HOUSE OF THE DRAGON S3 had some thrilling scenes and A LOT of dragons, but overall was a slight disappointment. I loved GAME OF THRONES when it came out. The creators fumbled the ending, sure, but there was still a lot to love about that final season. It wowed me. It broke my heart. It thrilled, excited, and mystified me, and maybe that’s exactly the problem. I’ve come to expect that from this world, and HOUSE OF THE DRAGON rarely delivers it anymore.
HOUSE OF THE DRAGON suffers from “the curse of the prequel.” When you already know what happens in the grand scheme of House Targaryen, it gets a lot harder to invest in them along the way. For Star Wars fans out there, I also had this problem with ROGUE ONE, but then I loved ANDOR so much that it made ROGUE ONE better for me. King Aegon II’s story had a big twist in S2, plus the fates of Rhaenyra’s children, and whatever Daemon is up to at any given moment: None of it lands as shocking when you’ve already lived through GAME OF THRONES. It all just feels like familiar territory, and it’s hard to get excited each week.
Queen Rhaenyra and Corlys “The Sea Snake” Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) remain the strongest characters in the show, but for very different reasons. I don’t know Corlys’s fate the way I know hers. That uncertainty is doing a lot of work to keep me invested. I genuinely love Emma D’Arcy’s performance as Rhaenyra and wish the show would keep her as the main focus instead of drifting off with 50 other characters whose names are so similar that it’s genuinely hard to keep track of who’s who. For example: Jaehaerys & Jaehaerys & Jaehaera & Jacaerys or Alyn & Alfred & Alicent & Alys & Alyssa & Alysanne & Allun just to start.
That is the big issue: There are simply too many characters. With Aegon and Aemond sidelined for most of the season, everything outside Rhaenyra’s own storyline felt scattered. I haven’t read the books, so I don’t know how much of this was already streamlined for the show, but I have to imagine some of these characters or their houses could be combined, or cut entirely, for a tighter story. And don’t get me started on Rhaena Targaryen. Her story could be interesting, if only there were time for it.
From where they started in S2, to where they were at the end of this season, the dragonseeds turned out to be a big letdown. Hugh Hammer, Ulf the White, and Addam of Hull were introduced last season in such an exciting, dramatic way, and this season squandered nearly all of that potential. Hugh, who left his wife and her family to answer Rhaenyra’s call, had real potential but mostly just sulked around instead. Addam, one of Corlys’s bastard sons (and full brother to Alyn of Hull), has plenty of promise too, but he and Alyn both still seem to be living in their father’s shadow rather than getting meaty stories of their own. And with all of that being said, we don’t really NEED more character stories. But if you’re going to introduce them, at least give them something to do.
Ulf is my one exception as far as the dragonseeds go. The culmination of his S3 story at the Battle of Tumbleton drives the entire finale, and his arc got him there logically: everything we’ve seen of him leading up to that moment explains exactly his choices in the finale. And yet again, it didn’t land as shocking to me, when we’ve seen far crazier things happen in GAME OF THRONES. Plus Ulf was never likable to begin with, so I didn’t find myself rooting for him or against him. He was just mostly annoying, and easily the least interesting of the three dragonseeds until this finale.
HOUSE OF THE DRAGON is confirmed for four seasons, so next season will be the last, and if you know anything about Targaryen history, or if you were paying close attention during GAME OF THRONES, you already know roughly how this ends. What I want out of the final season is focus: Rhaenyra as queen for the Blacks, against whichever Green ends up on the throne; whether that’s Aegon or Aemond or another family member. I don’t need a lot of time spent on the Tullys, the Arryns, the Lannisters, the Starks, or the rest of the noble houses. I want the show to stay centered on House Targaryen, Black vs. Green, and the long throughline to the events of GAME OF THRONES that will take place a couple hundred years later. In S1, I didn’t think there were enough dragons for a show called HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. Now we’ve got so many dragons and yet so little focus on the “house” in the title.
HOUSE OF THE DRAGON S3 is streaming in its entirety on HBO Max and airing on HBO.
