House Of The Dragon Season 3's Returning Characters Have A Big Problem
Don't bother to try to remember anyone's name if you haven't watched "House of the Dragon" Season 3, Episode 2. Spoilers ahead!
Partway through the second episode of the third season of "House of the Dragon," the massively popular spin-off and prequel to HBO's hit fantasy series "Game of Thrones," we watch as a sooty, freaked-out Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell) rushes up to a massive stone gate seeking help. The woman who can either grant or deny this request stands in front of her, stone-faced — and, more to the point, angry that Rhaena has arrived with a wild dragon in tow after the shocking death of Prince Jacaerys "Jace" Velaryon (Harry Collett) during a recent battle. Rhaena begs and pleads for assistance and shelter, but the woman remains steadfast in her cold refusal.
Wait. Who is this lady?
In this instance, said lady is Lady Jeyne Arryn (Amanda Collin), but I'm here to argue that this confusion points to a larger issue found within the second season of "House of the Dragon." While major players like Jace, his mother Rhaenyra (Emma D'arcy), her rival Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), and her evil one-eyed son Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) are easy enough to recognize and remember, "House of the Dragon" is full of side characters. (This is, unsurprisingly, also true of George R.R. Martin's Targaryen-centric book "Fire & Blood," the source material for "House of the Dragon.") Are any of these side characters reintroduced in Season 3 in a way that makes sense? No!
Jeyne was, at first, the most galling example of this to me. Keep peeling the onion, though, and you'll realize that Season 3 of "House of the Dragon" does absolutely nothing to remind you of the context of supporting characters, and you'll get frustrated too.
House of the Dragon Season 3 doesn't bother to reintroduce any of its many supporting characters
When a new season of a television show I like is set to come out, I prefer to rewatch the prior season if I have time. I did not, initially, do this with "House of the Dragon," because I felt like I probably had an acceptable handle on who would appear on my screen at any given moment. That was a mistake, so I refreshed myself on the goings-on of Season 2 after Season 3 premiered and spent a lot of time going, "Oh! That's who that is!"
The aforementioned Lady Jeyne Arryn, for starters, rules over The Vale in the fictional continent of Westeros; in Season 2, she agrees to take in Rhaena and Rhaenyra's handful of youngest children to keep them safe during the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. Rhaena runs off, finds a wild dragon named Sheepstealer, and, by interfering in the Battle of the Gullet in the Season 3 premiere, ends up creating an environment that kills both Jace and his dragon Vermax. Still, we haven't seen Jeyne onscreen since Season 2, which aired in 2024. Some context about who she is might be nice!
Again, this issue is not exclusive to poor Jeyne. Last season, Rhaenyra found "dragonseeds" (bastards of potentially noble Targaryen birth who can tame and ride dragons), and two of them, Tom Bennett's Ulf and Kieran Bew's Hugh, look really alike. (It's the wigs. The long blonde wigs do not help.) When they come back in Season 3 of "House of the Dragon," do we get even one single expository line about who they are? No, and I was in the weeds about who they were for a while.
It's nice that House of the Dragon trusts its audience, but a little assistance might actually be great
On the one hand, it's encouraging that "House of the Dragon" isn't pandering or talking down to its audience ... or worse, following the alleged Netflix directive that forces its characters to over-explain every single plot beat. On the other hand, some guidance would be nice, as the lore behind "House of the Dragon" (and, for that matter, all shows associated with "Game of Thrones") is famously dense. There's a reason that George R.R. Martin has been writing one-off books and encyclopedias instead of finishing the sixth book in "A Song of Ice and Fire," "The Winds of Winter." It's because he knows that people enjoy stories set in Westeros when they have a wider and more comprehensive context of the world, and in the early episodes of Season 3 of "House of the Dragon," that context is sorely lacking.
From Jeyne to Ulf to Hugh to Gayle Rankin's witchy Alys Rivers (a character I was mentally identifying as the "leaky castle witch" until I reacquainted myself with her whole deal), "House of the Dragon" trusts its audience to remember the supporting players from previous seasons. Maybe I'm just a bonehead, but bonehead or not, I'll admit that I could have used just a few lines of exposition; as far as Alys is concerned, I don't think anyone even says her first name when she appears onscreen for the first time in Season 3. That would be enough!
As Season 3 of "House of the Dragon" continues every Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on HBO and HBO Max, we'll become familiar with these characters again. Still, I wish it wasn't quite so tricky.