The House Of Dragon Season 3 Review

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Westeros is torn apart by turmoil: two queens are fighting for the Iron Throne at once.

The widow of Viserys the Wise, the intimidated schemer Alicent, with the support of her father, placed her eldest son on the throne, whereas the weak-willed old man actually wanted to crown his daughter Rhaenyra. The secret eventually comes to light, and the furious claimant prepares to storm King's Landing—for only her family possesses a weapon that no one else has anymore: dragons.

And so, the third season. The struggle for power finally moves beyond layers of intricate schemes and complex political alliances: the clash between the two families is no longer simply inevitable. The smoke of civil war is already rising over the Seven Kingdoms.

The new chapter of the story wastes no time and immediately throws us into the middle of the action. The fair-haired heir intends to take the throne by force—but the cautious nobility is not convinced of her quick victory. Unexpected agreements within the enemy camp may fall apart, while the fleet of her vassals may not withstand the pirates and mercenaries of the Triarchy's merchant fleet. The series begins with an enormous naval battle at the Gullet, where ships crash into one another, cutthroats rush to board, dragons circle in the sky and burn everyone they can reach… the battles are staged so powerfully, dynamically, and at the same time so realistically that you immediately understand: this is not a morally justified war between the “good” and the “bad”; it is simply the slaughter of people like cattle. A senseless bloodbath where no one even understands anymore what they are dying for, or why ravens should peck the eyes out of the faces of people who were neighbors only recently.

 

 

The story of Rhaenyra Targaryen is a vividly portrayed tragedy of a person who, in the struggle for power and personal justice, first loses everything and then turns into a monster.

The finale of “Game of Thrones” showed this too quickly (although there were hints of Daenerys's future downfall—we just happen to like it when slave traders are crucified on crosses, whereas burning former allies for minor criticism is apparently something completely different). The prequel shows it more subtly: we see how a chain of unfortunate events breaks Rhaenyra, leaving her unprepared for the role she chose for herself, even after she finally gets what she wanted. Royal blood and prophecies are poor consolation for the leading politician of a state on the verge of decline and social collapse, with no political program and a war being fought on distant fronts.

(Although, to be fair, there is also a moment involving a dragon and the sudden thought, “To hell with everything, let it all burn with blue flames”—but it belongs to an unexpected character.)

The story performs an interesting trick: in the first seasons, we sympathized with Rhaenyra because she was a victim in a vulnerable position, someone to whom unfair things were happening. She was searching for her path (and her identity) in a world of imposed rules, where power always goes to men and a woman is expected to sit quietly and have as many children as possible. Although, wait a minute, she is the daughter of a KING who always showed her his affection. Rhaenyra of the great Targaryen lineage, from distant Valyria already destroyed by fate, knows that the crown rightfully belongs to her. But will she be able to be a queen, especially after the price she will have to pay? Will she have enough strength and wisdom to rule as thoughtfully and reasonably as her father did, under whom there were no wars? In bitter irony, her actions will set in motion exactly what Viserys tried so hard to avoid: turmoil and an interregnum.

Of course, she was doomed from the very beginning.


 

Emma D'Arcy carries the very difficult role of Rhaenyra with dignity and vulnerability, completely opening the character's soul to the viewer. Her screen partner is played by Matt Smith—and his Prince Daemon transforms from a cruel and cynical loner who lives for battle into a loyal ally and loving husband, ready to temper his pride for the sake of his wife's ambitions (and his fanatical ideas about restoring the greatness of his homeland, long ago destroyed by the will of the gods). Olivia Cooke remains somewhat in the shadows because of Alicent's complicated status, but she continues to powerfully and convincingly portray a woman who has spent her entire life immersed in intrigues and politics behind the back of her slowly fading husband, to whom her own father married her off, and who now finds herself surrounded by emptiness and uncertainty.

A mother who paid a terrible price for the crown. A warrior who married his niece. A daughter who traded her soul and youth for power for her father. Living, tragic people who repeatedly make morally ambiguous choices that make it difficult to sympathize with them.

 

 

This season introduces several fresh faces that noticeably liven things up. For example, the cunning Ormund Hightower, who has seized an important trading city with its citizens as hostages and decided to put forward his own claimant to the throne. A young lad with brown hair reluctantly plays the role assigned to him, but he is intelligent and holds to his moral principles, unlike his unwelcome “mentor.”

The series contains several significant departures from the book, which did not exactly delight the author himself. For example, the role of one of the secondary heroines is given to the daughter of the Rogue Prince Daemon, while the storyline of Alicent's strange daughter, Helaena, temporarily takes an unexpected direction. But George R. R. Martin may be somewhat biased: these changes serve the drama, evoke emotions in the moment, and do not devalue the original. (For example, the actions of Baela, who never had a dragon of her own and then suddenly acquired one, or Corlys, who became fed up with injustice even though he himself had behaved the same way for a long time, turn out to be understandable on a human level.) After all, a dry description of fictional events and an expensive epic show featuring actors performing according to the Stanislavski method are two different things.

And there are also dragons here.

 

 

That is the main reason to watch the series. The way Weta Digital (the special-effects artists behind “The Lord of the Rings” and “Avatar”) created and animated the dragons deserves a song of its own. Magnificent, dangerous, slow and yet simultaneously swift, resembling grotesque dinosaurs with powerful wings instead of forelegs—these creatures, howling and shrieking like birds, command your attention in every scene in which they appear. And when their riders fight each other… The third season has a scene where a bitter truth is revealed, the characters confront one another—and four dragons are fighting in the frame at once, blasting each other with fire and inflicting horrific wounds.

There simply are no fantasy series of this caliber right now. (Except perhaps “The Rings of Power,” based on Tolkien, but that is more of a show for fans of the books and people willing to return to Middle-earth without comparing it to Peter Jackson's classic films—which is not easy at all.)

Saying that, given these ingredients, the series is at least well made would be unnecessary. The production designers, set decorators, and costume designers—all of them are working at the highest level. Every frame looks like a picturesque painting that has faded slightly with time, whether it is an interior scene or a battle. The lighting and cinematography are also quite good: there are absolutely no scenes on the level of that infamous Battle of Winterfell, where you simply cannot see what is happening on the screen through the torchlight.

The music deserves a separate mention: yes, the same melody from the main series plays over the credits (but now over images of rather ambiguous tapestries instead of mechanical structures and figures growing out of stone), but this is the only drawback for which Ramin Djawadi bears no responsibility. For the second series set in the world of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the brilliant composer has written completely unique music—hypnotic and majestic, anxious and melancholy. Music that will stay with you long after the final credits.

 

“House of the Dragon” is a prequel to “Game of Thrones,” the series that changed television and essentially created modern streaming culture. The adaptation of George R. R. Martin's “A Song of Ice and Fire” showed that a series could look like an incredibly expensive film, sound like a theatrical drama, and feel like real medieval times, complete with mud, blood, and the soot of burned bodies. It was a world of court intrigues, brutal battles, ruined fortresses, and heroes who themselves stopped understanding whose side they were on. The journey of Daenerys Stormborn, Queen of the Rhoynar and the First Men came to an end, but the world of “Game of Thrones” still contained an untold legend that directly influenced the outcome of the struggle between the nations of the Seven Kingdoms and the long Winter advancing from the North. And it will help us better understand what happened 175 years later.

The new prequel series is an epic spanning several decades. The first season initially shows the friendship and then the rivalry between the young Rhaenyra and Alicent, whose lives are remarkably similar even though they belong to different families and social classes. But their alliance eventually comes to an end when the friend becomes the new wife of the widowed king, and the disappointed princess realizes that her hopes for the throne are rapidly fading. And does she even need that crown… or does she? Rhaenyra herself is not sure.

The second season promised development, but to some extent it took a step backward: the narrative became linear and slow, there were few large-scale events, the characters barely changed, and, apart from a couple of interesting twists, everything looked like a repeated rearrangement of pieces on a round checkered board. The main game of everyone against everyone has only begun now.

 

 

Rating: 8/10, an excellent return to form for a great series. “House of the Dragon” is “Game of Thrones” in its old-school form, back when expensive visuals and the hurried pace of the story had not yet overshadowed deep characters and their drama. An incredibly gripping pseudo-medieval spectacle, a court chronicle of a battle for power where good intentions turn out to be worse than criminal ones, and chance can rewrite the course of an entire continent's history.

The choice has been made. Everything is predetermined. The Iron Throne bares the blades of hundreds of swords.
The Dance of the Dragons will begin soon.

May the gods have mercy on us…

 

Автор: Updated at Aug 29th 2026