House of the Dragon episode 3

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With that said, it’s good we’re getting to meet the dragon now; it’ll make a key event in the future involving Seasmoke all the more heartbreaking. Given the book’s sparse details about the war in the Stepstones, it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that Seasmoke’s role in this week’s episode was a show-only invention. Just as likely, it’s the show nodding toward a rare moment of Martin canonically exhibiting self-restraint. Perhaps it’s worth paying attention to Nymeria’s tale and how it might correlate with the princess and the queen’s future. For House of the Dragon, however, resolving that conflict required only a single episode, and even more succinctly, a seven-minute action sequence. Still, his fate is consistent with what happens in Fire & Blood, the fictional history book on which HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel is based.

The new episode of House of the Dragon, Second of His Name, saw a climactic battle and a new Targaryen in town.

House of the Dragon war explained](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/house-dragon-dance-dragons-war-explained/) [Where was House of the Dragon filmed?](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/house-dragon-filming-locations-sets/) [What is Dark Sister in House of the Dragon?](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/house-dragon-dark-sister-explained/) [Who is the opening voiceover in House of the Dragon episode 1?](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/house-of-the-dragon-voiceover/) [What book is House of the Dragon based on? Game of Thrones timeline explained](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/game-of-thrones-timeline-house-of-dragon/) [What time is House of the Dragon released in the UK?](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/house-dragon-time-release-uk/) [What is the Dance of the Dragons? Queen Alicent approaches King Viserys in his chambers to discuss Princess Rhaenyra and the Queen suggests she will marry if she believes it is her choice to do so. King Viserys notes the importance of marriage but does not want to replace Princess Rhaenyra and wants to see her content and happy. Queen Alicent pushes King Viserys to do what is best for the realm - and that is to vanquish the Crabfeeder. Lord Lyonel suggests a match and King Viserys assumes it will be his own son but the honourable Lord Lyonel actually suggests Ser Laenor Velaryon as a match for Princess Rhaenyra to mend the ties between House Velaryon and House Targaryen and provide wealth and pure Valyrian blood - if Ser Laenor survives the war in the Stepstones. Ser Otto visits an unhappy Queen Alicent and he pushes the importance of Prince Aegon becoming the heir to the Iron Throne. The pair return to a shocked group of onlookers in the camp with the dead boar as Princess Rhaenyra passes by covered in blood. Lord Jason hands King Viserys the spear to kill the stag and he does but it is slow and he must stab it twice. In the forest, Princess Rhaenyra sits with Ser Criston by a fire at night and she asks him if the realm would ever accept her as their queen but he says they will have no choice but to. Lord Jason makes clear his desire to marry Princess Rhaenyra and to add strength to House Targaryen and compensate Princess Rhaenyra for (he expects) her losing her title as heir to the throne. Catching up with her near a lake in the Kingswood, Ser Criston asks Princess Rhaenyra what troubles her and she admits it is her marital prospects and Ser Criston jokes that he could kill Lord Jason for her.

Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock) has to fight off poorly equipped potential suitors in the new episode of 'House Of The Dragon'.

Rhaenyra is a woman.” A reference from Otto Hightower to Viserys’ father and his 55-year reign, this once again illustrates the inflexible, tradition-bound way of doing things in the Seven Kingdoms. Simply because Rhaenyra is not a man, the people will always, Otto says, be unhappy to see her on the throne. At the beginning of this House Of The Dragon episode he had declared, “I’m going to feed you to your own crabs.” He was true to his word. After this, Alicent convinces the hungover King that in the Stepstones the best course of action is intervention – Viserys should step in to help his brother. Forever a self-confident thorn in her father’s side, Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) – who is now 17 – reluctantly agrees to travel to Kingswood on a hunt with the lads, where Jason Lannister (Jefferson Hall) tries and fails to woo her with honeyed wine. [Stepstones](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Stepstones), frustrated at how little progress they are making, propose that someone act as bait in order to lure the men out of the comfort of their caves.

Now, Viserys (Paddy Considine) and Alicent (Emily Carey) are happily married with a young son, Aegon, and another nipper on the way. A week truly is a long time ...

In the episode’s final shots, he scuttles out of the caves with the bisected corpse of the Crab Feeder, ending a brutal three-year war and giving him license to return to King’s Landing to stir the pot. When, finally, he confesses his feeling that he is “forever doomed to anger one person in the pleasing of another,” he might as well be summing up the entire history of leadership in the Seven Kingdoms. She wants the best for her husband, her son, her childhood chum, and the realm at large. Going on a single-handed, Rambo-style rampage, archers fire at Daemon with the accuracy of Stormtroopers, while his infantry opponents – very sportingly – line up one at a time to be killed, rather than swarming him all at once. More pressing is to head out on a hunting (and drinking) trip to celebrate the little Prince. “I came here to hunt, not to be suffocated by all this f***ing politicking!” he explodes at his hand (and father-in-law), Otto, as the dual questions of Aegon’s succession and Rhaenyra’s marriage begin to eat at him, like the flesh-eating virus that is also, um, eating at him. The King’s daughter and (current) heir, Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), is still sulking about her dad hooking up with her best friend – and while Alicent gamely labours on through her second pregnancy, Rhaenyra regresses into a sullen teenager. Since we left them bartering over a backroom deal, Daemon and the Sea Snake have waged full-on war in the Stepstones against the so-called “Crab Feeder”, Craghas Drahar (a truly creepy, non-verbal performance from Daniel Scott-Smith). He is coming into his own in a role that is one of the more ambiguous across the Thrones canon. Well, the third episode of [House of the Dragon](/topic/house-of-the-dragon-0)– titled “Second of His Name” – goes one step further. The week viewers have waited since that pact was struck between Daemon Targaryen ( [Matt Smith](/topic/matt-smith)) and Corlys Velaryon ( [Steve Toussaint](/topic/steve-toussaint)) has brought proceedings forward a full three years. Now, Viserys ( [Paddy Considine](/topic/paddy-considine)) and Alicent (Emily Carey) are happily married with a young son, Aegon, and another nipper on the way.

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Episode three has been the show’s best so far, and if the series continues in this vein, the first season will measure up to its predecessor, Game of Thrones. The final act of the series returns to the Stepstones, where Daemon has been informed that Viserys will send a paltry ten ships to his aid. Daemon’s scenes are a little too ‘John Wick’ and there’s some serious suspension of disbelief required to accept the outcome, but it was excellent television nonetheless. She is presented with a potential suitor, though she makes it clear that she won’t be sold off to the first man who comes knocking, which leads to a rather sweet moment between her and her father. Rhaenyra is miffed that her little brother Aegon looks set to usurp her position as heir to the Iron Throne - most of the men at court seem to think it’s a given that she will be passed over. It’s clear from the bloody opening of the episode, in which Targaryen foot soldiers are seen nailed to spikes and fed to the crabs, that Daemon doesn’t have everything in hand.

In the third episode of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel, Rhaenyra is bored, has to fend off a Lord, then nearly gets gored; meanwhile, a minor threat gets put ...

- The show did a fair bit of work to set up the Crabfeeder as a formidable foe, but all of that work was purely visual. But we didn't get to actually see Daemon slicing the Crabfeeder on the bias, giving him a fashionable, kicky, off-the-shoulder kind of death. High on a ridge overlooking this sad scene, the true White Hart of Yeah No For Real You Are the True Heir to the Iron Throne, GurlTM appears to Rhaenyra and Ser Criston. He's the firstborn son of the king! This scene is a big emotional breakthrough for Viserys — yes, he's drunk, but he's clearly been putting in the work on himself, processing, self-actualizing, filling out the workbooks — but Alicent just sort of ... But instead of one that looks out at the wider world, this one looks inward — and to the past. He's troubled, also, by Jason Lannister's offer of a spear with which to kill the beast, as well as his offering himself up as Rhaenyra Suitor Number 1. This sets her fuming, and she confronts the king, accusing him of pawning her off for political gain. Rhaenyra feels overlooked and disregarded by the king and ... (It's in this same wood that King Robert I will later be mortally wounded by a boar, kicking off the events of Game of Thrones.) But Viserys dismisses him, too preoccupied with his son Aegon's upcoming second birthday, and the royal hunt that has been arranged in his honor. This recap of House of the Dragon's third episode contains spoilers for ...

As evidenced by King Viserys's (Paddy Considine) nearly three-year long refusal to get the crown involved with it, the Stepstones war is far from an existential ...

The fact that it still feels like classic Game of Thrones anyway is as auspicious a sign as a white hart in the kingswood on your Name Day. “Second of His Name” does well to spend plenty of time with Rhaenyra as well as she nurses her wounds over her father’s marriage and the creation of an heir that might leapfrog her over the throne. More and more the Iron Throne looks like a prison of contradicting responsibilities on House of the Dragon. Neither Rhaenyra nor her father are one to indulge in superstition but how can Rhaenyra deny the mighty symbolism of being the one to see the white hart when it was intended for somebody else? Befitting of the great hunt’s scale, “Second of His Name” provides House of the Dragon with another influx of new characters. Here, however, the scale of the occasion is truly immense and impressive. House of the Dragon answers this question and more in “Second of His Name.” While our time in the Stepstones is certainly worthwhile and glorious, “Second of His Name” could not be considered a successful episode of television if it contained only that. It would be one thing for Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and the rest of the realm to hear about Laenor Velaryon’s (Theo Nate) ascension as a dragonrider, it’s another thing entirely for us to actually see it. In Game of Thrones, King Robert’s hunting party consisted of the drunken king himself, his brother Renly, and a handful of other dudes roaming around the woods until a boar goared the Usurper King to death (offscreen of course, in keeping with Thrones’ early monetary modesty). Though House of the Dragon does imbue the Crabfeeder saga with a little more importance than its worth, the show does get one crucial character (re)introduction out of it. In fact, for much of its early run Game of Thrones went out of its way to avoid major battles even when the situation called for it.

“Even I do not exist above tradition and duty, Rhaenyra!” - King Viserys I Targaryen, to his daughter. Sunday night's episode of House Of The Dragon gave us ...

He lands on his dragon, walks over to the warlords discussing their next move, reads the letter, hands it to Corlys, picks up his helmet and smashes the messenger’s face in before being dragged off, and then rows over to the other side and the forces of the Triarchy and never once during all of this does he utter even a single word. Then Daemon sees the Crabfeeder retreating into his tunnels and follows him, emerging at last with just one half of his enemy’s body, covered in blood. The B-plot takes place at the beginning and ending of the episode. The Crabfeeder and his men retreat to the caves. That takes place at the end of the episode. Alicent urges Viserys to send help to Daemon—for the realm if not for his brother, who Viserys calls a malcontent. The symbol of the white hart was once a sign of nobility prior to the Targaryen conquest of the land. Indeed, as his daughter is fending off the boar, Viserys is downing cup after cup of wine, sinking further and further into a wretched mood. Viserys botches the slaughter and is forced to stab the poor beast several times with a spear gifted to him by Jason Lannister, before he strikes the killing blow. He seems almost as much in denial over his daughter as he is the war in the Stepstones. Hightower tells Viserys that he is king and his daughter would obey him if he ordered her to wed the Lion. Boars and wine were, of course, the downfall of the Baratheon king, whose sigil was a stag.

The episode begins on the Stepstones, where Daemon (Matt Smith) and Corlys' (Steve Toussaint) war against the Crabfeeder is proceeding slowly. The pair have ...

It took Game of Thrones until the final few seasons to show us large-scale battles, but House of the Dragon is wasting no time in splattering the camera with gore. Corlys’ forces followed the rebellious prince, and with the cruel crustacean feeder out in the open, they make short work of him. I credit the show for not resorting to literal exposition dumps, but I do miss Thrones’s coherence. Viserys is weak in spirit and body, desperate for validation and praise, while Rhaenyra is the opposite. It’s a really effective battle scene that focuses almost entirely on Daemon’s experience as he slashes, burns, and crushes his way across the battlefield. All of this is contrasted with Rhaenyra, who does not care for appearances, skips necessary parties, and refuses to do the accepted thing and marry a man her father selects. As the various lords and ladies of the realm start politicking, it soon becomes clear to Rhaenyra that Viserys is trying to wed her off for political reasons, while the king has to deal with various nobles telling him to name Aegon heir. All around, court lords plot to have Aegon named heir, and across the Narrow Sea, another threat looms. Poor, clueless Viserys doesn’t really understand why Rhaenyra won’t attend the name day of a potential political rival and starts making a fuss about things. His lackeys simply snare a deer and bring it to him; there’s no skill or honour in it. The pair have made surprisingly little progress against the piratical admiral, especially when we see what short work a dragon makes of his corsairs, but hey ho, it’s an excellent excuse to see a fire-breathing lizard turn people into candles, so we shouldn’t complain too much. Warning, spoilers for House of the Dragon episode 3 ahead.