House of the Dragon season 3 is officially back after a two-year wait between seasons, and despite an epic premiere, it's easy to see how the series is falling into a trap that plagued Game of Thrones for most of the series.
The House of the Dragon season 3 premiere is one of the best episodes of the series so far. The Battle of the Gullet definitely didn't disappoint, but that doesn't mean it was flawless. In fact, the epic episode exposed one of the show's big flaws: too many characters who are too spread out.
There were so many important characters in House of the Dragon season 3 that basically had nothing to do this episode, and we barely saw them aside from a short scene or two. I'm talking about Daemon (Matt Smith), Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), Helaena (Phia Saban), and Ormund Hightower (James Norton). Even Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy), the Queen, gets little screentime. Instead of being in the middle of the action, Rhaenyra gets locked in a room. There were other smaller characters who got little shine in the season 3 premiere, as well.
This is a very similar problem Game of Thrones faced for basically its entire run. There were so many characters spread out across the map with their own stories that all connect. It took so long to bring the stories together. That's what House of the Dragon season 3 needs to solve because they've already invested so much time
When you go two years between seasons and the biggest characters in the series get such limited screentime, it doesn't make for the most pleasant viewing experience. Of course, screentime isn't created equal, and I'm not asking it to be. I just think that it has been so long since we've seen these characters. To have them reduced to just a few minutes, or less, on screen, it's hard to get excited about their stories.
Like, Criston Cole is one of the most polarizing villains in the series, and we saw him painting in the forest doing a whole lot of nothing. Daemon was on screen for like five minutes, and he's basically the third-biggest cast member. I know the Battle of the Gullet was the focus, but why do I know more about what Sheepstealer has been eating than what Daemon has been doing? Does that sit right with anyone?
And, speaking of things that sit right with no one, we saw Aemond kiss his mom, Alicent (Olivia Cooke), and then, she was assaulted.
There's plenty of screentime to go around, but some of these choices are just wrong. Why are we giving the biggest characters of this story crumbs?
House of the Dragon's many characters create a double-edged sword much like Game of Thrones dealt with
This isn't a problem exclusive to House of the Dragon season 3 by any means. It's a big issue in a lot of these sprawling fantasy shows that have so many key characters. The plot needs to move forward, but the characters need to develop, move, and make choices that move the story forward. You have to do that without slowing the series down too much.
Game of Thrones struggled with this for a number of seasons. As the story grew and we fell in love with more episodes, we had characters sitting on the sidelines for major episodes while the story moved forward elsewhere. The same thing that made the show interesting to so many people actually caused problems down the line when there were two dozen characters part of important plot points from a book.
Obviously, in some ways this is a credit to George R.R. Martin weaving incredible stories together in these books and creating such a rich tapestry. It's just a major challenge to adapt a story with this many moving parts.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, we can be with Tyrion for a chapter and read something happen, and then we can jump to Arya's perspective after that event and then jump to Jon and then to Dany in Meereen. And, it all flows together because he's so great at telling stories with multiple perspectives.
In essence, the question is: how do you create a series that gives these characters enough to do so they aren't relegated to the background but doesn't slow the pacing to a crawl?
That's the real dilemma with so many characters. Sure, we could give these characters each big storylines, but that means we're going to slow the pace of the story down so much.
Having too many characters spread out too far across a massive world like this was inevitable at some point in this story, but I wasn't expecting to have it happen this early in House of the Dragon season 3. I thought the writers would find a way to check in with most of these characters in a substantial way. That episode didn't feel like a premiere episode at all, in good and bad ways.
Of course, because of how the writers broke the story and how these first two episodes were basically supposed to be the final two episodes of season 2, that's messed with the pacing a bit.
It will be really interesting to see how House of the Dragon season 3 rectifies this dilemma. Will we see these characters who were on the sidelines in the premiere actually get in the game in episode 2? We'll see in the very near future.
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