Full spoilers follow for House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 1.

High stakes. High seas. High treason. This season opener has everything. This is the Battle of the Gullet and it is every bit as spectacular as we could have hoped, all pirate battles and flaming missiles and hand-to-hand combat. It’s surrounded by the sort of scheming, seduction, confession and devastation that makes for good character drama too. If the rest of the season is anything like this, this Game of Thrones spin-off might finally have a way to outfight its predecessor.

We’ll come back to the character stuff. The centrepiece of this episode is a hugely exciting air-and-navy clash between Lord Corlys Velaryon’s (Steve Toussaint) fleet and the Tyroshi fleet led by Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn). For Lohar, it’s a grudge match; for Corlys, it’s only part of his blockade of King’s Landing on behalf of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and her “Blacks” in the civil war called the Dance of Dragons against her cousins, the “Greens.”

Lohar’s determined to hit the Sea Snake where it hurts, sending half her fleet to burn his home: “High Tide is a monument to the Sea Snake himself. Do you think his focus will hold when he sees his treasure aflame?” She’s right: it is another devastating blow to a man who already lost a wife and two children. Happily, he’s also a badass. He lures Lohar away from the fleet, sinks two of her companion ships thanks to some fancy-pants sailing through a narrow channel, and then fights hand-to-hand against the ferocious Tyroshi captain. Abigail Thorn is great as Lohar here, absolutely convincing as a leader of men and a serious threat to Corlys. She’s already come close to taking down a dragon before getting to this personal vendetta.

Given that Corlys begins the episode having a moving heart-to-heart with his formidable illegitimate son Alyn (Abubakar Salim) and that he then earns Alyn’s respect as a sailor and a captain during the battle, you have to wonder if he’ll survive this fight; he’s missing at the end of the episode. If this is how he goes out, fair play. It’s an exceptionally well-shot, almost entirely practical battle; apparently the ship tanks and sets were so massive at Leavesden Studios that they overshadowed the new Harry Potter’s Privet Drive.

The battle in the air goes less well. Yes, Prince Jacaerys (Harry Collett) and Baela (Bethany Antonia) ride into the fight and decimate the Tyroshi fleet, but Jace’s dragon Vermax is almost taken down by Lohar early on, and then Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) joins the battle to devastating effect. In this episode, we see that she’s finally wooed a dragon of her own, but in one of those rabbit’s foot scenarios her half-feral beast refuses to obey her and attacks friends and foe alike in the heat of the moment. Her attempts to help contribute to the battle’s biggest loss as Vermax is harpooned in the chest and drags Jace into the drink with him. It’s a devastating finale.

Rhaena's attempts to help contribute to the battle’s biggest loss as Vermax is harpooned in the chest and drags Jace into the drink with him. It’s a devastating finale.“

On the bright side, at least it saves Rhaenyra from having to confront her son’s high treason: the reason she is not there on her own dragon is because he locked her in her room for her own protection. She’s on a high this episode, convinced by Alicent’s (Olivia Cooke) offer to surrender King’s Landing and confident in her new dragonriders, who are waiting grumpily near Harrenhal to ambush awful Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) and his massive dragon Vhagar. (So oversized. What is he compensating for?) Of course, this follows two seasons of dithering, so you can understand why her team isn't so convinced. It’s a bit late for her to start quoting Elizabeth I now. Rhaenyra’s line, “I may appear to have the weak and feeble body of a woman but I possess the heart and spirit of a king” is a historical lift from a speech that also preceded a major naval encounter. Anyway, she sends for her husband, Daemon (Matt Smith), who’s just destroyed a Green-aligned Lannister army at Red Fork with the help of the Riverlords, and enjoying the blood-splattered look.

The late-arriving Starks bring Daemon the head of Lord Jason Lannister (Jefferson Hall), while his fully-armoured twin Tyland tries to keep control of his Tyroshi allies on the Gullet. So much for one Green army, but the spoiled, rather prissy Ormund Hightower (James Norton) has another on the way, including the dragon Tessarion. Oh, and Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) is out there with his forces, alongside Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), who’s increasingly horrified by Cole’s nihilism and his lack of control of his thuggish men. That’s a lot of potential fighting men still on the board.

Then there are the main members of the Green royal family. Alicent is horrified, on her return to King’s Landing, to find Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) missing and Aemond all too present, when she had promised Rhaenyra precisely the opposite. Aegon’s run for it is interrupted by Rhaenyra’s troops and Lord Larys’ (Matthew Needham) scheming, unbeknownst to his mother, but it takes all of Alicent’s considerable powers of persuasion – and a hint of something closer to seduction on Aemond’s part, ewww – to send her son off to Harrenhal and clear the way for the deal she has made. As for that kiss, we needed something to really turn the stomach this episode, right?

In summary, we’ve got dragons in action; ships sinking and burning and firing; armies clashing; Larys and Aemond and Aegon and Cole being awful; and Alyn and Corlys and Daemon being badass. If the show were always like this, it wouldn’t just match Game of Thrones, it would outshine all but a handful of episodes. Two years ago, rounding up Season 2, I speculated that showrunner Ryan Condal had held back on the action last time to build a war chest for this season. I thought I was joking, but this episode makes me wonder. If this signals the path for Season 3, it’s going to be a feast.