House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 3 Review: Heavy Is the Head | Den of Geek

This review contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3 episode 3.

You ever of have of those days? Well, Rhaenyra Targaryen – Queen on the Iron Throne, former Princess of Dragonstone, the Realm’s Gods Damned Delight – is having one of those days.

Not even 24 hours since the taking of King’s Landing, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) discovers that King’s Landing is very annoying. Before getting lost at sea in heavy armor, master of coin Ser Tyland Lannister emptied the Red Keep’s treasury and now the crown has no money. King Aegon II remains missing in action but his legacy lives thanks to the rats that now swarm the city, thriving without any living rat catchers to stop them. The High Septon refuses to publicly coronate Rhaenyra as the Faith of the Seven isn’t so sure the last king is dead yet.

What’s more: seemingly everyone in Rhaenyra’s orbit wants something from her. Hand of the Queen Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) wants his bastard sons legitimized. Hugh the Hammer (Kieran Bew) wants a place to live. Prince Daemon (Matt Smith) wants Rhaenyra to kill their new Green hostage Daeron (it must be noted that his offscreen reminder of “you still have to kill Daeron” is probably the season’s biggest laugh line yet). Even the smallfolk – hungry, desperate, and increasingly bold – get in on the petitioning, requesting 500 gold dragons that the crown doesn’t have to replenish the capital’s supply of sheep. If this back-of-the-napkin math from Reddit is to be believed, that’s a request of nearly $6 million. For wool and mutton!

All of these entreaties to Rhaenyra’s newly-won authority begin early in House of the Dragon season 3 episode 3 and never really stop. Viserys’ headstrong daughter feels the weight of the crown before she’s even worn it to her coronation yet. And thanks to plenty of Sorkin-esque walking-and-talking, there’s nowhere in the Red Keep she can go to escape it. Even when the day ends, she must retreat to the bed her father wasted away in. She opts to snuggle up with Daemon instead.

Though House of the Dragon‘s third season kicked off with two season finale-level episodes that feature some of the most consequential moments from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, this is the first hour in which the show truly feels like itself again. At its best, any Game of Thrones story is about the frustrating impossibility of governance. And governance has rarely felt more frustrating or impossible than it does for Rhaenyra here.

Even before she gets her period.

Creature of the internet that I am, I suspect that Rhaenyra’s cramps will generate some online headlines, with some arguing that her discomfort while trying to perform her queenly duties is at odds with the show’s feminist inclinations. As someone who does not have a menstrual cycle, I cannot really assess the accuracy of the Rhaenyra’s pain. It is clear, however, that writer Sara Hess’ script approaches the moment carefully and empathetically. This isn’t a case of Rhaenyra opining that “I was gonna be a good queen today but then my genitals got in the way.” It’s just one more irritation heaped upon the beginning of a reign that has not gone the way she hoped.

Of course, Rhaenyra’s despair only feels this acute because of how complete her victory initially seemed. Usually when the monarch makes it to the other side of the board, the game is over and the pieces put away. The opening scene of this week’s episode appears to be an acknowledgment of this reality at first. When Daemon, Hugh, Ulf (Tom Bennett), and their respective dragons arrive in the Riverlands to address Lord Ormund’s army, everyone has good reason to believe that this struggle is over.

Daemon tells Lord Ormund (James Norton) as such, summing up the situation succinctly, “Glad news, Lord Ormund! The war is ended, your allies have scattered, and your nephew’s fled. There is a new queen and she sits her father’s throne.” Ormund takes the words as intended, consenting to take his massive, impeccably assembled army home and send the queen’s son Daeron (played by Charlie Gordon…but not really) and his dragon Tessarion off to King’s Landing as honored guests (re: hostages).

Following my muted reaction to episode 2, if House of the Dragon thought it could win me back with a glitzy cold open, then… it was absolutely right. The pre-credits sequence of this episode is a perfect table-setter. It’s also an equally perfect bookend with the episode’s final moments in which the “Daeron” in King’s Landing is revealed to be a fraud and Rhaenyra discovers that Lord Ormund’s forces have taken Tumbleton, a small market town in the Reach with no strategic value other than forcing the new queen to decide whether she should lay fiery siege to her subjects. The episode slyly dropping that Hugh’s wife absconded to Tumbleton in search of safety and food amid Aegon’s reign adds a layer of emotional resonance to the incoming decision. It also adds some dramatic tension for those familiar with the source material.

This is a consistently tense, thematically on point episode of House of the Dragon but it’s also a particularly funny one. I already made mention of Daemon’s hectoring Rhaenyra that she needs to kill a child, delivered with the same energy as if he were reminding her about a dentist’s appointment. But it really can’t be overstated just how vibrant and entertaining Daemon has become now that he’s away from his spooky misadventures in Harrenhal. Similarly funny is Rhaenyra immediately emerging from her overwhelmed fugue state to assert “Oh absolutely not” when Ulf proposes that he style himself as “Ulf Targaryen.” He settles for Ulf the White.

Even the sensitive issue of Corlys wanting Rhaenyra to legitimize his bastards takes on some comedic energy due to the show’s shrewd creative decision to cast Black actors for the Velaryon family. While House of the Dragon never needed complicated lore or storytelling justifications to change the race of some of its characters (at least not from me), the fact that Velaryons have a markedly different skin tone from Targaryens has paid real dramatic and comedic dividends in a world that relies on family inheritance for political legitimacy. When Corlys makes the stunning reveal to Rhaenyra that the two son-aged men who look very much like his sons are, in fact, his sons, she replies with a measured “I did not guess though I believe I see it now.” Well done, Rhae. He suspected nothing.

Moments like these affirm that House of the Dragon is at its best when it’s getting the little things right. But translating the bigger, more operatic moments remains a bit of a struggle. For, as satisfying as Corlys’ initial chat with Rhaenyra is, his swift and final repudiation of her when she doesn’t come through with what he wants is less effective.

“Your son Joffrey is a bastard. Your son, Lucerys, who I accepted as my heir, was a bastard. Your son Jacaerys lived and died a bastard,” Those are big, BIG words to say to any monarch. Notably the last Velaryon who said anything approaching that got his head cleaved in half. Yes, Rhaenyra is not quick to anger or as proficient with a sword as Daemon, but even factoring in her tenuous grasp on power at the moment a non-response doesn’t quite read as right.

Similarly ineffective is the episode’s biggest “setpiece” – the rat dinner fed to the nobles of King’s Landing. While both clever and visually striking, serving grilled rats to former Green supporters and raiding their storehouses rather than, you know, killing them goes beyond mere strategic miscalculation and straight into poor characterization.

In some ways the scene is emblematic of the biggest challenge facing showrunner Ryan Condal, writer Sara Hess, and the rest of the House of the Dragon team. One can’t always faithfully translate the nuances of Medieval-era politics into popular art without it coming across as boring. Lean too far into the spectacle, however, and you get nerds pushing up their glasses and issuing in a stern “well ackshully.” And here I am, well ackshully-ing a nice rat supper.

In any case, Rhaenyra’s Robin Hood act plays well with the smallfolk for now. But as this episode makes clear, King’s Landing is very much a “what have you done for me lately?” kind of city. And with the last of the Hightower banners taken down in the capital, King’s Landers will know precisely who to blame once the price of sheep reaches 501 gold dragons.