'House of the Dragon' finally finds its fire in Season 3 – Review

How can you have too many dragons and too few? How can you be too boring and yet too bloody? How can you be too close to what came before but also not unique enough? And how do you shake off all your failures of the past?

Enter "House of the Dragon," HBO's big-budget and big-dragon spinoff of "Game of Thrones," which returns for its third season Sunday, June 21 (9 p.m. ET/PT, ★★½ out of four).

The first two seasons of "Dragon" − a "Thrones" prequel about warring factions of the silver-haired Targaryen family − were woefully disappointing, a pale but slavish imitation of the show that was the biggest cultural phenomenon of the 2010s.

It was too much and not nearly enough all at once, throwing every "Thrones"-ism at the wall with barely anything sticking. The show has too many blandly interchangeable characters, too much grimness, too much repetition (and not just of Targaryen first names) and too much thumb-twiddling.

At the same time, the show has consistently lacked some of the fundamental traits that made "Thrones" (or any great show, for that matter) so sensational and affecting: Depth, feeling, stakes and likability. The people of "Dragon" have long felt like wooden chess pieces on the big old Westeros playing board, dropped by the writers into vaguely defined location after location with all-too vulnerable dragons clawing in their wake.

Season 3 of "House" still has too many forgettable and stilted characters (who can even remember little Rhaena Targaryen and her dragon problems, and why is she suddenly so important?) and not nearly enough oomph behind its biggest conflicts, even with two seasons' worth of backstory in its wake.

But there are glimmers of hope, particularly after the first two (sadly) table-setting episodes, that there is some honest-to-goodness storytelling momentum here. The pace quickens, the characters start using their brains and there's even the smallest smidgen of levity mixed in with all the heads on pikes and grieving mothers.

Is it enough to light the "Thrones" flame? Certainly not. But maybe it's enough to eke something more interesting out of what was previously a sunk-cost-fallacy turned TV show.

Season 3 picks up as the two Targaryen sides are on the brink of a major battle (in case you forgot, since Season 2 aired all the way back in 2024), pushing the succession skirmish into a full-on civil war. The first two long episodes focus on a major battle between the forces of Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and her half-brother Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and its fallout.

Aegon's "green" side is currently being led by his murderous brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), who tried to kill his king in Season 2 but failed. Aegon's on the run, Aemond's making psychotic decisions from the Iron Throne, and young mom/grandma Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) is trying to maintain a sense of control in a power structure that has left her without agency.

On Rhaenyra's "black" side, things aren't much better. She nabbed a few extra dragons, thanks to setting some Targaryen illegitimate children on them, but she can barely control her own kids or her husband/uncle Daemon (Matt Smith), even though the latter finally seems willing to submit to her rule. Plus, she doesn't know that her naval forces are about to be attacked by a foreign army the greens managed to recruit, one which particularly hates Rhaenyra's master of ships, Corlys Velarion (Steve Toussaint).

It's that naval battle that's the centerpiece of Episode 1 − and it is a marked improvement on the battles from Seasons 1 and 2, which were large in scope but tiny in stakes and emotions. Thanks to some Season 2 work to round out Corlys, there is some real feeling to be had when his forces come to a head with the foreign navy, led by a delightfully unhinged villain (Abigail Thorne).

The first four episodes made available for review likewise have tiny sparks of interest, from some witty dialogue to genuine plot momentum to intriguing new characters popping up. It's almost enough to hope for a victory − not for the greens or blacks, but for the quality of the series.

It is still deeply disheartening that the biggest problems of the show remain. In spite of D'Arcy's best efforts, Rhaenyra is an impenetrable character with illogical choices and zero magnetism to the viewers (or seemingly, her councilors). The writers have her quoting England's Queen Elizabeth I, trying to get some gravitas behind her but the character is drowning in sexist tropes, always acting on emotion rather than sense, flighty and overly sexualized.

Daemon and Alicent feel similarly impotent as main characters, with only Ewan and newbies like James Norton ("Grantchester") as Ormund Hightower adding some zest and vibrancy to the proceedings.

"Dragon" was a series encumbered from the start by expectations and too many cooks in the kitchen. HBO's first spinoff and a spinoff of its most successful show at that, it had a heady mandate to meet.

Every "Thrones" fan wanted something different out of it. Book author George R.R. Martin has publicly disagreed with the direction of showrunner Ryan Condal. There are a million things working against "Dragon" and only a few things in its favor. It's perhaps a great feat, then, that it's able to shake off some of its heavy baggage, even if it took three seasons to do so.

Let "Dragon" fly free, and maybe it will take us to interesting places.