sided in these early episodes.
What strikes me the most about this season, however, is how quickly my emotional investment in these characters returned, especially knowing this civil war will likely end as all do: in the most emotionally devastating way possible. “House of the Dragon’s” biggest strength is how these characters are raging against the dying of this empire, founded upon one catastrophic misunderstanding that plunged the entire realm into war. That dramatic tension in and of itself is compelling, but because of how Condal and crew have structured the series with all the time spent with Alicent, Rhaenyra, Cole and others in their early years, each little betrayal of their own honors in pursuit of this larger goal is magnified by the weight of that narrative experience.
As the losses mount on both sides, Season 3 proves that “House of the Dragon” is committed to following through on the emotional devastation of trying to find some shred of honor amidst a conflict that’s shown, time and time again, to be far less black and white (or green) than either side would be willing to admit.
In fact, the most devastating notion of this season of “House of the Dragon” might be the creeping realization that the only way to win this conflict is to abandon any shred of honor entirely — and the emotional weight of that revelation makes the series richer because of it.
“House of the Dragon” Season 3 premieres Sunday on HBO.