House of the Dragon Season 3 Finale Recap and Review

Full spoilers follow for House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 8, “The Traitors of Tumbleton.”

Back in the day, Game of Thrones typically delivered its big action beats in a season’s penultimate episode and spent the finale wrapping up loose ends and setting the stakes for the following year. House of the Dragon is a different beast: this season began and ended with all-out war, and if anything, this finale leaves too many loose ends dangling. If it’s less punch-the-air satisfying than the season opener, it may have more consequential revelations for what’s to come.

In King’s Landing, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) continues to make one unforced error after another. Driven to near hysteria by the news that Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) has survived, she exiles one of her more clear-eyed advisers, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) and baffles her subjects, speaking to them about prophecies – occasionally in High Valyrian – when they’re worried about putting food on the table.

More troublingly, she makes a classic Henry II of England error and has the head of her church assassinated in his cathedral. That didn’t go well for Henry, who sparked widespread unrest and had to make significant concessions to the Pope to settle things down, and doesn’t seem likely to go well for Rhaenyra either. Perhaps significantly, Rhaenyra has the generally likeable Alyn (Abubakar Salim) strike the fatal blow. His brother Addam (Clinton Liberty) accused him of being overly ambitious and under Rhaenyra’s thumb; he may have had a point. Rhaenyra is no longer as hesitant as she once was, but fear has also made her vicious. The woman who hisses commands to Alyn in the Sept is not the same one who wrung her hands over violence last season. Something has broken in her; she may no longer be one of the Targaryens capable of greatness.

We also bade farewell this week to Queen Helaena (Phia Saban), who has given one of the most quietly and consistently compelling performances this season as a woman who knows how tragically it’s all going to play out. The manner of her death – she threw herself out a window – was the same as the book, but there are some differences: her youngest son, Maelor, was born before her death on the page, and met his own tragic end. This is less horrible than the murder of an infant might have been, but it’s plenty disturbing. Her final scenes with Rhaenyra are also superbly done: watch how Viserys’ older daughter, when she tries to force Helaena to eat, impatiently puts aside the very tapestry that might have given her the answers she so desperately sought.

At Harrenhal, Aegon arrives on Sunfyre and resolves to work together with his wayward brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) for maybe the first time in their lives – albeit not before slapping him around a bit and threatening to kill him for, in fairness, his attempt on Aegon’s life. But Aemond’s obvious guilt and true repentance saves him; the pair set off to find the still-missing Vhagar and take the fight to Rhaenyra. We also learn, by the way, that Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) is the former Lady of Harrenhal. She was the wife of Black Harren, its builder, and was cursed to remain in the limits of its lands and never die when she sought dark powers in the forest to save the life of her badly-burned son. Alys’ background was never established fully in the book, so this is a new and potentially pretty potent wrinkle. In fact, Aegon and Aemond’s reconciliation is also new territory, and it’s going to be interesting to see how much trouble that terrible twosome get into as a united front.

Details

The majority of the episode, however, concerns the attack on Tumbleton. Despite the efforts of the late Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), the Rivermen have arrived en masse and Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) has flown down on Caraxes to take command and, oh yes, flame anyone who needs flamed. Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), one of the most likeable characters on the board and therefore probably doomed, tries to make peace by offering the return of the imprisoned Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), but no dice. He and Daeron (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) are left trying to survive in the besieged city; it’s not clear by the end of the episode that Daeron is OK.

Meanwhile, Ormund is searching desperately for his ace in the hole, the dragonrider Ulf (Tom Bennett), who is so excited about his heel turn that he’s drunk himself into a stupor. Here, Ormund makes an ultimately fatal mistake. He’s so overcome by the stink of the privy where he finally discovers Ulf that he entirely loses his temper and whales on the other man. Ulf still does his bidding long enough to flame half the army of Rivermen – but he then turns his fury, and Silverwing, on Tumbleton itself and Ormund in particular. So long, you prissy little manbaby bully.

Ulf is not the only dragonrider who’s in trouble this week: Hugh (Kieran Bew) also left his post in King’s Landing to look for his wife in Tumbleton, running in with the ground forces, while Baela (Bethany Antonia) is grounded in the Keep after daring to criticise Rhaenyra. As for the episode’s title, there are any number of candidates. Ulf obviously, but Hugh also disobeys orders to go to Tumbleton. Daeron and Gwayne both betray Ormund in attempting to sue for peace; Ormund has arguably betrayed Aegon in elevating Daeron. And Daemon accuses Corlys of treachery when he argues for peace. There’s a lot of it going around.

The end result is shellshocked troops stumbling around a charred battlefield, trying to collect corpses, while Caraxes and Hugh’s Vermithor chase off Ulf’s Silverwing. The Battle of Tumbleton is – at best – a draw for the Blacks, and if it’s a victory for the Greens it might prove to be a Pyrrhic one, what with the loss of Ormund, their best strategist, and the uncertain fate of Ulf and Silverwing afterwards.

At this point it’s a positive disadvantage to have read the books; some of us have been waiting for one face-off for nearly half a decade now, since that could plausibly have happened at the end of Season 1 or the start of Season 2. Now we will have to wait two more years if it’s even going to happen as written. The overall shape of the show is also becoming more evident, and something that I wrote about last season seems to be taking shape (read that here if you’re not scared of major spoilers). Whether showrunner Ryan Condal and his team can stick the landing for the finale better than Game of Thrones did remains to be seen, but they have made a great foundation for it this year.