Key Points
The first reviews are in for House of the Dragon season 3, with many critics applauding the series’ epic battles and dramatic character developments.
The Game of Thrones prequel series continues the ongoing civil war of House Targaryen, known as the Dance of the Dragons.
House of the Dragon season 3 premieres on HBO and streams on HBO Max on Sunday, June 21 at 9 p.m. ET.
It’s time to return to the Seven Kingdoms.
As House of the Dragon‘s season 3 premiere approaches, the first reviews for the fiery-fueled HBO series are in. Many critics are praising the latest season of the Game of Thrones prequel for turning up the heat via brutal battles and family drama, all as the fractured House Targaryen delves into civil war. (It’s important to note critics were sent the first four episodes for the third season, which will have eight in total.)
Variety critic Alison Herman teased that the first episode features a “major showdown,” the infamous Battle of the Gullet — the outcome of which is already known to those who’ve read author George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, which House of the Dragon is adapted from. Herman noted a highlight of the season is witnessing the “alternating waves of resentment and understanding, anger and sorrow” between Rhaenyra Targaryen (played by Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke).
Ben Travers’ review for IndieWire complimented season 3 for allowing more of the core cast to interact versus previous seasons’ more isolated storylines. Per Travers, fans can expect to see “class wars brewing… patriarchal undoings in the offing… and dragons threatening to break containment.”
With this being the penultimate season for the series, Travers wrote: “The biggest questions aren’t how it will end but what will be left when it does.”
“Regret may be an honest takeaway for a war of succession that leaves its house (and surrounding world) worse off than it was when the fighting began. But it’s also too simple an idea for an epic tale to rest upon,” he added.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Daniel Fienberg lamented the two-year gap between seasons as an issue for building momentum, while saying the third season overall felt “too packed, too narratively rushed.
Noting House of the Dragon “has always been packed with promising elements and intriguing mythology,” Fienberg felt the third season’s “surplus of dragons and special effects has become somewhat anticlimactic.” The one highlight for Fienberg is the season’s third episode, which he described as “funnier, smarter and a little more intimate in scale.”
Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen on ‘House of the Dragon’
Credit: Theo Whiteman/HBO
The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager commended season 3 as an “often-thrilling mixture of colossal battles and court intrigue, marked by a narrative that’s bound up in knots and some of the finest CGI-enhanced action on television.” And while the massive dragon Vhagar, ridden by eye-patched Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), is a fearsome opponent for all to fear on the battlefield, Schager said this season offers another “untamed winged beast” that causes “unintended seeds of destruction.”
According to Schager, “Volatility is omnipresent in House of the Dragon, whose story is a case study of God laughing at men making plans, and that gives it a consistent anxiousness which helps it speed past its lesser subplots.”
William Goodman at The Wrap commended the first four episodes of season 3, saying, “chaos and grand change unfold for pretty much every single major character in the series’ vast ensemble, all to gripping effect.”
Goodman continued by assuring that fans “looking for follow-through on seasons’ worth of setup will find it here in spades, many of which come rather quickly.” While not giving away too many details, Goodman declared the third episode of season 3 as “a particular standout for how it visualizes and dives into Rhaenyra’s headspace in the wake of the Gullet.”
Kaiya Shunyata of RogerEbert.com noted that a challenge for Rhaenyra at the start of this season is the fact that her “reputation and womanhood remain the most pressing points of contention surrounding her.” Furthermore, the Dragon Queen “has been forced into an incredibly precarious situation” and “there are times when the choices Rhaenyra makes are questionable not only to the characters she shares the screen with but also to the audience.”
Still, season 3 “begins to breath some new life into the series” Shunyata wrote, noting that characters are able “to make selfish and at times ludicrous decisions,” and such decisions “are followed by fallouts that range from beloved character deaths to the alienation of the smallfolk, each of which is felt not only in the faction that they happen to, but around the realm.”
Ewan Mitchell as Aemond Targaryen on ‘House of the Dragon’
Credit: Ollie Upton/HBO
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House of the Dragon season 3 premieres on HBO and HBO Max on Sunday, June 21 at 9 p.m. ET. New episodes will air weekly until the finale on Aug. 9.
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