After a masterful adaptation of The Hedge Knight that was the television series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, we go from gritty down-to-earth drama back to the fantastical and diabolical nature of a civil war, continental politics and of course…DRAGONS. House of the Dragon came back with Season 3 after what most would agree with a disappointing Season 2. The finale aired this past Sunday and boy do Steve and I have some thoughts on the episode and the season overall. Note: SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T WATCHED YET!
Jay: I thought showrunner Ryan Condal learned his lesson well after not ending Season 2 (S2) with a pivotal battle sequence and providing us with one of the most epic battles in the Game Of Thrones-verse. The Battle of Tumbleton was such a pivotal point in its source material (Fire and Blood) and I thought they executed it perfectly. It pulled no punches with the gore/action and had a lot of neat little touches that you didn’t get in the novel because they were able to expand on characters that were barely mentioned at all (e.g. Ormund Hightower). The addition of Ormund using kids as human shields was exactly something he would do and will add to the litany of issues that Rhaenyra will have to deal with in Season 4.
Steve: HOT DAMN WAS THAT A SEASON FINALE FOR HOT D! I know Game of Thrones largely ended with the concluding chapter final episode after the big penultimate episode each season, but that always stunk. Yes, it was very literary, but it’s no fun for television. The Battle of Tumbleton was awesome and tragic. I especially loved seeing the northerners fight like vikings. Tommy Flanagan was an awesome presence this season as Roderick Dustin. What a glorious ending he had, taking down Ormund Hightower and getting burnt to a crisp by Ulf’s dragon.
As much as I’ll miss Ser Roderick, I’m going to miss Ormund even more. Ordmund was a welcome and distinctive presence in season 3. He hated the Targaryens as much as he hated anything moderately disgusting. Introducing a character disgusted by all things dirty into the filthy world of Westeros was so entertaining. I saw comparisons to Dennis Reynolds from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which might explain just why I was so entertained by the character. I can easily see Ormund giving the untethered rage speech.
Jay: Enough can’t be said about Tommy Flanagan, who elevates everything he is in. Even with his limited screentime, he made Roddy the Ruin (his nickname in the book) so memorable. His takedown of Ormund is an all-time HotD moment. OMG, I never thought of that comparison between Ormund and Dennis and I can totally see it. “I’M A GOLDEN GOD, WE LIGHT THE WAY!”.
This season has taken certain liberties and had some deviations, with the Battle of Tumbleton not being an exception. In Fire and Blood, Daemon is not leading the battle for the Blacks, Roderick Dustin is and almost exclusively made up of the Winter Wolves (no Tully and Riverlord army at all). I didn’t mind this change at all because it gave something for Daemon to do and Matt Smith’s presence improves upon the show every time. But perhaps the biggest change is that of both Ulf and Hugh. In the show it had Ulf betray not just the Blacks, but the Greens as well. The latter never happens in the book. Hugh is also a completely different character in the book (a really bad dude) and is also part of The Two Betrayers plot to turn on the Blacks. This doesn’t happen, but with how they set up the death of his wife I can see how his alliance may soon change.
Honestly, as much as I was/am pro-Rhaenyra/Blacks camp it was great to see her comeuppance and just how disastrous a leader she actually is. This leads me to think, have we ever seen an effective, good King/Queen of Westeros between both GoT and HotD? How she has alienated all her allies is some brilliant level of self-destruction.
Lastly, we lose perhaps one of the most sympathetic characters on the show in Helena. Her innocence and desire to just live her life away from the spotlight and with her children was truly admirable. Though we know that in this universe, the righteous almost always come out on top. She was a character that was talked about so little in the book that it really is commendable how Condell was able to elevate and conjure a character that became so meaningful to the plot.
Steve: It really has been an advantage for HotD to break loose from the source material sooner than Game of Thrones did. Game of Thrones was fairly faithful (with a few notable exceptions) until they ran out of source material. And then, once the source material ran dry, welllllll, we know how that went.
Daemon is, on paper, an absolutely despicable character. Matt Smith plays him so well and I welcome his presence in all scenes. Daemon is a force to be reckoned with in all scenes and as imposing a figure as there has been on the televised world of Westeros.
Rhaenyra’s journey throughout Season 3 is a fascinating one. She began the season having lost another child to a war with her own family. After finally achieving her goal, she grew more and more frustrated with the obstacles and burdens of leadership, until she got to the point of embracing facism and desecrating the most sacred spot in King’s Landing. Having seen Cersei’s clash with the faith in GoT (SHAME!) It’s hard to imagine this ending well for Rhaenyra. Emma D’Arcy has done an incredible job portraying this character, who has to wear every emotion under the sun.
What I’m most intrigued about heading into Season 4 are these splintered alliances among the dragon rides. Ulf’s drunk ass is more or less a free agent. Ser Hugh the Hammer will do gods know what after losing his wife. Baela is in the wild with Sheepstealer. Team Green doesn’t even have a united front among the Targaryen boys.
Based on our conversations throughout the season, I know you have been most frustrated by the Aemond storyline where he has basically been Misery’d into submission by Alys Rivers. Aemond has been one of the strong personalities throughout the first two seasons of the show. His brother and the technical king, Aegon, has basically risen from the dead and is looking to make his mark. Aemond rejected Aegon’s offer of letting bygones and burnings be bygones and burnings and running off to kick ass. So, what does the Team Green faction look like whenever the hell we get Season 4?
Jay: Honestly, it will be really interesting to see because I have no idea! Despite reading the book, the whole Ulf the White betraying The Greens has the show playing by its own rules at the moment. It feels like they are shaping up for it to be a three-way stand-off between Aegon, Rhaenyra, and Daeron, which is very different! I don’t hate it, but it feels like they are creating an additional story when we are approaching the final season which could be a folly in that things could feel a bit rushed as these last major events unfold. I could be wrong though and we see a reconciliation between Aegon and Daeron as the rest plays out like it’s written.
I think you nailed it with Rhaenyra. She could have easily been broken by the deaths of Lucerys and Jacaerys, but she barrelled through to the detriment of what she had stood for.
In my opinion, Harrenhall has become a bit of a joke at this point in the show where you sideline your best characters because you don’t know what to do with them. It happened with Daemon last season and now Aemond. Every time an episode shifted to the story at Harrenhall, the momentum stopped. Any real character development is undercooked and in the latest case with Aemond proved almost completely meaningless with Aegon returning.
I loved this season, but I thought it could have done a better job giving more background and explanation to some of the side characters that are treated as tools rather than fully developed characters. A few come to mind with Jon Roxton (gruff dude with a bad haircut at Ormund’s side), Oscar Tully (teenager Tully kid in charge of the Riverlords), and Alyssane Blackwood (bad ass archer with lots of eye shadow). Roxton is a major lord who wields one of the very few Valyrian swords in Westeros called “Orphanmaker”. When we saw both he and Daemon battling, it was a rare Valyrian sword fight with the aforementioned Orphanmaker and Daemon’s Dark Sister. Oscar Tully has had his role condensed from three different Tullys (Oscar, Grover, Elmo…yes George R.R. Martin had a sense of humor) into one. He leads “The Lads” who are a group of young riverlords who are ruthless in battle. One of those “Lads” is Alyssane Blackwood, Aunt of the crazy Benjicot Blackwood we saw back in S2 at the Battle of the Burning Mill. She is called Black Aly and plays a prominent role throughout the war.
Back to what I really liked, obviously the Battle of the Gullet, Battle of Tumbleton, the banter between Aegon and Larys, anything with Daemon, Helena’s development and tragic ending, and how could we not forget CRISTON COLE DYING. I didn’t particularly like that they tried to give Cole this “I know I’m going to die, so I might as well enjoy it” story, but seeing him go out the way he did gave me so much joy. He was easily one of the most loathsome characters on the show and the way he pulled out Alicent’s keepsake thinking she even gave a second thought to him made me burst out into laughter at that moment.
Steve: I saw a comment online about Criston Cole getting done dirty and there is just no way that you could do that man dirty at this point. I was so glad he finally went. Overall, I thought Season 3 was the show’s strongest, giving us awesome battle scenes, like the Battle of the Gullet in the opening episode, and keeping a consistent pace. Season 2 , in particular, struggled with the pacing and ended on such a weird note. I can’t wait to see how many Targaryens are left standing when all is said and done after the fourth and final season. Now, we just have to wait for (UGH) 2028.
