House of the Dragon Season 3 is all gas, no breaks: review

Heads will roll. For anyone who complained that not enough was happening on “House of the Dragon,” Season 3 feels like showrunner Ryan Condal and his writing team heard your feedback and cranked the dial up to, “a hundred things are happening at once.” After two seasons of build-up to a war, the “Game of Thrones” prequel finally gets to the good part.Season 3 is all gas, no brakes. It’s hard to keep track of how many beheadings there are, how many dragons spit fire, or how many big plot events happen. Among the three shows in the “Game of Thrones” world (the original show, this show, and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms“), “House of the Dragon” is the inferior offering. That hasn’t changed – even though this is the best season yet. There’s a lot of action.

Much of it lacks depth, because the characters remain underdeveloped and the story is spread too thin across too many of them. But, this season flows better than the previous two, and it’s more entertaining. If you can leave your brain at the door, Season 3 is the perfect summer show, full of spectacle, strong performances, and more levity than past seasons, in between the violence and tragedy.(The writers seem to have taken note that the lighter-toned “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was a hit). Set over a hundred years before the events of “Game of Thrones,” “House of the Dragon” follows a civil war between Daenerys (Emilia Clarke)’s ancestors: Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), and her half-brother Aegon (Tom Glynn Carney), fighting over who is the heir to the Iron Throne. Rhaenyra has her uncle/ husband Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) on her side, as her fiercest fighter.

The show still sidelines him too much.But, in an improvement over Season 2, at least he’s not forced to spend an entire season hallucinating sex with his mom (remember that?). On Aegon’s side, he has his brother, the volatile, eye patch-wearing Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) as his most...