The tears of the queen burn away, and all that is left is black. Emma D’Arcy begins the Season 3 finale of House of the Dragon with a remarkable display of raw emotion, as Rhaenyra Targaryen learns Aegon has brought the “I lived, bitch” meme to Westeros. She’s crying, hyperventilating, her paranoia made manifest. “Mine own subjects,” she tells Daemon, are now asking the gods for a ruling. And he’s concerned, but quieter. Always thinking tactically. Daemon halts Rhaenyra’s hysterics over Viserys and the old king’s prophetic expectations. He defines the moment as her truest test, where her season-long frustrations with rule have always led. And she calms. They are both clad in black.
We have never felt more fluent in High Valyrian as when Daemon and Rhaenyra shift into the ancient tongue to define their deliberate, violence-courting plan. “This is your test. Now. The moment you rise. The only quality the realm understands is strength.” And then a summation of his war hawk stance. “You have always known this.” As she gives the order to attack Tumbleton, her features become set with a dark determination. And the queen’s tears flee for their lives.
This is it. The epic battle to bookend this season, and bring to HBO screens another set piece from the George R.R. Martin source material. Inside Tumbleton, Ormund knights Daeron and regally declares him “Ser Daeron the Daring” even as he forces children onto the town’s walls. Human shields against dragonflame. Outside, Daemon (with Caraxes) has joined Ser Oscar Tully, Ser Roderick Dustin, and the Team Black land army, where he rejects a desperate Ser Gwayne’s plea for a political solution, some kind of shared Hightow-argaryen rule of the realm. (But he will reclaim Lord Corlys from the Greens, thank you very much.) War horns sound. Daemon first expresses the queen’s wishes for no harm to noncombatants, then turns to his host. “I don’t want the best of you. I want the worst!” Gonna be hard to do both.
In King’s Landing, Rhaenyra has donned full formal armor and her father’s golden crown. Little Joffrey is with her, and in their litter en route to the Grand Sept, she tells her son and heir about the Song of Ice and Fire. It is also her demand to be anointed, but the septons have only grown more defiant, especially with word of Aegon’s “resurrection.” She has Ser Alyn, as acting Hand, run a sword through the high priest. A traitor to her cause. This newly determined Rhaenyra needs the Faith no more.
And she’ll prove it. To a silent smallfolk throng gathered outside the Sept, Rhaenyra declares her rule prophesied long before common memory. And here’s some shit: she publicly reveals the Targ line’s remit, to protect everybody from “an ancient and sinister darkness that looms in the far North, beyond the Wall, beyond the lands of winter.” WTF looks from Torrhen Manderly, Orwyle, the gathered Blacks. But Rhaenyra presses on. The Song of Ice and Fire is now a public plank in her platform. “If your world is to survive, I must light the way. I am Rhaenyra the Chosen.” She switches to High V for scary emphasis. “I am the Prince That Was Promised!”
The Battle of Tumbleton is a terrible masterpiece of bloodshed, fire, and multiple perspectives. Ulf got drunk and missed his own betrayer’s coronation, leaving a huge hole in Ormund’s strategy, which Daemon fills by sending Ser Roderick and the Winter Wolves over the walls, Oscar Tully to the flanks, and himself in the center, where Caraxes obliterates T-Town’s front gate. Clashing swords, suits of armor, war axes buried in faces — it’s all brutal. Roddy fights his way to Ormund, and they spar viciously on the battlements. But just when the Blacks have the advantage, and Daeron is about to join the fray on Tessarion for the Greens, who appears in the sky but a surly Ulf the White on Silverwing. The turncoat spews dragonflame on advancing columns of Rivermen, nearly immolating both Corlys and Daemon. And then, hardened by how all of the highborn have treated him, Ulf the lush, Ulf the dragonseed, Ser Ulf the White — the betrayer — becomes this battle’s ultimate chaos agent. “Fuck you, too,” he declares, turns his dragon on Tumbleton, and burns Ormund alive just as Roddy is jamming a short sword up the lord’s ass. (“A proper fucking, from the North!”) Now that is a glorious TV death for a villain. Smell ya later, Ormund Hightower.
“Do you think life is nothing more than not being dead? Our father would hate you for this. All the things you care about are ugly.” These were Helaena Targaryen’s powerful words to Rhaenyra, themselves draped in prophecy, as the queen tried, failingly, to again force her compliance. With Rhaenyra off declaring her public campaign of Ice and Fire, Helaena is alone in her Red Keep chambers. There is an open window. She recalls another scene from earlier, when she saw the grey mare and wagon from her foresight in the courtyard. And the princess leaps to her death. Far away, somewhere between King’s Landing and Harrenhal, Alicent Hightower watches as a kaleidoscope of blue butterflies alight and flutter away.
As the smoke clears on the Battle of Tumbleton, with massive losses on both sides, dazed and scalded common folk wandering the ruined streets, Corlys puts his arm on Daemon. “Ulf has turned. The town is lost. We are leaving.” It’s hard to say who even won. But Rhaenyra doesn’t know any of that yet. As she arrives in Helaena’s chambers, still in her armor and crown, she considers her half-sister’s now-completed needlework, which drapes from the open window where she fell. There, rendered in the stitches, someone else is in charge. But Rhaenyra simply closes the shutters. She has determined her path.
Hot D’s for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 8:
- So Ormund bought it, but who survived HOTD Season 3? Gwayne, for one; he climbs from the burned Tumbleton rubble and searches for Daeron, whose post-battle fate is unknown. Mysaria is also still among the living. Rhaenyra consolidated her power by banishing her advisor and occasional lover to Pentos. But Mysaria slipped her guard, and is seen in the crowd during the big Grand Sept speech. What also of Baela and Rhaena? Both remain alive, but still on the queen’s shit list for insolence. Neither Baela’s dragon, nor Ser Addam with his own mount, were a factor at Tumbleton.
- And neither was Ser Hugh Hammer. The other principal dragonseed left Vermithor completely and joined the battle on the ground. Sadly though, it seems Hugh was too late to save his wife Kat from the carnage.
- Not only does Alys Rivers survive, she’s actually kinda ageless, and we’d say Gayle Rankin is Season 3’s sleeper star. Alys delivers a beautifully emotional speech to Aemond here in Ep 8, confirming her background, the details of her curse, and the shared sense of abandonment that brought this unlikely pair together. They take each other’s hands and kiss. The power couple and their secret dragon’s eggs are set to thrive.
- Unless Aegon gets his way. House of the Dragon creates a huge cliffhanger for Season 4 by bringing the scarred usurper to Harrenhal on Sunfyre, where his wish for kinslaying reciprocity is forsaken by a remorseful Aemond. Tom Glynn-Carney is such a dastardly delight as Aegon II, and will remain so. “Maybe, when Rhaenyra’s head is on a spike, and I’m back on the Iron Throne, maybe then I’ll forgive you for trying to fucking kill me.”
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.