Season 3 of House of the Dragon premieres this Sunday. It's been two full years since Season 2 ended, so you're forgiven if you don't remember all those characters and their irritatingly similar names (Aegon and Aemond! Rhaenys and Rhaenyra and Rhaena! And in this new season, just to rub it in our collective face, Daemon and Daeron!). Neither can you be reasonably expected to recall which team (Green vs. Black) they've sorted themselves into and which dragons they ride, where everything currently stands in the war between them, or precisely what it is they're all fighting over.
So let's start with that last thing: The Iron Throne is what they're vying for, because way back in Season 1, King Viserys promised his daughter Rhaenyra (Team Black) that she would be his heir. But on Viserys' deathbed, Rhaenyra's best friend Alicent (Team Green) misunderstood the wizened old codger's delirious mumblings and installed her son Aegon on the throne instead.
So began the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, which is a dance not so much in the "elegant courtly waltz" sense, and more a dance in the "mosh pit at a Knocked Loose show" sense. Which is to say: Elbows get thrown, bones get broken, dragon halitosis turns folk into so many Maillard reactions.
So here's everything you need to know going into Season 3.
Team Black
HQ: Dragonstone, an island off the coast of Westeros, ancestral seat of House Targaryen
Affiliated Houses: Velaryon, Stark, Arryn, Tully, Beesbury, Frey, Blackwood, Broome, Celtigar, plus the Winter Wolves.
Dragoncount: Seven. Syrax, Caraxes, Vermax, Moondancer, Vermithor, Silverwing, Seasmoke, plus two hatchlings, Tyraxes and Stormcloud, and three dragon eggs.
Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy): She was gonna inherit the Seven Kingdoms, but then Aegon parked his insufferable keister on the Iron Throne. And then her son Luke got killed by Aegon's brother Aemond. And then her uncle/husband Daemon challenged her authority, so she sent him away to the middle of the continent. Spent a chunk of Season 2 setting up a kind of dragonrider recruiting drive, which bolstered Team Black's dragoncount, although some of the new guys (Ulf and Hugh) are a bit sketchy. Last we saw her, she was tentatively accepting a surprising offer from her old friend Alicent — more about that later. She rides Syrax.
Prince Daemon (Matt Smith): Hoo boy, this sneering schmuck. Spent most of Season 2 off on his own, stumbling through the decaying corridors of Harrenhal (a huge castle in the middle of Westeros), experiencing an endless series of entirely pointless and repetitive quasi-mystical visions that told us nothing about him we didn't already know. He did end the season by seeming to get over his resentment of Rhaenyra and uniting various Houses under her banner. He rides Caraxes.
Prince Jacaerys (Harry Collett): Rhaenyra's son via her lover, the late Harwin Strong. Helped secure the aid of the Starks and other Northmen, who've sent a bunch of old, grizzled warriors called the Winter Wolves. Rides Vermax.
Lady Baela (Bethany Antonia): Daughter of Daemon from a previous marriage. Twin sister of Rhaena (see below). Betrothed to Jacaerys, rides Moondancer.
Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint): Head of House Velaryon, Lord of the island of Driftmark; his castle is High Tide. Admiral of Team Black's fleet, which is currently enforcing a blockade of King's Landing, preventing ships from passing through The Gullet — a narrow strait at the entrance to Blackwater Bay. Widower to Rhaenys (Eve Best) who died last season. Not-so-secretly the father of Alyn and Addam (see below).
Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno): A mysterious figure known as White Worm who's Rhaenyra's unofficial mistress of whisperers (read: spymaster). She and Daemon used to be a thing, and last season she shared a kiss with Rhaenyra, so.
Lord Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes): Teenage Lord who just took over the Riverlands on the death of his grandfather. Stood up to Daemon's bullying. Kind of a badass.
Ser Simon Strong (Sir Simon Russell Beale): Surrendered Harrenhal to Aemond immediately, because he couldn't be bothered to put up a fight. Plays at being avuncular and harmless; is neither.
Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin): Hangs around Harrenhal bein' creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky and altogether ooky. It was her potion of goof-juice that sent Daemon careering through his interminable hallucinogenic walkabout last season. Speaks in vague oracular platitudes. Keep an eye on this one.
Over the course of last season, four new Team Black dragonriders entered the chat:
Addam (Clinton Liberty): Son of Corlys, brother to Alyn. Rides Seasmoke, his half-brother Laenor's old dragon.
Ulf (Tom Bennett): An oafish drunk from King's Landing who bonded with the dragon Silverwing last season.
Hugh (Kieran Bew): A King's Landing blacksmith who bonded with Vermithor.
Lady Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell): Daughter of Daemon, twin sister of Baela. Rhaenyra sent her off to the Vale to protect the Queen's youngest kids, Joffrey (another son of Harwin Strong) and the two she had with Daemon, Li'l Viserys and Baeby Aegon (not to be confused with Team Green's Aegon). Joffrey and Baeby Aegon have hatchling dragons who are too young to fight named Tyraxes and Stormcloud, respectively. Toward the end of last season, they were all preparing to leave the Vale and escape over the Narrow Sea to Pentos, but Rhaena stayed behind to try to net herself a wild dragon, which she did, sort of, in the final moments of the season. Enter: Sheepstealer.
Team Green
HQ: King's Landing, specifically the Red Keep, which houses the Iron Throne
Affiliated Houses: Hightower, Lannister, Baratheon and the Triarchy (the Free Cities of Lys, Myr and Tyrosh)
Dragoncount: Three. Vhagar, Dreamfyre and Tessarion. Sunfyre, King Aegon's dragon, was grievously wounded last season and presumed dead — but I don't buy it.
Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke): Wife of the late King Viserys. Mother of Aegon, Aemond, Helaena … and Daeron (see below). Childhood friend of Rhaenyra, though that relationship is hella strained now; several acts of intrafamilial homicide will do that. Has been sidelined by her sons, who are both jerks. In the Season 2 finale she reached out to Rhaenyra and offered to leave the gates of King's Landing open to her. Tried to get Rhaenyra to promise not to kill her son Aegon once she takes the throne; Rhaenyra was like, "I'll be sure to take that under advisement."
King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney): Willful, cowardly, weak Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. Horribly injured last season in a dragon-battle by his own scheming brother Aemond — though Aegon had the good sense to pretend not to remember that fact. His dragon Sunfyre is MIA. At the end of last season, Aegon was smuggled out of King's Landing by …
Larys Strong (Matthew Needham): Aegon's master of whisperers, a scheming, shifty dude who orchestrated the murders of his own brother and father. Has a thing for Alicent, which she reluctantly indulges.
Aemond (Ewan Mitchell): Called Aemond One-Eye (by the smallfolk of Westeros) and Left-Eye Lopes (by me). Sports an eyepatch, due to a childhood injury. Also sports a cruel, hot-headed and scheming disposition, due to his mother Alicent not loving him enough, or something. Kicked off the current civil war by killing Lucerys at the end of Season 1. Followed that up by turning his brother Aegon into a smoking chunk of brisket during a battle over Rook's Rest. Slid into the Iron Throne and started issuing commands. Rides Vhagar, the biggest, baddest, oldest dragon in existence.
Helaena (Phia Saban): Moony, ethereal daughter of Viserys and Alicent, sister to Aemond and Aegon, also the wife of the latter, because Targaryens gonna Targaryen. Given to prophetic dreams and visions and utterances that seem like non-sequiturs until stuff happens and they suddenly prove to have been deeply um … sequiturial. Rides Dreamfyre, at least on paper. In reality, she's a dreamer, not a fighter, and doesn't ride her dragon much.
Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel): Commander of the Kingsguard, now Hand of the King to Aegon. A fine warrior, but really just another trifling King's Landing f-boi. He's had occasion to hang his scabbard from the bedposts of both Rhaenyra and Alicent, over the years. Much less pure and noble than he tells himself he is.
Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox): Knight of Oldtown. Son of Otto, brother to Alicent. Currently on the march with Criston Cole. Is actually pure and noble, two traits that put a target on your back in Westeros.
Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans): Alicent's dad, once Hand to the King, but then got dismissed by Aegon. Been MIA since Season 2's second episode, but we got a glimpse of him in last season's finale, waking up in a cell.
Daeron (?): WOOP WOOP WOOP NEW CHARACTER ALERT. Daeron is the youngest son of Alicent and Viserys, brother to Aegon, Aemond and Helaena. Though he was mentioned a few times in Season 2, we still haven't met him, as he's been living a continent away from King's Landing, in Oldtown, squiring for Ormund, the head of House Hightower. Here's hoping that growing up away from the Red Keep means he's a bit less repellent than his brothers. Rides Tessarion, whom we glimpsed flying over the Lannister army in one of the closing shots of the Season 2 finale.
Three things to watch out for in Season 3
Keep your eye on the Gullet
The Blacks are blockading Blackwater Bay, starving King's Landing in the process. The Greens, in the form of Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall), reached out to the Triarchy for a fleet of 100 warships to break the Green blockade. The Triarchy's admiral is Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn).
The Black's admiral is Corlys, who last season renamed his flagship after his dead wife Rhaenys, The Queen Who Never Was. His son Alyn (Abubakar Salim) is by his side.
Expect a sea battle that should make Game of Thrones' brutal Battle of the Blackwater look like a summer Sunday yacht club regatta.
New faces
I know, it's not like this show is sparsely populated — the cast list is longer than a CVS receipt — so the addition of even more characters seems a daunting prospect. But remember that there's a war going on, so you can expect a few folks you've come to know over the past two seasons to make their flaming/blood-soaked final exits over the course of the season.
In addition to Daeron, the casting notices indicate we'll be meeting:
- Roderick Dustin (Tommy Flanagan), aka Roddy the Ruin. A battle-scarred warrior leading the Winter Wolves — those oldheads from the North fighting for Rhaenyra and the Blacks.
- Ser Torrhen Manderly (Dan Fogler). A Northman also fighting for Rhaenyra.
- Ormund Hightower (James Norton). Head of House Hightower. Leading a host of warriors from the Reach for the Greens.
Still yet more Alicent/Rhaenyra meetups, somehow
The show's decision to center itself on the friendship between Alicent and Rhaenyra makes sense on paper, and both Cooke and D'Arcy are great together. But it's forced the writers to keep inventing howlingly improbable circumstances to get the two of them together, despite the fact that they're at war with each other. Imagine Churchill getting snuck into the Eagle's Nest for a quick confab with Hitler in 1943. I'd like to think the Season 2 finale was the last time they'll try it, but I've been wrong before, so let's all just steel ourselves for what's to come.
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