House of the Dragon Closes Out This Season With a Veritable Buffet of Deaths
Slate · L · trust 48/100
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This article contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of House of the Dragon .
As his army marches toward battle in the final episode of House of the Dragon ’s third season, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) takes a moment to savor how much he’s looking forward to meeting the traitorous knight Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) on the battlefield, only to be informed that Ser Criston has already been killed. “How did he die?” he asks with a glum sense of disappointment. And as if to cheer him up, his second in command, the Northman Roderick Dustin (Tommy Flanagan), reassures him: “Badly.”
Criston, a common-born turned knight turned eventual Green-allied Kingmaker, wanted a warrior’s death. His forces greatly outnumbered and sure to be slaughtered, he made a noble offer in Episode 6, “Faceless Men,” to meet the opposing commander in single combat—an offer that was still hanging in the air when the first arrow struck him in the gut. Another followed, and a third, that one to his face, punching a hole in his look of dumbfounded confusion. An episode later, we saw his severed head being toted around as a trophy, the arrow’s broken shaft still protruding from his cheek. And now, as House of the Dragon reaches the climactic battle it’s been building to for weeks, we see Cole’s enemies chuckling over his stupid and pointless death. So much for going out in a blaze of glory.
Turns out that’s the theme for this season finale, which wages war at Tumbleton, a battle that, while action-packed, is pretty short on blazes, glory-wise. There’s plenty of death, if that’s your thing: Ormund Hightower (James Norton) and the aforementioned Roddy the Ruin; Kat (Ellora Torchia), the wife of dragonrider Hugh the Hammer (Kieran Bew); plus innumerable combatants on both sides torched by the wayward Ulf (Tom Bennett), who decides he’s had enough of being sneered at by his social betters—both Black and Green—and would rather just turn his dragon on all of them. Ulf’s wanton deployment of the most powerful weapon in Westeros recalls Daenerys Targaryen’s attack on King’s Landing , the unforgivable transgression that set Game of Thrones ’ inevitable endgame in motion. But Daenerys was driven mad by grief, an anguished, traumatized woman striking back, with appalling indiscretion, at a society that had spurned her. Ulf is just an angry jerk lashing out in wounded pride, as oblivious as a drunk driver plowing into a school bus.
The martial rearrangement of the Game of Thrones theme that plays over House of the Dragon ’s opening credits frames the show as a series about war, but it’s steadily becoming a story about its aftermath, the bodies that litter the field after the battle is done (including the times when they’re just playing dead until you get within stabbing distance, as the late Ser Criston found out the hard way). Knowing he’s hopelessly outmatched but unwilling to surrender, the foppish Ormund, who has taken command of Tumbleton to stand against the still-uncrowned queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), populates the city’s battlements with child soldiers, some wielding shields the size of salad plates. Daemon cautions his troops that the town must be retaken in a way that preserves Rhaenyra’s “moral standing” in the eyes of skittish smallfolk and highborns alike, but his soldiers all but roll their eyes at the idea that moral and military victories can be won at the same time. When he sees one of those children inside the walls of Tumbleton, Roddy doesn’t hesitate to bury his axe in their face.
That’s not to say House of the Dragon has suddenly gotten squeamish about violence. The moment in the season’s penultimate episode when the deposed king Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) regains control of his dragon, Sunfyre, and instantly uses it to light up an unsuspecting army, was essentially played for laughs. (Sometimes roasting humans alive is an unspeakable horror; sometimes it kind of rules.) It’s tactically unwise for Rhaenyra, in Sunday night’s finale, to march her troops into the Great Sept of Baelor and have them gut the High Septon (Simon Chandler) for refusing to publicly anoint her queen, but let’s be honest—that guy sucked. That goes double for Ormund, who does manage to lop off Roddy’s arm with a lucky blow, but gets a mouthful of his enemy’s blood in return—the ultimate horror for a prissy germaphobe. The two get immolated by Ulf’s dragon at the same moment, but for Roddy, whose only goal is to die an awesome death, it’s a moment of fulfillment, where for Ormund it’s the ultimate humiliation (or perhaps penultimate, since the show makes sure we get a glimpse of his barbecued corpse lying in the rubble). The ruthless Daemon easily carves his way through the city until he runs into Jon Roxton (Joplin Sibtain), Ormund’s hulking second in command, and then suddenly the cold-blooded Targaryen killer is in a fight for his life, very nearly succumbing to a stronger foe until a flaming wall collapses and separates them. There’s real joy in watching this self-styled badass, so used to meting out death from the back of his dragon, get his ass handed to him in one-on-one combat.
Technically, the Blacks win this round. What remains of the Hightower host flees Tumbleton, Rhaenyra proclaims herself queen with or without the High Septon’s blessing—and, while she’s at it, the Prince Who Was Promised—and her remaining enemies have been banished or eliminated, even if more wait in the wings. But she’s close to being what her future descendant will one day call “queen of the ashes.” Her kingdom is hobbled, its resources all but depleted—some of them by men who can’t stomach the idea of being ruled by a woman—and she’ll never be a beloved ruler like her father, who…
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