House of the Dragon season 3 review: "The most explosive start to a Westeros-set season to date"

For all its strengths, House of the Dragon season 2 was ultimately hobbled by the 2023 Hollywood strikes. Instead of a clearly intended 10-episode second season, HotD's sophomore run was trimmed to just 8 instalments, abruptly cutting the action short right before the climactic confrontation. Well, the good news is that House of the Dragon season 3's first four episodes – the sum total sent to press for review – waste no time in paying off that long wait; it's easily the most explosive start to a Westeros-set season to date.

The much-ballyhooed Battle of the Gullet ("arguably the craziest episode of TV ever made" among the many superlatives thrown around in recent interviews) is the gruelling centerpiece of the 65-minute season 3 premiere. A brutal, thrillingly staged battle at sea, it pits the Lord Corlys's armada against a fleet of revenge-fuelled Triarchy pirates, with dragons raining fire down from the skies for good measure. Like many of Thrones' famed battle episodes, it's an impressive marriage of spectacle and character, with some seriously huge ramifications for the future of the Team Green vs. Team Black civil war.

Adeptly orchestrated by "Red Sowing" director Loni Peristere, the Gullet leans into the chaos of naval combat and makes some memorably unexpected starboard turns. A tense sequence where Corlys attempts to run his Triarchy pursuers aground along the shallow Dragonstone pass is just as exciting, in its way, as the many boardings and burnings. Largely shot in real water tanks, the scale of the action eclipses anything outside the World of Westeros, even if the absence of major players like Rhaenyra and Aemond means the Battle of the Gullet never quite reaches the highs of The Battle of the Bastards, Hardhome, or several of Thrones' standard-bearing set-piece episodes.

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Even better are episodes 2 and 3, which drastically change the game for House of the Dragon. We'll keep this review spoiler-free, but by the end of episode 2, HotD has made the kind of radical moves you'd expect from a finale, not the opening salvo of a new season – further evidence that these incendiary early episodes are season 2's intended finale in a thinly veiled new guise.

In particular, a renewed focus on Rhaenyra allays justifiable criticism that being stuck on Dragonstone, with Syrax leashed, wasn't doing HotD's insurgent queen any favors. This comes at the expense of some other major players – Aemond is largely absent from the first four episodes – but HotD season 3 makes a strong case for Rhaenyra being as compelling a central figure as Daenerys as she faces up to new responsibilities.

Daemon is also mercifully unshackled this season. No longer stuck hallucinating around Harrenhal, Matt Smith gets to play every shade of Daemon, including a rarely glimpsed softer side. And after exploiting loopholes in the text to bring Rhaenrya and Alicent together in season 2, Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke share more fiery exchanges in season 3's first half than they have since season 1's time jump. If House of the Dragon is truly about Team Black and Team Green's mistakenly adversarial maternal figureheads – as showrunner Ryan Condal has claimed in the past – season 3 goes a long way to realigning the show around that idea.

Back in black

The result is a more confident and immediately satisfying version of House of the Dragon. With Rhaenyra in a position of strength thanks to the successful recruitment of three new dragonriders, there is a dangerous sense that Team Black has it a little too easy right now; anyone familiar with Game of Thrones will tell you a rug pull undoubtedly lurks around the corner. The introduction of James Norton's cunning Ormund Hightower is a wildcard that shows plenty of promise in the first half of the season, in this respect.

HBO's flagship fantasy series has always been an astonishingly handsome show, but the dragons in season 3 make Game of Thrones' once impressive firebreathers look like they were rendered on a PS4. And in these early episodes, at least, the show doesn't skimp on screentime for its marquee creatures. What's more impressive is just how much personality the beasts have. Newcomer Sheepstealer – a wild dragon who even Daemon dismisses as untameable – feels more fleshed out than some human characters do after two seasons.

Of course, without having seen the full scope of season 3, it's not clear if the rest of this penultimate season will deliver on the promise of its first half. Or if shunting two episodes worth of story down the road will have a similarly deleterious effect on this latest batch of episodes as it did on season 2. But after HotD's ambitious but flawed first two seasons, this is as good as a Westeros-set show has been since before Game of Thrones' late-run downswing. After A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms wowed earlier in the year, the World of Westeros' hot streak continues.

House of the Dragon releases on HBO in the US on June 21, and streams on HBO Max and Now from June 22 in the UK. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming Game of Thrones movies and shows.