House of the Dragon is now in its third season, but with releases spaced two years apart, each wait feels substantially stupid. My son was still an infant when the show first premiered in 2022, and he is in 4K preschool now. By the time the final season airs, he will be in first grade. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms came out earlier this year and was genuinely excellent. I did enjoy this season of House of the Dragon, but I can also see clearly why George R.R. Martin has had SIGNIFICANT disagreements with the people running the show.
Season 3 picks up directly where Season 2 left off, opening with the Battle of the Gullet. It is one of the more prominent engagements from the source material, involving the Triarchy allying with the Greens to break the naval blockade that Rhaenyra and House Velaryon have established around King’s Landing. The show takes some notable liberties with how it unfolds, but the sequence is visually impressive and appropriately chaotic.
What was neither impressive nor chaotic this season was Aemond Targaryen. He is by a wide margin the most dangerous individual the Greens have in this conflict, and he spends most of the season hovering nowhere. He gets his scenes, but the spotlight has shifted away from him, and his dragon, Vhagar, barely shows up either.
The primary antagonist this season turns out to be Ormund Hightower, son of Otto, uncle to King Aegon and his siblings, and a genuinely unpleasant man. What is a little strange is that in the books, he is Otto’s nephew rather than his son, and he is a fairly minor presence that most readers would struggle to recall years later. The show has given him a substantially different and expanded role, and that expansion has created a ripple of changes that spread outward from it.
On the Blacks’ side, Daemon and Rhaenyra remain the central focus, as they have been throughout, navigating wins and losses the way they have across the previous two seasons. This is also the point where Rhaenyra begins to genuinely test the patience of those around her, and the audience along with them. Emma D’Arcy’s performance felt off at times this season, and some of her acting was downright bad.
The best thing the show has going for it remains the dragons. Whatever HBO is spending on the visual effects, it shows. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms impressed me a great deal when it aired earlier this year, but its one real drawback is the complete absence of dragons. For anyone paying attention to where this story is heading, that absence is something of a signal. For anyone who does not yet know what becomes of these creatures by the end of the Dance of the Dragons, I will leave it at that.
House of the Dragon Season 3 is probably the weakest entry in the series to this point, though it is still a quality production and one I looked forward to whenever my wife and I had a free evening. Season 1 represents the high-water mark, and the showrunners should have more self-awareness about what they are doing by pulling away from the source material, especially given that everyone watched David Benioff and D.B. Weiss demonstrate exactly where that road leads. The impulse to go rogue and substitute their own ideas is not a new mistake, and it is not a forgivable one when the books are sitting right there. Season 4 being the final season is an argument for getting it right, not for getting creative. Fans will watch regardless and will find things to enjoy, but this kind of decision-making does not inspire much confidence in whatever these showrunners touch next.