The following is a review of the eight-episode third season of HBO’s House of the Dragon — Series created by Ryan Condal and George R. R. Martin.
Nowadays, it can be difficult to remember just how big Game of Thrones was back when it aired, especially since the show is most often mentioned online for how frustrated fans were with the final season. But the continued success of the first spin-off show, House of the Dragon, is a testament to the fact that the original adaptation still holds a strong place in the hearts and minds of fantasy nerds (said and meant lovingly) around the world. I remember being wowed by the first season of the spin-off because it made me fall back in love with the world of the show that I had watched for so many years. When the second season finished in 2024, I wasn’t burnt out on it, but I noted the online frustrations and agreed with some of them. It did feel repetitive. It did feel rushed. It did feel like it didn’t actually have a proper season finale. Still, I was hopeful that the third season could win back some of the goodwill that the sensational first season had earned. Having recently finished the third season finale just last night, I can say that while I do think it is, in some respects, still suffering from some of the same issues that plagued it last season, the highest highs of the show keep me hooked. It is a show that can still wow you. It just doesn’t have as steady a hand as the early seasons of the original show did when it comes to building characters patiently, or when it comes to making story build-up feel purposeful rather than laborious. At its worst, it feels like the show is stalling. At its best, it feels like the show is not only delivering on the action but capable of doing something interesting with character focus.
One of the big asks for the start of the third season was for the show to start at a high pace to provide viewers with the level of entertainment expected of a season finale in the season premiere titled Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood. Given how much criticism the second season got for setting up a climactic event without giving it to us, this felt like something the show really had to do. And it did. The first episode of the third season delivered with strong acting beats, incredible CG-action, and incredibly upsetting action scenes with proper story and character consequences. The episode was largely praised. But I will admit that I didn’t fully warm to it immediately. In a way that really took me out of the show, it really did feel like a belated season finale, and its busy, formula-repeating events (an heir dying, a would-be queen being unhappy because people around her aren’t listening to her, etc.) made me fear that the show would continue to be stuck in the mud, which I felt parts of the second season were.
The second episode of the season — Queen’s Landing — kept a fast pace, and it, yes, felt like a belated season premiere. I jotted down in my notes that I felt the location-hopping for characters became a bit too much. An overly fast pace has been an issue with episodes in this narrative universe before, as characters are overly speedily moving from location to location and from narrative beat to narrative beat. But I did feel that the show found its feet in the second episode. Emma D’Arcy, who was terrific in the premiere as well, shares outstanding scenes with Matt Smith, whose Daemon Targaryen is poisoning her ear and influencing her approach to power.
However, perhaps the highlight of the season, for me, was seeing the third episode of the season — Rhaenyra Triumphant — change gears significantly. Here we had a compelling Rhaenyra-centric episode focusing on the ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’ aspect, as she learns what it means to rule again and what it’ll demand of her if she wants to be legitimized by every group in and around King’s Landing. It is an excellent episode that feels like it is in conversation with — or related to — the season one episode The Princess and the Queen, in which she tried to prove her worth even though she was suffering from the effects of post-partum. It was also an episode that had several dominoes falling, as she had to weigh optics against keeping allies, as well as figuring out what kind of ruler the world — and the state of it — will allow her to be. There is also great use of soundwork and visuals to emphasize how the walls are closing in on her.
After the third episode, though, I started to see the show repeat some of the mistakes of the second season again. It got stuck in the mud. Although there are good scenes with James Norton’s new character in the subsequent episodes, the other storylines took a hit. Certain future developments surrounding Rhaenyra’s supporting dragon riders became way too obvious, and the pace of the show halted significantly, causing the entire season to feel quite uneven in pace. As if that wasn’t enough, the show failed to find ways of making Aemond’s extended stay at Harrenhall entertaining, and instead it just felt like a retread of what they did with Daemon in Harrenhall, which was already a subplot and location that got a lot of criticism in season two. Build-up, or set-up, episodes felt overly clunky and slow, and the subplot involving Fabien Frankel’s character didn’t go anywhere particularly memorable.
However, even though I felt the season as a whole was uneven and featured too much repetition, I also think the show got itself out of the mud it got stuck in. The final two episodes — The Dragon in Winter and The Treasons at Tumbleton — had terrific battle scenes, outstanding dragon-to-dragon combat, and the conclusion to a subplot that worked surprisingly well to ‘rehabilitate’ Tom Glynn-Carney’s Aegon Targaryen character (that is, making him work as a character again). While it, too, felt repetitive at times, his subplot sometimes felt like Game of Thrones of old, when varied and complicated journeys through Westeros were the norm even for major characters.
Indeed, Glynn-Carney’s performance is one of the highlights of the season, as he eventually adds a at-his-wits-end lunacy to his character that is really fun to watch, and there are acting beats in those last two episodes that stand out in ways that are both really exciting for the future of the show, but also just because his line delivery sometimes feels unhinged in humorous ways. The King’s Landing-centric narratives close out the season rather bumpily, though. I thought a certain significant heel-turn at the center of the show felt a little bit too heavy-handed, even though it had certainly been set up again and again throughout the season. That said, in general, I thought it was a smart decision to have Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy on-screen together for as much of the season as they were (despite the fact that they were absent from one another in the finale).
In conclusion, I felt that the third season was, on the whole, an improvement on the second season, which felt unnecessarily curtailed. The show still features incredible action scenes and second-to-none dragon visual effects that make the action fantasy elements of the show work fantastically well. I also think D’Arcy, Smith, Glynn-Carney, and Cooke all help to elevate the show’s scenes through passionate performances that bring their respective characters to life well. That said, it still feels rather repetitive (especially so in the mid-section of the season), and I found the season to be unevenly paced. So, I don’t think the show recaptured the magic of the first season consistently here, but it does just enough right this season to make it all work relatively well.
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
