I haven't been feeling House of the Dragon S3, but this mid-season trailer gives me hope
Are some things about to actually happen?
Now that the World Cup is over, I'm finally redressing the imbalance in my viewing habits in recent times – meaning I don't have to watch multiple football matches every day. For one thing, I'm gagging to get back to actually watching movies now that my evenings are my own, but it's also allowed me to catch up on House of the Dragon.
I've been a moderate defender of the show in the last couple of years, since I think it's definitely maintaining a higher average quality than the last two or three seasons of Game of Thrones, and that makes it highly watchable. That said, its third season has been hit and miss, to me.
It opened with a great sense of momentum and some big battles, staged at the sort of scale that few other TV operations can match. Some truly crazy practical sets and backdrops make it look far better than most of its rivals, and the craft that go into it is hard to overestimate.
Still, a few episodes later and I can't help but feel we're back in the mire of plot conveniences, confusing timelines and locations, and a general sense that the showrunners don't know how to keep its war going credibly without basically having to remove characters (and dragons) from the board.
Now, the show has a mid-season trailer giving glimpses of what's coming in the second half of the season, and it's giving hope that the short answer will be "more action".
We certainly seem to get a look at battle formations and siege tactics, as the Targaryen forces encircle Tumbleton, where their enemies have taken root – a battle that looks set to decide much of the outcome of the bloody war of succession.
It's fairly clear that a whole heap of characters are going to converge on the town, but what I'd like is for some more clarity when we're not in the middle of big battles. It's all well and good having tentpole moments a couple of times a season, but the show's a little too blurry outside of these sequences.
Part of the genius of Game of Thrones' animated intro sequence was that it reminded you where everyone was in relation to each other as each episode kicked off, and that made it all the more frustrating when distances ceased to matter in later seasons (as the writing got lazier).
Now, I'd say House of the Dragon is committing the same sin, and without even a map to help viewers figure anything out, it's really confusing to try to work out where people are. That makes it all the more baffling when we're told that a dragon like Vhagar, the size of a jet plane, can't be found despite the number of sheep she seems to consume.
In the same way that Daemon (Matt Smith) was locked in purgatory in Harrenhal last season, it's also now Aemond's turn, and it's just as boring the second time around. Unpredictable characters who turn events on their head are the heart of this series' attraction, so putting them in a box for hours at a time to keep things simple is a dull solution.
I'm hopeful that the season can right that wrong and get Aemond and others back into more meaningful positions quicker than I'm worried about, but it's an unknown until those new episodes arrive. Still, from the trailer it's clear that I'll at least get some sort of denouement to enjoy in the next few weeks.
