{"id":738697,"date":"2026-06-15T17:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T17:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/738697\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T17:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T17:17:07","slug":"house-of-the-dragon-season-3-review-more-action-less-sleepy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/738697\/","title":{"rendered":"‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Review: More Action, Less Sleepy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cIf this be victory,\u201d a character on \u201cHouse of the Dragon<\/a>\u201d reflects while gazing out at a corpse-strewn battlefield, \u201cI hope I never see another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat line is essentially the thesis statement of the \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d prequel series, which returns on June 21 after a now-customary two-year absence. (Franchise fans could get their fix in the meantime with the lovely, much lower-key \u201cA Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/a>,\u201d which aired on HBO earlier this year.) The drama follows a massive civil war that pits the royal family of Westeros against itself to the benefit of absolutely no one. Season 2, however, faced some criticism<\/a> for its lack of climactic setpieces, potentially due to an episode order shortened from 10 to just eight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPersonally, I was a defender of the sophomore season\u2019s sometimes funereal feel, apart from some true wheel-spinning like an overreliance on dream sequences<\/a>. Not only did I find the major confrontations we did see, like the death of Princess Rhaenys Targaryen<\/a> (Eve Best) and maiming of Iron Throne claimant Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) in the show\u2019s first proper instance of dragon-on-dragon combat, plenty awesome \u2014 as in, literally awe-inspiring \u2014 in themselves; I\u2019d also internalized the show\u2019s previously well-established stance toward armed conflict. The quote that opens this review is simply one of the more explicit statements of what any casual \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d viewer already knows: war is hell, and there\u2019s no war more hellacious than one with fire-breathing, questionably controllable weapons of mass destruction. It\u2019s not something to look forward to, or relish when it arrives.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs is typical for a show of this scale, the four episodes of Season 3 provided to critics came with a laundry list of spoilers longer than some wedding toasts. But one plot point I can divulge \u2014 in fact, one I bet HBO would very much like me to \u2014\u00a0is that there\u2019s a major showdown in the very first episode. The infamous Battle of the Gullet pits naval forces loyal to Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D\u2019Arcy) and led by decorated commander Corlys \u201cSea Snake\u201d Velaryon (Stephen Toussaint) against a fleet from a Triarchy of allied city-states who\u2019ve agreed to help break Rhaenyra\u2019s blockade on the Westerosi capital of King\u2019s Landing. It\u2019s also one of several pivotal confrontations that will likely allay concerns about continued treading of water, Narrow Sea or otherwise.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs stewarded by showrunner Ryan Condal and directed by Loni Peristere, the Battle of the Gullet is indeed spectacular. Yet the entire point of \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d has been so well made that there\u2019s little satisfaction to be gained by the Pyrrhic victories achieved within its scope. There\u2019s no moment comparable to Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) raising the chain across the bay in the Battle of the Blackwater, an early highlight in \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d that delivered a (brief) dose of fist-pumping triumph. When the dragons arrive at the Gullet, any relief felt by Rhaenyra\u2019s troops is fleeting at best \u2014 especially when not all of them obey their riders\u2019 wishes, which is how this whole mess began in the first place. Though neither history nor the parties affected care that Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) didn\u2019t mean for his supersized pet to vaporize his own nephew, which is another \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d theme: that individual intentions are no match for larger forces, be they historical or animal.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s why, to my mind, the more exciting development in Season 3 is much more intimate in scope than hordes of troops descending into chaos. The final episode of Season 2 saw a long-delayed face-off between Rhaenyra and her estranged childhood friend-turned-stepmother (the Targaryens, everybody!) Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), two women now stranded on opposite sides of the yawning chasm that started as a crack in their once-strong bond. The scene was a reminder of the rewarding layers in the relationship as acted by two of the more skilled actors in a deep-benched ensemble. (So skilled, in fact, that we barely blink when reminded the 32-year-old Cooke is meant to be the mother of 29-year-old Mitchell.)<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m forbidden from disclosing their exact circumstances, but Season 3 features many more scenes between this central pair, a rewarding return by \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d to its roots. Decades have passed within the series\u2019 time frame, not to mention four years of real time; it\u2019s often difficult to recall the complex web of alliances, betrayals and family ties that brought these characters to each other\u2019s throats, a confusion that\u2019s sometimes purposeful and sometimes frustrating. (It took me several minutes of one supposedly emotional midseason scene to remember I was watching a parent speak to their own child.) In their alternating waves of resentment and understanding, anger and sorrow, D\u2019Arcy and Cooke imbue Rhaenyra and Alicent\u2019s dynamic with all the weight of this history and none of its convolutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNot all of the show\u2019s connections are so well-realized, even foundational ones that drive vast swathes of the story. Two seasons later, for example, \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d is still paying the price for handwaving such developments as Rhaenyra\u2019s long-term affair with Harwin Strong (Ryan Corr), which produced two children whose widely disputed legitimacy played a major role in starting the war. Seeds planted in Season 1 are supposed to be bearing fruit by now, but Rhaenyra\u2019s continued denial and her hazily sketched blip of a massively consequential romance make the payoff less than cathartic. It\u2019s a good thing, then, that Rhaenyra and Alicent\u2019s multifaceted rapport is a check the show is more than able to cash.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d is adapted from author George R.R. Martin\u2019s \u201cFire & Blood,\u201d a text that\u2019s more an alternate history encyclopedia than literary narrative. At times, Condal and his collaborators work to shade in the nuance and humanity that gets erased in academic accounts; at others, they accurately channel the feeling of stumbling on a footnote that contains an entire idiosyncratic life story. So it is with Alicent\u2019s cousin Ormund Hightower (James Norton), a Season 3 newcomer who quickly earns his place in a crowded field of combat. Deceptive, capricious, fussy and endowed with quirks like a sensitivity to scents, Ormund enters the fray as a chaos agent, nominally allied with the so-called Greens (the Alicent-Aemond-Aegon side) but with an agenda and strategy of his own. He\u2019s the kind of character who leaps off the page in Martin\u2019s writing, a feeling Condal and others preserve in the adaptation despite Martin\u2019s publicly stated issues<\/a> with some of their choices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCondal has said<\/a> that \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d will end with Season 4, and it\u2019s not quite a criticism to say that the first half of Season 3 left me ready for that conclusion. I don\u2019t need to know the particulars of how the conflict resolves to know it will leave no one truly happy and everyone worse off, precisely because \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d forecasts that so clearly in each character\u2019s terrible, escalatory decisions. That\u2019s what makes both marginal figures like Ormond and fundamental ones like the two antiheroines so important. Whether they provide surprise and distraction or anchoring ballast, it\u2019s the people who make \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d worth enduring the predetermined devastation. The dragons are just the CGI flying lizards on top.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeason 3 of \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d will premiere on HBO and HBO Max on June 21 at 9 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf this be victory,\u201d a character on \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d reflects while gazing out at a corpse-strewn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,57216,348],"class_list":["post-738697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-house-of-the-dragon","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}