HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOn Aegon\u2019s side, he has his brother, the volatile, eye patch-wearing Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) as his most formidable warrior. The latter remains the show\u2019s MVP.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mitchell remains the cast member most attuned to what kind of show this really is: not a prestige drama, but a gnarly, operatic, absurd melodrama.\u00a0His scenery-chewing continues stealing the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Aemond and Aegon\u2019s mom Alicent (Olivia Cooke) is also a key schemer.\u00a0<\/p>\nOlivia Cooke as Alicent in \u201cHouse of the Dragon.\u201d HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTommy Flanagan in \u201cHouse of the Dragon.\u201d HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nLast season, Aemond even tried to kill Aegon. He hurt the would-be king badly enough to sideline him. Aemond is now functionally in charge.<\/p>\n
So, there\u2019s infighting within the sides of this war, too.\u00a0If that sounds convoluted, yes, it is.\u00a0And, there\u2019s more!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not only does the plot jump around haphazardly between dozens of characters, but it also still can\u2019t pick who to focus on. On top of that, it piles on a handful of new players.\u00a0<\/p>\nOlivia Cooke and Ewan Mitchell in \u201cHouse of the Dragon.\u201d HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOlivia Cooke in \u201cHouse of the Dragon.\u201d HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSome of them are played by charming actors \u2013 such as \u201cSons of Anarchy\u201d star Tommy Flanagan, who plays a grizzled Northern warrior fighting with the Starks, or \u201cHouse of Guinness\u201d star James Norton, who joins the cast as a haughty Hightower relative.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s spot-on casting, but you\u2019re not sure whether to cheer or groan when they enter. The last thing this show needs is to keep expanding into more<\/em> characters.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cGame of Thrones\u201d had a vast cast, but it did a good job balancing the story, and focusing on a half-dozen main characters per episode.<\/p>\n
\u201cHouse of the Dragon\u2019s\u201d writing team hasn\u2019t figured out how to do that well, and that issue is exacerbated in Season 3. The story is still unfocused.\u00a0<\/p>\nMatt Smith in \u201cHouse of the Dragon.\u201d HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nMatt Smith and Emma D\u2019Arcy in \u201cHouse of the Dragon.\u201d HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cGame of Thrones\u201d and \u201cA Knight of the Seven Kingdoms\u201d are both accessible to casual viewers. With \u201cHouse of the Dragon,\u201d if you haven\u2019t read the books (or spent time Googling the lore), the show hangs you out to dry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The battles are impressive if you didn\u2019t watch \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d or \u201cA Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.\u201d\u00a0The other shows do a better job at anchoring you in a character\u2019s point of view during a fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d has a lot of action and chaos, but it whips around so jerkily between it all, it dulls the emotional impact.\u00a0Random side characters get more screen time than people who are ostensibly the leads, like Daemon.\u00a0<\/p>\nMatt Smith in \u201cHouse of the Dragon.\u201d HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nEwan Mitchell in \u201cHouse of the Dragon.\u201d HBO<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut, if you can turn off the part of your mind pointing all this out, it\u2019s a good time, full of splashy action.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The third episode teases us with the better show that \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d should have been all along, honing in on Rhaenyra\u2019s unreliable perspective.\u00a0It\u2019s too little, too late for the show to shift gears from a bird\u2019s eye view of \u201cwhat happened\u201d to a close focus on subjective points of view.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, when viewed in isolation, it\u2019s a stand-out episode.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you liked the first two seasons of \u201cHouse of the Dragon,\u201d you\u2019ll like Season 3 more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you thought the first two seasons were just okay, Season 3 probably won\u2019t change that. But, at least it\u2019s not boring. The explosive part of the plot is here, at last.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d Season 3 premieres Sunday, June 21 on HBO at 9 p.m.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heads will roll.\u00a0 For anyone who complained that not enough was happening on \u201cHouse of the Dragon,\u201d Season 3 feels like showrunner Ryan Condal and his writing team heard your feedback and cranked the dial up to, \u201ca hundred things are happening at once.\u201d\u00a0 After two seasons of build-up to a war, the \u201cGame of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2460377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[368207,21741,330562,21917,364238,22205,21913,361306],"class_list":["post-2460376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-classic-television","tag-entertainment","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-hbo","tag-house-of-the-dragon","tag-television","tag-tv","tag-tv-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/House-of-the-Dragon-Season-3-is-all-gas-no.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2460378,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460376\/revisions\/2460378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2460377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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