House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1 Review: The Battle of the Gullet Was Visually Stunning but Emotionally Hollow

Critic’s Rating: 3 / 5.0

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If you’ve been eagerly anticipating the fact that House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1 would chart the Battle of the Gullet, then you’ve been waiting a long time.

Seriously. It’s been almost two years since House of the Dragon Season 2 ended in the most anticlimactic fashion, thanks to HBO cutting the episode order.

I get that HBO wanted House of the Dragon Season 3 to begin with the battle because it’s a spectacle. There’s no doubt about that.

All of the treading water was almost worthwhile because this installment was certainly a feast for the eyes.

Sadly, I don’t feel the same way about how the storylines surrounding this big event were handled.

The Greens and the Blacks have lost countless key players over the years, so I can see why Alicent felt the only way forward was to strike a deal with Rhaenyra to hand over King’s Landing.

In Alicent’s eyes, it was a small price to pay to at least try to have any semblance of a life with whichever of her children survived in the aftermath.

There have been times when Alicent truly hated Rhaenyra, but I’m not sure where these two can go if their plan works.

Alicent has single-handedly turned her back on Aegon and Aemond by making this deal, and I don’t know if there’s any way for her to mend fences if she’s ever in the same room with them again.

I enjoyed her spiral as she realized that Aegon had already left with Larys and then immediately got to work sending Aemond to Harrenhal because she was so eager to keep up this deal with Rhaenyra.

House of the Dragon Remains Shocking

I was genuinely stunned by that scene with Aemond and Alicent. I know the Targaryens have a history of incestuous behavior, but I felt sick to my stomach by how that played out.

Poor Alicent herself looked disturbed, whereas her son was so nonchalant about it. How very Targaryen of him.

My biggest annoyance with House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1 was that Jaecerys couldn’t help but make terrible decisions.

His mother has proven not to make calculated decisions in the past, but her entering this battle would have been a show to the realm that she was not sitting idly by and was prepared to get into the thick of it.

I can see why Jaecerys thought it was a good idea to lock up his mother to stop her from making a decision that didn’t align with who she is as a person, but in what world would Jaecerys have been able to overrule any of Rhaenyra’s counsel?

His argument was compelling enough, but I’m finding it hard to understand why he thought it was a good idea.

Did he unquestioningly believe that with the Sea Snake and dragons in tow, he would steamroll the competition?

Then again, I don’t think he banked on Sheepstealer showing up and going rogue.

One of the biggest problems with Jaecerys in this installment was that House of the Dragon gave him a savior complex and then bent over backward to make him responsible for his own downfall.

He locked up his mother because he thought he knew better. He rushed into battle because he thought he knew better.

Even when things started to go wrong, he continued to act as though he was the only person capable of saving the day.

The problem is that none of it felt organic.

One of the things I’ve liked about House of the Dragon is how it has expanded the lore of dragons.

There’s so much we don’t know about them and how they behave, despite having seen them in the franchise for 15 years now.

Rhaena taking control of Sheepstealer was fated ever since she started pursuing the wild dragon during House of the Dragon Season 2, but the show didn’t do the best job of bringing this storyline to life.

For one, it deviated considerably from Fire and Blood. I’m not too opposed to that, but considering Rhaena was in pursuit of the dragon for so long, I expected a far better payoff.

I’m not sure how she thought it was a good idea to join the Battle of the Gullet despite literally just taking control of the dragon.

I get that she got to Dragonstone, saw the burning in the distance, and felt it was necessary, but everything that could go wrong did.

The show clearly wants us to view her arrival as a heroic moment.

Still, it came across as recklessly irresponsible because she barely understood her dragon and immediately inserted herself into the biggest battle of the war.

The reality is that she made a reckless decision that undoubtedly played the biggest part in Jaecerys’ death.

My biggest annoyance was that the battle started with Jaecerys and Vermax at a disadvantage because of the tools the Triarchy brought into it.

It’s always painful when the dragons are harmed because they’re known as these behemoth creatures capable of unleashing fiery hell on anyone who gets in their way.

But Vermax suffered from a failure to launch because of that.

In hindsight, maybe if Baela and Moondancer had never saved him at the beginning of the battle, his death would have been more impactful.

This leads into one of the most baffling omissions from Fire and Blood.

In the source material, Rhaenyra’s sons Viserys and Aegon were captured by the Triarchy, with Aegon escaping and returning to Dragonstone with the news.

That development would have fundamentally changed the context of Jaecerys’ actions.

Rhaenyra Is Ready for War

How would Rhaenyra be expected to think rationally, knowing one of her sons was being held hostage? She wouldn’t. Suddenly, Jaecerys locking her away and taking matters into his own hands makes a lot more sense.

Instead, the show strips away that motivation, leaving us with a character who makes increasingly reckless decisions because the plot requires it.

These changes continue to detract from what should be a good show, and I’m not sure it’s justified to make changes that make the story less logical.

That’s why Jaecerys’ death didn’t land for me. Compare it to Luke’s death at the end of House of the Dragon Season 1.

That moment was heartbreaking because it felt inevitable once events were set in motion. Luke wasn’t trying to play the hero. He was a kid caught in a conflict far bigger than himself.

Jaecerys’ death should have been equally devastating. Instead, I spent most of the battle wondering why he kept making decisions that put himself and everyone around him in greater danger.

By the time he was riddled with arrows, I had already checked out emotionally because the show had spent too much time convincing me that his downfall was self-inflicted.

I’m far more interested in how the aftermath will shake out because, whether she wants to admit it or not, Rhaena played a big part in Jaecerys’ death.

I can’t even begin to imagine how Rhaenyra will take this loss. She’s lost far too much and must be getting numb to the deaths at this point.

She’s never been the type of person to sit with her emotions either, so I suspect she’ll want to know everything that went wrong with the battle and set out on a quest for vengeance.

Rhaena is going to have to get rid of the dragon or disappear like she was supposed to, or else she may have Rhaenyra chasing her across Westeros.

It’s hard to be too mad at Rhaena because getting a dragon is a Targaryen rite of passage, and she must have felt left out as everyone else got theirs.

But her misguided attempt at being a savior came back to bite her in a big way. I’m not sure how she’ll be able to come back from this.

I’m not even going to dive into Corlys’ apparent death because there’s no way that he’s dead. This show would have shown him perish if it were headed in that direction.

All things considered, House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1 delivered the battle fans have spent years waiting to see.

The spectacle was undeniable.

The dragons looked incredible, the action was ambitious, and HBO clearly wanted to make a statement with the season premiere. The problem is that the emotional weight wasn’t there.

Too many character decisions felt engineered to get everyone into position for the Battle of the Gullet, and the changes from Fire and Blood continue to create problems that didn’t need to exist in the first place.

A battle this massive should have left me devastated by what was lost. Instead, I walked away more frustrated by how the show got there.

What are your thoughts on Jaecerys’s death, House of the Dragon Fanatics? Do you think the deviations from the source material have ruined the HBO hit?

What do you think of Rhaena’s actions? Do you think she’ll keep Sheepstealer?

And, what do you think of Larys’s scheming to save him and Aemond, but having the rest of their men killed?

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
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