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\n In embracing all-out nihilism, the Game of Thrones prequel reaches its potential in season three.
\n Photo: Theo Whiteman\/HBO\n <\/p>\n
Team Black? Team Green? Or just Team Dragon? Join forces and sign up<\/a> for our subscriber-exclusive newsletter dissecting House of the Dragon season three.<\/p>\n Sound the horns: House of the Dragon<\/a> has fixed its momentum problem. In season three, vows are made and broken, citizens are violated and slaughtered, and heroes we\u2019ve known from the beginning are unceremoniously offed. It\u2019s bleak as hell, and it\u2019s also the best House of the Dragon has ever been, clear-eyed about the story it\u2019s telling and no longer so enamored with the people grasping for power or the dragons they use for their bidding.<\/p>\n To be fair, stretching a few chapters from Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin\u2019s in-universe history of the Targaryens, into a multi-season bonanza of familial infighting for the Iron Throne was always going to come with pacing issues. HOTD\u2019s first season<\/a> comprised a lot of setup, time jumps, and a questionable prophetic tie<\/a> to Game of Thrones<\/a> proper in order to establish the intimacy between Rhaenyra (Emma D\u2019Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke), best friends turned step-relations turned opposing matriarchs battling over the Iron Throne. Following the death of Rhaenyra\u2019s father and Alicent\u2019s husband, King Viserys (Paddy Considine), the women split over Rhaenyra\u2019s right to the crown versus Alicent\u2019s son, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney<\/a>). Season two<\/a> had bouts of devastating dragon action saddled with narrative wheel-spinning; there are only so many times one can nod along to the thematic parallels of Queen Rhaenyra pacing in frustration around Dragonstone while Queen Dowager Alicent paces in frustration around King\u2019s Landing to understand, hey, there are some similarities between Team Black and Team Green! HOTD spent much of its run time so far assuring viewers that this will all connect back to Game of Thrones, really, and there are people you\u2019ll want to root for in this whole m\u00eal\u00e9e, promise. In its third season, the prequel series holds onto the former tactic but abandons the latter \u2014 to its betterment. This is an ignoble war making monsters and fools out of its participants, and against the uncontrollable weapons that are dragons, everyone\u2019s resolve is crumbling.<\/p>\n The premiere, which airs on June 21 on HBO, picks up immediately where season-two finale \u201cThe Queen Who Ever Was\u201d<\/a> left off in August 2024, when Alicent came to Rhaenyra with a secret proposition. If she were to sacrifice her two shitty sons, Aegon and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell<\/a>), to Team Black and surrender King\u2019s Landing to Rhaenyra, could Rhaenyra rule justly and save Alicent and her daughter Helaena (Phia Saban<\/a>)? Rhaenyra is seriously considering the proposition when HOTD starts up again, to the surprise of the men in her Small Council. Can she really trust Alicent, a woman who has conspired against Rhaenyra for so long? But all this bloodshed in her name is getting to the Black Queen, who has already lost one son to the war and sent away her three youngest children to keep them safe. In a season where practically all the Targaryens feel the destabilizing consequences of their actions, Rhaenyra struggles to gain the respect she\u2019s convinced she deserves, especially from men who sneer that she\u2019s never been to battle, the only way Westeros knows to solve its problems. The action sequences are as exorbitant as ever, especially when the dragon Sheepstealer and his underbite show up. But what you\u2019ll remember long after the Battle of the Gullet or the Battles of Tumbleton are over, instead of the sick tricks the dragonriders get up to, are the oceans and fields of dead, the blood in the water and the mud, the bodies picked clean by animal scavengers and human looters alike.<\/p>\n Shook free of Martin\u2019s influence<\/a>, co-creator and showrunner Ryan Condal still sticks to most of Fire & Blood\u2019s pivotal plot points, but Condal also corrects a recurring HOTD error: He fills in the internal blanks of these characters by sowing discontent within the teams, disrupting their assumed homogeny and hammering home just how devastating this war for loyalty and land has been. Aegon, dragged out of King\u2019s Landing by spymaster Lord Larys Strong (Matthew Needham<\/a>) in an effort to save him from the fratricidal Aemond, gets an up-close look at the petty tyrants who have sprouted up in the countryside thanks to his impetuous rule. Aemond, horny always for bloodshed, pushes his luck with Alicent, who has to play the role of supportive mommy while secretly yearning for Rhaenyra to accept her offer and free her from her mad sons. Daemon was stuck at Harrenhal<\/a> last season; now, Matt Smith is unleashing every smirk and eye roll in his arsenal as he serves as his wife-niece Rhaenyra\u2019s best warrior and worst diplomatic envoy. He\u2019s either dropping sarcastic, unbothered one-liners about the war to opponents like the rigid Ormund Hightower (James Norton), who leads the land army pledged to Aegon and has been warding Alicent\u2019s youngest son, Daeron, or cooing in Rhaenyra\u2019s ear about world domination like they\u2019re Pinky and the Brain. Either way, he\u2019s a menace.<\/p>\n In between the expected violence are dialogue-heavy scenes where characters discuss their ideologies and worldviews and grapple with what it means to rule and seem genuinely changed by the rigor of those conversations. At long last, the interiorities so many of these characters lack \u2014 especially the adult versions of Rhaenyra and Alicent, who usually are limited to reactivity \u2014 are able to expand. This season\u2019s third episode should be recognized as the best hour of the series so far, a thorough, process-centric portrait of what\u2019s required to lead the commonfolk and sit on the maybe-sentient Iron Throne, which is famed for its ability to accept or reject a ruler. D\u2019Arcy and Cooke<\/a> have remarkable moments of despair and paranoia all throughout the first half of this season, but they shine particularly in this episode as each queen grapples with the limitations of her role and the myriad responsibilities they\u2019ve been saddled with thanks to their fathers, husbands, and sons. HOTD\u2019s version of feminism is still a simplistic \u201cboys drool, girls rule\u201d dichotomy, but it\u2019s easy to accept when D\u2019Arcy and Cooke maneuver their characters so well into joined puzzle pieces, each woman\u2019s frustrations and resentments against the Man becoming easier to understand when the other is presented as her mirror. And, most importantly, all this progression is occurring at a rapid clip, with full arcs tidily wrapped up in the four (of eight) episodes provided for review and characters\u2019 hidden motivations revealed deliberately and steadily. We\u2019re closer to the end of HOTD now than the beginning, and the series, noticeably and refreshingly, churns along toward that conclusion.<\/p>\n