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For anyone who complained that not enough was happening on “House of the Dragon,” Season 3 feels like showrunner Ryan Condal and his writing team heard your feedback and cranked the dial up to, “a hundred things are happening at once.”
After two seasons of build-up to a war, the “Game of Thrones” prequel finally gets to the good part. Season 3 is all gas, no brakes.
It’s hard to keep track of how many beheadings there are, how many dragons spit fire, or how many big plot events happen.
Among the three shows in the “Game of Thrones” world (the original show, this show, and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms“), “House of the Dragon” is the inferior offering.
That hasn’t changed – even though this is the best season yet.
There’s a lot of action. Much of it lacks depth, because the characters remain underdeveloped and the story is spread too thin across too many of them. But, this season flows better than the previous two, and it’s more entertaining.
If you can leave your brain at the door, Season 3 is the perfect summer show, full of spectacle, strong performances, and more levity than past seasons, in between the violence and tragedy. (The writers seem to have taken note that the lighter-toned “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was a hit).
Set over a hundred years before the events of “Game of Thrones,” “House of the Dragon” follows a civil war between Daenerys (Emilia Clarke)’s ancestors: Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), and her half-brother Aegon (Tom Glynn Carney), fighting over who is the heir to the Iron Throne.
Rhaenyra has her uncle/ husband Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) on her side, as her fiercest fighter. The show still sidelines him too much. But, in an improvement over Season 2, at least he’s not forced to spend an entire season hallucinating sex with his mom (remember that?).
On Aegon’s side, he has his brother, the volatile, eye patch-wearing Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) as his most formidable warrior. The latter remains the show’s MVP.
Mitchell remains the cast member most attuned to what kind of show this really is: not a prestige drama, but a gnarly, operatic, absurd melodrama. His scenery-chewing continues stealing the show.
Aemond and Aegon’s mom Alicent (Olivia Cooke) is also a key schemer.
Last season, Aemond even tried to kill Aegon. He hurt the would-be king badly enough to sideline him. Aemond is now functionally in charge.
So, there’s infighting within the sides of this war, too. If that sounds convoluted, yes, it is. And, there’s more!
Not only does the plot jump around haphazardly between dozens of characters, but it also still can’t pick who to focus on. On top of that, it piles on a handful of new players.
Some of them are played by charming actors – such as “Sons of Anarchy” star Tommy Flanagan, who plays a grizzled Northern warrior fighting with the Starks, or “House of Guinness” star James Norton, who joins the cast as a haughty Hightower relative.
It’s spot-on casting, but you’re not sure whether to cheer or groan when they enter. The last thing this show needs is to keep expanding into more characters.
“Game of Thrones” had a vast cast, but it did a good job balancing the story, and focusing on a half-dozen main characters per episode.
“House of the Dragon’s” writing team hasn’t figured out how to do that well, and that issue is exacerbated in Season 3. The story is still unfocused.
“Game of Thrones” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” are both accessible to casual viewers. With “House of the Dragon,” if you haven’t read the books (or spent time Googling the lore), the show hangs you out to dry.
The battles are impressive if you didn’t watch “Game of Thrones” or “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.” The other shows do a better job at anchoring you in a character’s point of view during a fight.
“House of the Dragon” has a lot of action and chaos, but it whips around so jerkily between it all, it dulls the emotional impact. Random side characters get more screen time than people who are ostensibly the leads, like Daemon.
But, if you can turn off the part of your mind pointing all this out, it’s a good time, full of splashy action.
The third episode teases us with the better show that “House of the Dragon” should have been all along, honing in on Rhaenyra’s unreliable perspective. It’s too little, too late for the show to shift gears from a bird’s eye view of “what happened” to a close focus on subjective points of view.
But, when viewed in isolation, it’s a stand-out episode.
If you liked the first two seasons of “House of the Dragon,” you’ll like Season 3 more.
If you thought the first two seasons were just okay, Season 3 probably won’t change that. But, at least it’s not boring. The explosive part of the plot is here, at last.
“House of the Dragon” Season 3 premieres Sunday, June 21 on HBO at 9 p.m.
