House of the Dragon Opens Season 3 With a Devastating Loss

Welcome back to House of the Dragon, aka emo Game of Thrones, in which everyone pouts because they want to be king or queen of Westeros, which is unquestionably the worst job in all of the Seven Kingdoms. 

Nothing good has ever happened to anyone sitting on the Iron Throne. Even Viserys Targaryen, one of the few kings not to die a violent death, seemed to enjoy the job about as much as he would swallowing a fistful of thumbtacks. 

After two seasons of brooding, dragons and occasional incest, the action finally picks up in the season three season opener, with the long-awaited Battle of the Gullet, which is one of the best battle sequences from any Game of Thrones show. 

However, before delving into the episode's true high point, let's do a brief recap of where we find our characters as the Dance of the Dragons finally kicks into high gear.

Queen Dowager Alicent is one of the main instigators of the civil war gripping Westeros, and she’s starting to realize that betraying her best friend so that she could put one of her two depraved sons onto the Iron Throne wasn’t the fantastic idea it seemed when she first came up with it.

Alicent seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she desperately tries to stop a war that has grown far beyond her control. Matters aren’t helped by the creepy kiss from her son Aemond, who both looks and acts like a G.I. Joe villain, as she attempts to betray him. 

In a show rife with awkward sex, Alicent has dealt with the most bizarre encounters, including showing feet to win the loyalty of Larys Strong in season 2.

The Lords loyal to Rhaenyra will do absolutely anything to see that the rightful Queen is restored to the throne, except listen to her. Rhaenyra is once again sidelined on the verge of a massive battle and is actually locked in her room like a teenager who broke curfew, while the rest of the cast goes out for glory and horrific deaths.

Say this for Aegon: despite all of his failings as a king and a man, he at least stays consistent. The severely maimed (former?) king hits the road with Larys Strong when they encounter a roadblock of soldiers loyal to Rhaenyra Targaryen. He only has to swear loyalty to his half-sister to continue on his journey.

Instead, he acts like a teenager on my Super Sweet 16 who didn’t get the exact model of Mercedes he wanted and throws a hissy fit. He’s only saved from a broadsword through his petulant guts by a quick-thinking Larys, who convinces the soldiers that they are more valuable as hostages than corpses. 

This wasn’t a big Daemon episode. He kills some Greens and links up with a band of warriors from the North who swear allegiance to Rhaenyra.

Rhaena, the Cindy Brady of the various Targaryen heirs, finally gets her dragon when she bonds with wild dragon Sheep Stealer, which isn’t exactly the most intimidating name for a massive, flying, fire-breathing lizard creature. 

The Battle of the Gullet is the massive naval conflict that fans have waited two full seasons to experience, and despite our snark, we’ll admit that this is easily the best sequence of the entire series. 

The primary combatants are the Blacks’ fleet led by Corlys, the Sea Snake, Velaryon and the mercenary fleet of the Triarchy, led by Sharako Lohar. While ostensibly hired to break the Black blockade of King’s Landing, the battle quickly turns into a personal showdown between Corlys and Sharako. 

Sharako breaks from the blockade to attack Corlys' castle, Driftmark and successfully baits him into following her into battle around his island. 

A brutal conflict of burning ships and savage hand-to-hand fighting ensues. Jacaerys Velaryon and Baela Targaryen join the fray on their dragons and turn several of Sharako’s warriors into charcoal. 

Realizing that Sharako would rather kill him than break the blockade, Corlys leads her on a sea chase through a narrow pass at low tide, where he expertly navigates through rocky, shallow waters and comes out to the open seas.

Sharako, who is less familiar with the territory, nearly runs aground on the rocks, but manages to lift her ship through the pass by tossing Tyland Lannister and the rest of the Green knights overboard in their heavy armor. 

With the faster ship, Sharako quickly closes on Corlys, and a massive ship-to-ship battle ensues, with the two commanders ruthlessly slaughtering each other's crews. We finally get the face-to-face battle between the leaders, and just as the Sea Snake is about to decapitate his rival, his ship is torn in half, and he’s tossed into the frothy waters. 

Corlys’s unclaimed son, Allyn, decides to finish the battle his father started and comes after Sharako. Their fight descends into the bowels of her sinking ship, and Allyn manages to get a knife between her ribs, ending the all-too-brief reign of one of the show’s greatest villains.

While it appears that Corlys may have also died in the fight, one thing we’ve learned from the show is that unless you see their head fall off their shoulders, there’s always a good chance a seemingly dead character will make their return. 

While Sharako and Coryls meet their fates, the Green and Black fleets continue to battle around Driftmark when Rhaena flies in on Sheep Stealer, seemingly ready to turn the battle in favor of the Blacks. 

Unfortunately, she didn’t have much time to train Sheep Stealer, and after ordering him to attack, he set about indiscriminately BBQing ships from both sides. Rhaena desperately and ineffectively attempts to call off her dragon, and Jace prepares to attack her, only veering off at the last minute when he realizes it's his cousin. 

Avoiding Sheep Stealer puts the young prince and his dragon Vermax directly in the path of a Green harpoon attached to an anchor, which sinks into the dragon’s side and slowly drags him down into the dark waters despite Jace begging him to fly.

Jace releases himself from his mortally wounded dragon and swims to the surface, where he grabs onto a piece of driftwood and serenely bobs along until Green sailors fill his body with arrows, making him the fourth heir to the throne to die in the show’s nineteen episodes. 

While the first two seasons focused more on political maneuvering than open battle, the Dance of the Dragons is now fully engaged, and we’d expect much bloodshed to ensue. The big question we have going forward is how Rhaenyra will react to the death of her second son, and whether Alicent can successfully betray her son before he gives her any more creepy tongue kisses.

The season’s later episodes also exposed the larger character problem House of the Dragon still hasn’t solved.