Season 3, Episode 1
From its opening moments, something is different about this episode of “House of the Dragon.” The composer Ramin Djawadi adds several extra measures of nothing but pounding drums to the start of his main title theme. When the story opens and the score kicks in, the dominant sound is not stirring strings but a recurring, sinister synth hook, so low in the bass register that it’s practically chthonic. The sonic symbolism is not subtle. This is the sound of all-out war.
Last season of “Dragon” ended on the eve of battle for the Iron Throne, in which rival claimants from the ruling House Targaryen will vie for the right to control the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. On one side stands Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), an indomitable but tragedy-prone woman whose inheritance was usurped by her wastrel younger half brother Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney). Backing her is her mercurial warlord uncle-husband, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), and the realm’s greatest naval commander, Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), known as the Sea Snake. Rhaenyra issues her commands from the old family seat, the island fortress called Dragonstone.
On the other side stands Aegon, and well … his situation is complicated. Betrayed and horrifically maimed by his younger brother Aemond One-Eye (Ewan Mitchell) and Aemond’s Godzilla-like dragon, Vhagar, Aegon has fled the capital city of King’s Landing to avoid assassination. His de facto caretaker is Lord Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), known as the Clubfoot for his disability.
A schemer whose loyalties are a big question mark, Larys saves the arrogant Aegon’s life from soldiers loyal to Rhaenyra by outing the king’s identity. Larys guesses, correctly, that their captors would rather have live hostages than severed heads. This leaves Aemond, a certified psycho, to claim the throne in his big brother’s absence.
This is a major problem for Alicent, and for the realm. In a risky move — and in a departure from the author and co-creator George R.R. Martin’s source material, “Fire and Blood” — Alicent visited her old friend Rhaenyra last season to arrange a surrender. Known colloquially as the Greens because of House Hightower’s colors, Alicent’s side has only two war-ready dragons, and their riders are of uncertain utility: Aemond is unpredictable, and his as-yet unseen younger brother Daeron is some distance away, with his own dragon and an army under the command of Alicent’s snide cousin Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton). The Greens would be no match for the seven dragons known to be flying under Rhaenyra’s black banner.
Three of those dragons and their riders — Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew) and Ulf White (Tom Bennett), all illegitimate descendants of the old Valyrian houses — are off waiting to ambush Aemond, who refuses to fall into their trap.
At their camp, they receive a cryptic visit from Black Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), the self-professed witch who bedeviled Daemon last season, accompanied by a Black Philip-type goat and a strange antlered humanoid. (I don’t know what that is either, man.) The men’s banter, particularly Ulf’s, indicates that dissension in the dragon-rider ranks is already brewing, and Alys does nothing to ease it.
Unaware of any of this, Alicent plans to call off any defensive measures and allow Rhaenyra to take the city and the Iron Throne without burning or bloodshed. She asks only that she and her gentle daughter, Queen Helaena (Phia Saban), be spared. (Helaena, who is portrayed as equal parts neurodivergent and telepathic, is far more interested in studying insects than in riding a dragon.) Sending Aemond and Vhagar off to the Riverlands to chase Daemon and his dragon, Caraxes, is central to Alicent and Rhaenyra’s plan.
But even as Daemon wins a bloody battle against the Green-allied armies of House Lannister — with some unexpected help from Northern forces under the familiar direwolf sigil of House Stark — Aemond refuses to budge. He is supposed to join Alicent’s younger brother, Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), and her former lover Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) in the campaign against Daemon, but he reasons that at least one experienced dragon-rider must stay behind to guard King’s Landing. Only by relentlessly flattering her son’s ego, up to and including an incestuous kiss, does Alicent convince him to take her advice and depart. The price, as we see from the tear that falls from her eye afterward, is her dignity.
Alicent’s old friend faces her own form of filial disrespect, with even graver consequences. When Rhaenyra’s stepdaughter Baela (Bethany Antonia) arrives at Dragonstone with news that the foreign alliance called the Triarchy has attacked the Sea Snake’s fleet on the Greens’ behalf, Rhaenyra races to suit up and meet them on dragonback.
Her headstrong son Jacaerys (Harry Collett), however, has other plans. Whether out of youthful naïveté, cultural sexism, suspicion of Alicent’s motives, the need to prove himself, the simple desire to protect his mom or some combination of all those things, Jace locks Rhaenyra in her chambers and races to the battle himself on his dragon, Vermax. Baela and her own beast, Moondancer, join his assault.
What they find waiting for them is, simply put, the most spectacular battle I’ve ever seen on television. Even by the elevated standards of the World of Ice and Fire franchise, the Battle of the Gullet is a standout.
Under the command of the pirate queen and admiral Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn), the Triarchy’s fleet collides with the Sea Snake’s in a conflict of staggering scope and ferocity. Flaming projectiles soar through the air. Soldiers and sailors duel on decks slick with blood. Dragons swoop in and rain death from above — not just Jace’s Vermax and Baela’s Moondancer but also Sheepstealer, a wild dragon half-tamed by Baela’s sister, Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell). Spooked by the combat, Sheepstealer goes berserk, torching everyone and everything it sees and taking a serious run at the other dragons.
Luckily for Team Black, Lohar has come to settle a score, not win a war. Tossing the Green ambassador Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) over the side of her ship to drown, she engages Corlys Velaryon in a white knuckle chase through a shallow inlet, then rams his flagship with her own. (Her vessel is evocatively named the Bitchfist.) The Sea Snake falls overboard during his duel with the savage Sharako. She is then stabbed to death by Corlys’s illegitimate son Alyn (Abubakar Salim) in an upsettingly intimate hand-to-hand fight, submerged in seawater up to their necks.
Rhaenyra’s son isn’t so lucky. Baela saves Jacaerys and Vermax from Sharako’s first anchor-laden grapnel. But a second grapnel does the job, drowning the dragon with horrific slowness. Watching Jace realize, in real time, that his beloved steed is done for and that he must cut himself loose to survive is surprisingly moving — that’s how real these C.G.I. creatures feel.
We’re given no time to catch our breath, though, before the resurfaced Jace is feathered by arrows, in the style of Saint Sebastian. It is brutal to watch him survive a plunge from the sky on a fire-breathing dinosaur only to be shot like the proverbial fish in a barrel.
The episode ends with the two flagships wrecked, the two commanders dead or missing, a devastated Rhaena fleeing on Sheepstealer and her sister, Baela, left to survey the carnage from the sky as ships burn and sink as far as the eye can see.
Like the other shows in the franchise, “Game of Thrones” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” “House of the Dragon” runs on violence. Violence is the engine that powers the culture these shows chronicle. Violence is what puts kings on thrones and topples them off. Violence is what enforces a rigid hierarchy of title, rank, class and gender. Violence is enshrined in the motto of House Targaryen: “Fire and Blood.” Violence can also be a lot of fun to watch from the safety of your sofa.
The trick, then, is to give us what we want to the point where we are no longer sure we want it. Disappointed that Season 2 didn’t end in the big naval battle to which it had been building? Here, enjoy scores of humans being set on fire or thrown overboard to drown in their armor. Watch a swashbuckling pirate die with terror in her eyes. Thrill to a teenage girl accidentally committing a series of horrific burnings as she screams, sobs and begs her dragon to stop. Have some fun with a 16-year-old prince making one bad decision and dying for it, along with his magnificent dragon, gushing blood into the water as it sinks. Have a side of mother-son incest while you’re at it. Happy now?
This is not to say that the episode is humorless: Aegon and Larys’s buddy comedy routine is a scream; the trio of untested dragonriders have an entertaining dynamic going; Aemond’s creepiness is darkly funny; and even Sheepstealer gets in on the act, tossing a burned-up sheep to Rhaena like an overgrown cat bringing home a dead mouse for its owner. And as horrifying as the show often is to look at, it is just as frequently gorgeous, its scenes lit in sumptuous gold or atmospheric gray.
But the overwhelming message about wars of choice is a simple one, expressed by the nihilistic hand of the king, Ser Criston Cole. “Look around you,” he tells Gwayne as they wait to fight and die. “Doom and ruin surround us. We will all become beasts before our end.”
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