‘House of the Dragon’ season 3 review: more action, less sleepy

“If this is the victory,” a character in “House of the Dragon” thinks as he looks out on a battlefield strewn with corpses, “I hope I never see another.”

That sentence is essentially the thesis statement of the “Game of Thrones” prequel series, which returns June 21 after a now customary two-year absence. (Franchise fans, in the meantime, can get their fix with the beautiful, much more subdued “A Knight of the Seven Kingdom,” 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. However, Season 2 received some criticism for its lack of climactic set pieces, possibly due to an episode order that was shortened from 10 to just eight.

Personally, I was partial to the sometimes funereal feel of the second season, aside from any real wheel-spinning like an overreliance on dream sequences. Not only did I like the big confrontations we had did see, like the death of Princess Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) and the dismemberment of Iron Throne claimant Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) in the show’s first real example of dragon-on-dragon combat, awesome in itself – as in, literally awe-inspiring; I had also internalized the show’s previously established stance on armed conflict. The quote that opens this review is simply one of the more explicit statements of what any casual “House of the Dragon” viewer already knows: war is hell, and there is no war more hellish than a war with fire-breathing, questionably controllable weapons of mass destruction. It’s not something to look forward to, or enjoy when it arrives.

As is typical for a show of this magnitude, 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 reveal – in fact, something I bet HBO would really like – is that there is a big confrontation in the very first episode. In the infamous Battle of the Gullet, naval forces loyal to Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and led by decorated commander Corlys “Sea Snake” Velaryon (Stephen Toussaint) must face off against a fleet from a triarchy of allied city-states who have agreed to help break Rhaenyra’s blockade of King’s Landing, the capital of Westerosi. It is also one of several crucial confrontations likely to allay concerns about continued treading water, narrow seas or otherwise.

Led by showrunner Ryan Condal and directed by Loni Peristere, the Battle of the Gullet is spectacular indeed. Yet the whole point of “House of the Dragon” is so well made that there is little satisfaction to be gained from the Pyrrhic victories won within its scope. There’s no moment comparable to Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) hoisting the chain across the bay in the Battle of the Blackwater, an early highlight of “Game of Thrones” that delivered a (brief) dose of fist-pumping triumph. When the dragons arrive at the Esophagus, the relief Rhaenyra’s forces feel is fleeting at best – especially when they don’t all obey their riders’ wishes, which is how this whole mess started in the first place. Although neither history nor parties influenced the concern that Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) did not mean for his super-sized pet to vaporize his own nephew, which is another “House of the Dragon” theme: that individual intentions are no match for greater forces, whether historical or animal.

Therefore, in my opinion, 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 featured a long-delayed showdown between Rhaenyra and her estranged childhood friend turned stepmother (the Targaryens, y’all!) 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 to the relationship, played by two of the more skilled actors in a visceral ensemble. (So ​​competent, in fact, that we barely blink when we’re reminded that 32-year-old Cooke is supposed to be the mother of 29-year-old Mitchell.)

I’m prohibited from revealing their exact circumstances, but Season 3 features many more scenes between this central duo, a rewarding return of “House of the Dragon” to its roots. Within the time frame of the series, decades have passed, not to mention four years of real time; it’s often difficult to remember the complex web of alliances, betrayals, and family ties that brought these characters at each other’s throats, a confusion that’s sometimes purposeful and sometimes frustrating. (It took me several minutes of a supposedly emotional midseason scene to remember watching a parent talking to his own child.) In their alternating waves of resentment and understanding, anger and sadness, D’Arcy and Cooke imbue Rhaenyra and Alicent’s dynamic with all the weight of this history and none of its convolutions.

Not all of the show’s connections are so well realized, even fundamental connections that drive large parts of the story. Two seasons later, for example, “House of the Dragon” is still paying the price for conveying developments like Rhaenyra’s long-term affair with Harwin Strong (Ryan Corr), which produced two children whose widely contested legitimacy played a major role in starting the war. The seeds planted in Season 1 should be bearing fruit now, but Rhaenyra’s continued denial and her vaguely sketched blip of a wildly consequential romance make the payoff less than cathartic. So it’s a good thing that Rhaenyra and Alicent’s multifaceted relationship is a check the show can more than cash.

“House of the Dragon” is an adaptation of author George RR Martin’s “Fire & Blood,” a text that is more of an alternate history encyclopedia than a literary tale. Sometimes Condal and his collaborators attempt to obscure the nuance and humanity erased in academic accounts; in others, they accurately channel the feeling of stumbling over a footnote that contains a very idiosyncratic life story. So it is with Alicent’s cousin Ormund Hightower (James Norton), a newcomer from Season 3 who quickly earns his place in a crowded battlefield. Deceptive, capricious, fussy and gifted with quirks such as a sensitivity to smells, Ormund enters the fray as an agent of chaos, nominally allied with the so-called Greens (the Alicent-Aemond-Aegon side), but with an agenda and strategy of his own. He’s the kind of character who jumps off the page in Martin’s writing, a feeling that Condal and others maintain in the adaptation despite Martin’s publicly stated problems with some of their choices.

Condal has said that “House of the Dragon” will end with Season 4, and it’s not really critical to say that the first half of Season 3 left me ready for that conclusion. I don’t need to know the details of the conflict’s resolution to know that no one will be truly happy and everyone will be worse off, precisely because “House of the Dragon” predicts that so clearly in each character’s terrible, escalating decisions. That is what makes both marginal figures like Ormond and fundamental figures like the two anti-heroines so important. Whether they provide surprise and distraction or anchor ballast, it’s the people who make “House of the Dragon” worth enduring the predetermined devastation. The dragons are just the CGI flying lizards on top.

Season 3 of “House of the Dragon” premieres June 21 at 9 PM ET on HBO and HBO Max.