CAN YOU WATCH House of the Dragon season three without having watched season one and two? Does having watched the entirety of Game of Thrones count for anything when you settle down to take in this spin-off series?
Or, I begin to wonder as I press play on the first episode of House of the Dragon season 3, are you a complete idiot for trying?
I know I won’t be the only viewer who comes to the series fresh, wondering how easy it is to slip into House of the Dragon’s world.
Here’s what I know from my research: the series (running since 2022) is set almost 200 years before Game of Thrones, and centres mainly on House Targaryen. In essence, it aims to chart the fall of that house.
Key characters include Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’arcy) who is the contested heir to the Iron Throne, and Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), her stepmother/former childhood friend. Matt Smith is Daemon Targaryen, the second husband of Rhaenyra. There are several dragons, one of which has apparently gone rogue.
I know that a civil war is underway, and I’m informed that something called the Battle of the Gullet is going to kick off. And hey, I’m no fool. So I anticipate the usual GoT-style setpieces, battlefield scenes and a whole lot of death.
No dilly-dallying
But what I forget is that in the GoT world, there is no dilly-dallying, and no spoonfeeding viewers with backstory when it can get straight into family members double-crossing each other, dragons torching sheep and men getting impaled on swords.
And so I spend most of episode one, as will any new viewer approaching this season, utterly confused.
It doesn’t start off too badly, with a familiar dragon killing the aforementioned sheep before being approached and then ridden on by whom I suspect is a newly pivotal character. (I consult my list of spoilers-that-cannot-be-mentioned and discover I must not name this character.)
Then we meet Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), who’s coughing and spluttering and trying to escape from… somewhere. I turn to my new best friend, Google: turns out he is the eldest son of Alicent Hightower, was burned by a dragon and is in terrible pain, and is fleeing Aegon. No, sorry Aemond. Right. His brother. OK.
The early set up of episode one sees us bouncing around to different characters, showing us where they are at this point of time.
But the dialogue is impenetrable at times, full of references that only regular viewers will understand. I jot down names that are familiar from GoT – ‘red keep’, ‘King’s Landing’ – but then stumble over mentions of the Triarchy, Vhagar (turns out this is an extremely pivotal dragon), rivermen who must be returned to the mud, God’s eye…
‘Told to denounce the usurper?’ I frantically scribble in my notepad. ‘Vanguard smashed rearguard broken?’
I wonder if I’m supposed to be telling the dragons apart. Can anyone?
I feel like I’ve been handed a gigantic cryptic crossword and ordered to solve it in real time. I’ve an hour. Go!
Soon, like a soldier lurching around the battlefield in any one of these episodes, I’m drowning in a soup of muddy consonants and trying to find some reference to cling on to.
Quest for power
Solace for my addled brain comes in the form of more straightfoward moments: when I note that Rhaenyra is on a quest for power but is butting up against the anger of her son; when Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton) rocks up, shiny in his pristine plate armour, and with a cocky attitude that brings some welcome levity; when Daemon Targaryen emerges on the battlefield, hench and full of brio, and then provides a poor soldier with a particularly grisly death.
The second half of episode one is taken up with an epic fight scene, and I’ve learned already that it’s best to let these moments sweep you away via impressive killings and tense stand-offs. You really do get all you want and more in these fight scenes, because they bring together different factions and are jumping-off points for the next major plot moments.
House of the Dragon excels at placing the viewer deep inside these battles, before sweeping out and giving us a 360-degree view of what’s going on. The camera relishes every fire lit, every man tossed overboard from a burning ship, every arrow piercing a skull. This, it feels at times, is what VFX was invented for.
And at the end of episode one, we get a nifty, unexpected death which underlines what I’d almost forgotten: anything Game of Thrones related always has a sting in its tail. It’s these juicy moments that keep people returning to these series. We’ve learned from GoT that in this world, no life is too precious to end. No taboo is too dark to be explored. We stay on our toes because the flash of a knife is always just out of view.
And when something particularly terrible does happen in this universe, the show sure knows how to pull on our heartstrings if it dares. So episode two opens with the sombre aftermath of the aforementioned surprise death, replete with a score featuring heightened strings and no dialogue for several minutes.
Thankfully, just in case we didn’t know the battle had been won, the eventual dialogue goes as follows:
Character one: ’The battle.’
Character two: ”Tis won.’
At this point I want to kiss the scriptwriter for their economy.
Sure footing
There is a list as long as my arm of things I cannot reveal from the first four episodes available for screening, so I won’t say who died or who won the battle. Or indeed who dies midway through episode two in a particularly unexpected way.
But it’s the expression of pure grief from one major character, [redacted], that impresses most, because it brings a humanity to the series, a humanity that’s much needed in a world where lives are often seen as without value.
That’s why I also appreciate getting to see more of Olivia Cooke’s Alicent Hightower, who puts up with horrendously chilling behaviour from creepy men. Cooke beautifully embodies how Alicent has to constantly stay on alert, her eyes always watching out for a split-second change in someone’s behaviour.
As the series progresses, new viewers will find themselves on more sure footing. We are now in the world of plot points that follow events that we’ve seen happening. So the aftermath of the shocking death puts us on more comfortable ground.
Though in the world of House of the Dragon, perhaps the word ‘comfortable’ is a misnomer. We might understand why much of what is happening is taking place, but we might not like it.
Worth watching?
So, is House of the Dragon worth watching? If you are new to its world, I can wholeheartedly say it’s best to bone up on series one and two if you really desire to get stuck into season three. It’s not ideal to have to google ‘which dragon important house of dragon’ while watching it.
For those who are fans, if you want to see: battlefields littered with corpses; pained-looking women atop menacing dragons; truly unexpected deaths of major characters; and men burning alive after a dragon lays claim to them, then do indeed check out this latest season.
And really, my hat goes off to you House of Dragon-heads. You don’t get confused by the Aegon/Aemonds, can tell Dragon 1 from Dragon 2, can clearly stomach the sight of dead bodies and keep up with the various machinations undergirding this fictional fantasy world. As such, I salute you.
House of the Dragon is streaming on HBO Max from Sunday 21 June.