House of the Dragon Redeems Itself With a Complete (If Confusing) Season

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of House of the Dragon.]

House of the Dragon Season 3 ended with a bang on Sunday night. The villain of the season was defeated in a battle that nevertheless proved the senseless carnage of war, and the remaining pieces on the board were rearranged in dramatic fashion for the final season to come. That marks a dramatic improvement over Season 2, which ended unsatisfyingly in the midst of buildup to a battle that viewers knew they would have to wait two years to see. 

As a result, Season 3 had to start by resolving the previous season’s leftover baggage, which made for an unwieldy start. The Battle of the Gullet that dominated the season premiere was an epic affair, complete with a full-on naval battle and tons of dragon action that culminated in the tragic death of Prince Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett), but it was an awkward way to kick off a new season. It would have made much more sense as the finale to Season 2, which spent most of its episodes getting the various armies and navies of Westeros in place for the Gullet, only to delay the climax. When it did finally come, viewers who hadn’t done a binge rewatch to prepare may have forgotten who the Winter Wolves were or why they should care about the Triarchy. 

It took one episode for Season 3 to finally deliver that violent resolution, and another to place Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) on the Iron Throne via the plan she cooked up with her rival Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) in the Season 2 finale. Only with Episode 3, when Rhaenyra started to realize that actually governing the Seven Kingdoms was a lot more difficult than she had imagined, did it feel like Season 3 kicked off in its own right. 

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The stark difference between winning a throne and actually sitting in it day after day has made good material for Westeros fantasy shows since the very beginning of Game of Thrones, and Rhaenyra’s storyline this season continued that rich tradition. Even as Rhaenyra adopted populist policies like taking food from the King’s Landing elite and redistributing it to the starving poor, she failed to accomplish basic government tasks like protecting her police force or keeping her most powerful allies (from the legendary Sea Snake to her new low-born dragonriders) happy in the new regime. Rhaenyra tried to show mercy to the people of nearby Tumbleton by not burning their town to the ground when it was taken over by Hightower forces, but in doing so allowed her enemies to mount a terror campaign against her citizens and take advantage of her dragonriders’ dissatisfaction. 

The Hightower occupation of Tumbleton and the climactic battle in Sunday’s season finale marked a departure from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, where the town is defended by Rhaenyra’s supporters instead of assaulted by them. It was one of many changes this season, which Martin has made clear he’s unhappy about, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. All adaptations need to riff on their source material, and Fire & Blood especially allows for it. Unlike the A Song of Ice and Fire novels that fueled HBO’s original Game of Thrones series, Fire & Blood is not written as a narrative with point-of-view characters, but rather as a history made up of conflicting sources, and House of the Dragon has often been creative with filling in the gaps. 

This season’s strongest storyline, for instance, was the journey of the disgraced and disguised Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) through the humiliation of surviving in refugee camps after previously living the most spoiled life anyone could have in Westeros. The fallen king’s journey back to a position of power takes place entirely “off-page” in Fire & Blood, but the show made a meal of it. Both the writing of Aegon’s storyline and Glynn-Carney’s visceral performance as an arrogant royal brought low evoked classic Game of Thrones high points by putting a detestable character through hell until they actually become sympathetic. By the end of this season, even the most diehard Rhaenyra supporter could exult in Aegon’s reunion with his similarly scarred dragon, Sunfyre.

But if the show is going to depart from Martin’s text, it needs to know where it’s going instead. The logistics of Tumbleton changed, but it worked out because the results stayed mostly the same. After a season of ruling the occupied town with an iron fist, Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton) got his deserved comeuppance at the hands of grizzled Northern warrior Roddy “The Ruin” Dustin (Tommy Flanagan), while Rhaenyra’s dragonrider Ulf White (Tom Bennett) switched sides, just as in Martin’s text. Some changes weren’t so successful. The show made a major departure by creating a romantic relationship between Rhaenyra and her adviser Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) but, apparently fearing that this new relationship might change things too drastically down the line, unceremoniously kicked Mysaria to the curb at the top of the season finale without even giving them a breakup scene. This gave Mysaria a reason to drive Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban) to suicide, but one piece of whispered advice hardly makes up for a season of Helaena trying desperately to survive, or for losing a character who had gained new energy in the adaptation (it’s worth noting that changing the logic behind Helaena’s suicide remains Martin’s most specific criticism of the show’s changes). 

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But the show’s most burdensome change to the text continues to be its ongoing assertion of Alicent as a main character even after the plot has passed her by. The rivalry between Rhaenyra and Alicent was the driving drama of Season 1, and the focus of the show’s promotion. But now that war is well underway and the story is being driven by constant military battles rather than castle politics, there’s little for a dainty Dowager Queen to do. Occasional check-ins could be fruitful, but instead Alicent is inserted into every episode, and even spicily suggesting potential incest with her son Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) doesn’t compensate for time that could be better spent with other characters (such as Helaena and Mysaria). It’s a credit to Cooke that she’s game for whatever weirdness, but it tends to discombobulate the rest of the show and bring the timing of everything into question when Alicent can travel from King’s Landing to Harrenhal in a single episode but Rhaenyra still hasn’t received news of the battlefield death of her former lover Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel). Perhaps a big reason the season finale feels so satisfying is that it doesn’t feature Alicent at all. 

Some of the wobbly plot decisions are compensated for by the fact that House of the Dragon is one of the most gorgeous TV shows ever made. Two years is a long time to wait in between TV seasons, but at least it results in incredibly complex VFX work for epic battles on both sea and land, with half a dozen colorful dragons that each boast their own personalities. Seeing Caraxes lean down to check on Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) after a tussle with Sheepstealer earlier this season was just as impressive as seeing Caraxes blow a gigantic hole through the walls of Tumbleton in the finale. Caroline McCall’s incredibly intricate costumes also do a lot of visual storytelling, and she saved the best for last with Rhaenyra’s Joan of Arc-inspired armor that proved perfectly fitting for storming the capital church of Westeros and killing their equivalent of the pope in the season finale. Glorious heavy metal fantasy aesthetics abound, even as some of the finer points of Martin’s vision have become obscured. We’ll have to wait for the fourth and final season to see if it can all come together in the end, but at least this time viewers don’t have to spend two years waiting for catharsis. 

House of the Dragon Season 3 is now streaming on HBO Max.