This is a recap of the most recent episode of HBO's House of the Dragon. It contains spoilers. That's what a recap is.
Season 3 finale credits! And the final addition to the Die, You! Tapestry we get this season is a scene from the end of last week's episode: Aegon going full Scott Stapp as Sunfyre rears up behind him and lights up the Mooton soldiers. It's a scene whose sheer awesomeness has the knock-on effect of igniting the tapestry itself. Meta!
So it doesn't rip apart like it used to, reflecting what the civil war is doing to the realm of Westeros as a whole. Now the tapestry burns, to reflect what's about to go down in Tumbleton specifically.
At the Red Keep, Rhaenyra learns that Aegon is back, baby, along with Sunfyre, and that the news of their whirlwind reunion tour is rippling across Westeros. The smallfolk are welcoming the resurrection of the True King; even Rhaenyra's most loyal royal subjects are wavering, and have descended on the King's Landing sept to seek the Faith's guidance in re: whom the gods want sitting on the Iron Throne.
Daemon convinces Rhaenyra that she should let him root the Hightowers out of Tumbleton already. (I'll note in passing here that, in High Valyrian, the name "Tumbleton" is pronounced "Toom-bleh-TOHN.")
(You know: Like "reggaeton.")
(Only … wow just you know … so, so much whiter.)
Hey Rhaenyra: Don't be a drag, just be a queen
She instructs him not swoop in on Caraxes and burn them out en masse, like some kind of mad Targaryen dragon queen executing a rushed, poorly established and wildly underwritten last-minute heel turn. No, he should go house-to-house, rooting them out individually. Which explains why at least one of the show's many, many dragons doesn't figure largely in the battle.
Corlys' status as a hostage of Ormund Hightower greatly concerns Baela; when she learns that the queen does not share her concern, she snaps at Rhaenyra, accusing her of using the people she needs and ignoring the rest. Which is meant to paint Rhaenyra as a cold, calculating tyrant, I suppose, but I dunno. I can't help thinking homegirl's got bigger fish to fry than managing all this intrafamilial emotional mishegoss. She's at war! She's awash in dilemmas and deficiencies! Famously! Using the people she needs — isn't that just efficient governance? Is she ruling a realm or facilitating group therapy? Do you really want to see her roll up her sleeves, pull the Iron Throne into the center of the circle, sit down backwards on it and say, "OK, I'm hearing that this is bringing up some issues for you — let's unpack them together"?
I don't, but clearly lots of folks in Westeros do, because more Velaryons from Driftmark arrive in King's Landing, and they share Baela's complaint, demanding that Corlys be rescued. Alyn, who we learn this episode is a true company man (the company in this case being Rhaenyra, Inc.) brushes them off.
In Tumbleton, Ormund knights Daeron, because in Westeros you have to be a knight before you can be a king. (Tell that to John Goodman.)
Ulf is carousing drunkenly with some Tumbletonians, having fully switched from Black to Green like a goth on St. Patrick's Day.
Back in the Red Keep, Rhaenyra inspects her father King Viserys' crown. You'll remember that Ser Erryk Cargyll swiped this crown from the castle and delivered it to her on Dragonstone, so that Aegon had to be crowned with the circlet originally worn by Aegon the Conqueror.
A servant reports that Helaena is not eating, but Rhaenyra isn't concerned about that — attagirl! Focus on the needs of the realm, not the neediness of others! She wants to force the High Septon to allay the smallfolk's confusion and anoint her.
Mysaria is sent packing — though she does get some hunks to help haul her junk, at least. She also gets passage to Pentos, and enough gold to set herself up with a manse and servants. Imagine that: In Pentos. The real estate market is crazy there! That's one hell of a severance package. Especially considering the kind of severance that other Masters of Whisperers have gotten, over the years (read: head from body).
In the Red Keep, Helaena sees the pale horse she dreamed about — and gets a quick infodump from a departing Mysaria: Aegon lives, so Helaena's unborn child is now even more of a hostage than it was before.
Alys doesn't live here anymore — no wait, sorry, my bad, turns out Alys does live here, and she will forever and ever and ever
In Harrenhal, Aemond wallows in self-pity and self-recrimination, but Alys, we learn, sincerely feels for the fishbelly-white dirtbag. Turns out she's an old softie, is our Alys. And I do mean old, because here we finally get her whole deal: She was once the wife of Harren the Black, the original builder of Harrenhal. (Which makes her — yes — Lady Hoare, but let's do be adults about this, shall we?) When Aegon the Conqueror attacked, one of her sons survived, but only barely. She turned to old magic to try to save him, but it didn't work, and she was cursed to live forever within the crumbling walls of Harrenhal, robbed of her name and title.
See, now her vibe makes more sense, as does the wary deference that poor dead Ser Simon Strong used to pay her. She was never just some servant, she was like the landlord who lives in your basement apartment: Always hanging around, making you self-conscious about playing your music or putting up bookshelves.
The fact that she seems sincerely smitten with Aemond, of all people, is puzzling, especially when sweet old Simon Strong would have been such a catch — funnier, smarter, more-self-aware, more meat on the bones, and a lot less prone to gettin' randomly stabby. To say nothing of Aemond's attempted fratricide and his particularly virulent strain of mommy issues. Any way you slice it, the guy's got more red flags than the Kremlin on May Day.
But you know what they say: Love is blind. At least in the one eye.
Phony beetle-mania has bitten the dust
Back in the Red Keep, Rhaenyra tries to get Helaena to eat, and at first I once again wondered why she was bothering with all this hand-holding and emotional maintenance when she had a realm to rule, but then Helaena spells it out for me. Rhaenyra just wants to ensure that Helaena's baby gets born, so she can use it to work her will.
Then Helaena goes off on one of her bug-monologues. "There is a beetle that emerges on the cusp of summer," she says. It's colorful, it looks like a turtle, and it eats the waste of other creatures. It's beautiful, she says.
There's a great moment when Rhaenyra, unused to just how very non- Helaena's sequiturs can get, looks around the room in puzzled frustration. You and me both, lady.
Outside the Red Keep, Addam accosts Alyn, who will be leading Rhaenyra through the streets of King's Landing to the sept. We learn that Addam's loyalty to Rhaenyra is waning, but Alyn's is waxing. It's downright gibbous, is what it is.
Rhaenyra, wearing the crown of Viserys, a Joan-of-Arc chainmail hood, and some pretty iffy Medieval-Max-Factor eyeliner, heads to the sept with li'l Joffrey (not that one!) in tow.
Back in Tumbleton, the Black army has amassed outside the walls, and their attack is imminent. But a servant informs Ormund that Ulf is missing; you will perhaps not be surprised to learn that the king of not-taking-things-well does not take this news well. He scours the city (himself, which seems wildly inefficient, but then again, men of his narcissistic temperament tend not to delegate responsibility well, so it tracks) and sends a bunch of terrified tweens to line the city's battlements.
Daeron and Gwayne look out at the vast Black army and aren't prepared to get slaughtered, so they hatch a plan.
Back in King's Landing, Rhaenyra's retinue on the way to the sept gets challenged by some smallfolk; in the ensuing tumult, Mysaria ducks out on the soldiers ostensibly leading her out of the city. Despite sporting a conspicuous, wildly expensive, elegantly woven cerulean damask cloak, she somehow manages to disappear into a crowd of people who are all basically wearing burlap potato sacks. Don't think about it.
A parley, but only barely
Gwayne takes Corlys out to the Black army and meets with Daemon. He attempts to parley by speaking for Daeron — they'll give up the fight and their claim on the crown if Daemon agrees to let Daeron rule the Reach from Oldtown.
But even that tiny slice of the pie is too much for Daemon, who sneers at their offer in much the same way he sneers at literally everything and everybody all the time, ever. In so doing he makes the joke about how the Hand of the Queen is now missing a finger that I was gonna make, so I thank him for his service.
The offer is rejected, and he slaps Gwayne down and sends him back to Tumbleton to die on the ramparts of the city along with the rest of the cast of the touring company of Lord of the Flies: The Musical.
Later, the Blacks form their plan of attack around a table with tiny statuettes representing different factions — the return of the tchotchkes! I've missed them so. The first season was lousy with them, between the figurines to represent each House and the late, lamented billiard balls of attendance-keeping at the Small Council.
Daemon, learning that Ormund's fortified his walls with so many Newsies, affirms Rhaenyra's desire not to attack with Caraxes. Instead, he'll send Roddy the Ruin and the rugged, ragged — and let's be honest, pungent-looking — Winter Wolves to go over the top. Which seems sensible on paper, but really it's like opting for a bazooka over a flamethrower. A distinction without a difference, results-wise.
Reunited, and it feels so-so
At Harrenhal, Aemond wakes up and hears a dragon. We're led to believe it's Vhagar, who's been MIA for several episodes now — but no, it's Sunfyre. Somehow, Aegon knew that his brother was holing up in the very hole-y castle of Harrenhal, and the two brothers proceed to enact a one-act Eugene O'Neill play, Westeros-style.
Aegon is furious and fuming about Aemond's attempt on his life, while Aemond is contrite and ashamed, which takes all the fun out of it for Aegon. The king is back to his old insufferable self, thank the old gods and the new. He lays out the plan: He and Aemond will team up, find Vhagar, fly to Tumbleton, take out the Hightowers and then march on King's Landing to take it back.
Presumably "find Vhagar" is a tall order, because they won't make it to Tumbleton this season. I can't help but worry about their storyline next season, because we know from hard-won experience that "character trudges through landscapes looking for a dragon for several episodes" is an arc this show has done before, and it's hella boring.
At the sept in King's Landing, Rhaenyra tries to strong-arm the High Septon to anoint her in front of the crowd; he refuses, because the patriarchy exists across all realities, even the makey-uppy dragon fantasy ones. So she gets Alyn to use his strong arm to shove a sword through the High Septon's soft belly. This act seems to put a dent in his once-titanium-coated resolve and devotion.
Before he dies, the High Septon warns Rhaenyra that going against the Faith will have terrible repercussions, so there's Rhaenyra's Season 4 storyline for you.
A prophet in her own country
On the steps of the sept, Rhaenyra delivers a speech before a restless crowd that gives the whole game away. She tells them about the prophecy of the Song of Ice and Fire — dragons, White Walkers, the whole schmear, really. The gist of it is: She needs to be sitting on the Iron Throne, because she is the Prince that was Promised. (Narrator: No, she's really not.)
The crowd looks unconvinced. Maybe if she handed out some rutabegas, like she did the last time. Orwyle and Torrhen Manderly exchange worried looks.
In Tumbleton, Ormund is still looking for Ulf and is growing increasingly unhinged, which is notable because the guy never seemed entirely hinged to begin with. Then he finds out that Gwayne and Daeron tried to execute an end-run around him with their parley plan, and he ratchets up from unhinged to bat-poop crazy.
This bit doesn't have a satisfying payoff, however, because Ormund never runs into either Gwayne or Daeron. What it's there to do, I suppose, is set up Ormund's frothing, enraged reaction to finally finding Ulf, who's been sleeping it off.
Ormund treats him exactly the way Daemon did — beating him up, insulting him, publicly shaming him in the street. Ormund sends him off with a couple of soldiers to get his dragon and light up the Black army.
Ulf, for his part, looks resentful. Which, yes, is pretty much his whole personality, but trust me: He's seething. And one thing you don't necessarily want to see in an underling who rides a flying death-ray is resentful seething.
The Battle of Helm's Shallow
The attack begins. The Winter Wolves scale the walls and Roddy the Ruin slices through the Tumbleton Boys' Choir like a hot knife through … a boys' choir. Daemon unleashes Caraxes on the Tumbleton main gate and it's as if Grond were alive, and scaly, and a good deal snakier.
Hugh shows up, though he was supposed to stay in King's Landing. But he immediately ditches his dragon(!) to storm Tumbelton with his fellow Blacks and search the town for his wife.
Gwayne finds Daeron in the Tumbelton sept where he's been stashing his dragon Tessarion. He tries to talk the kid out of riding into battle — and then, when he fails to convince him, to prevent him by force. But that confrontation comes to nothing, because just then, Ulf rides into the fray on Silverwing.
The Blacks cheer, at first — but then, once Silverwing starts burning through their ranks, they proceed to scream and combust and die, just a tremendous lot.
On the streets of Tumbleton, Daemon faces off with a guy from Team Green we've seen before — Bold Jon Roxton. This is sort of a big deal, for book people, because the two of them are each wielding Valyrian steel swords that have been passed down in their families for generations. Daemon has Dark Sister, and Roxton wields a sword called … Orphan-Maker (electric guitar riff).
The two go at it for a while, and Roxton gives as good as he gets. (Previously we saw Daemon cutting a swath through a whole bunch of other soldiers without a sweat — presumably the fact that none of them could challenge his Valyrian steel with Valyrian steel of their own was a factor.)
At one point it looks like Roxton's gonna poke out Daemon's left eye, because this show really loves its Daemon-Aemond parallels. But in the end, they get separated by debris.
Meanwhile, Roddy the Ruin has found Ormund, and comes at him relentlessly. He doesn't relent when Ormund chops off the grimy fool's grimy arm. And sends a gout of blood right into Ormund's pretty face. Which of course is too much for our boy's delicate stomach, and he proceeds to retch, giving Roddy the opening he needs to open Ormund's lower back with steel. They're locked together like that when, far above, Ulf wheels in on Silverwing, somehow finds the two of them, and burns them up.
Sure, Ulf's a drunk and a traitor and selfish and lazy and really not a good person, but his eyesight? Keen. Crazy keen. The guy may be beneath contempt but his vision is above reproach.
Daemon rouses himself from under the rubble — he can't find Roxton, but he fights on, through a ruined Tumbleton choked with the dead and dying. Corlys finds him, informs him that Ulf has turned traitor, and that they need to leave.
Embroidering the truth
The next shot puzzles me a bit. It seems to show Daeron on Tessarion, chased by Daemon on Caraxes, who breathes some fire on Tessarion's tail. Then Hugh on Vermithor enters the frame. But then we fade out — and it seems to me that Daeron and Daemon fighting on dragonback would be a much bigger deal.
Back in King's Landing, Helaena is embroidering something that looks a lot like the Red Keep. She gets up and walks toward a window in a worrisomely Tommenesque fashion.
In the now definitively tumbled ruins of Tumbleton, Gwayne stirs — he's made it through! My gay — er, my guy's a survivor! He calls out for Daeron, but does not find him. (See above, in re: puzzling dragon shot.)
Elsewhere, Bold Jon Roxton finds the broasted body of Ormund Hightower. And elsewhere elsewhere, Hugh the Hammer finds the dead body of his wife, Kat. He kneels over her and screams to the heavens, because this is a TV show and that's what people do on TV shows. (So who was that on Vermithor, in that puzzling dragon shot that somehow just got even more puzzling?)
And back in the Red Keep, Rhaenyra goes to Helaena's room and finds that she has thrown herself through the window, having left the most gorgeous, painstakingly wrought suicide note in history, in the form of a tapestry depicting a woman falling from a tower of the Red Keep.
We cut to Alicent, on the road to … somewhere, as a flock of butterflies swarm around her — the same butterflies whose presence so fascinated Helaena, six episodes ago. "This is strange … it isn't the season," she said back then. Well, it is now, girl.
In the Red Keep, Rhaenyra examines an earlier section of the tapestry, to find an image of herself on the Iron Throne. It's a disturbing one — behind the throne is a scene of roiling chaos: Fire, dragons, flailing arms. But Rhaenyra doesn't seem to see all that — instead, she focuses on the depiction of herself, triumphant, on the throne that the gods ordained to be hers.
Does she smile at this, a tiny bit? I think she does.
Parting Thoughts:
- You know the serf who can't locate Ulf? And then finds him, only to get a knife to the throat? He's got a distinctive voice — and face; that's Darren Evans, who played Chef on that wonderful, sorely missed medieval musical series Galavant, back in the day. He sang one of my favorite songs! Nice to see him here, howsoever briefly. Also nice to be reminded that there are only, in all the world, a total of like maybe six British actors, and that they stay booked and busy.
- Battle of Tumbleton body count: Ormund Hightower. Roddy the Ruin. Kat. Darren Evans. Assorted incontinent Victorian boy chimney sweeps. We got off surprisingly light, in terms of named characters.
- King's Landing body count: The High Septon. Helaena. Alyn's self-respect.
- The flames of fan speculation that it's Helaena who's been embroidering the Die, You! Tapestry in the opening credits just got a lot more fuel. So does that mean that next season we lose the tapestry? Or will someone else take over?
- If any of y'all know what's supposed to be going on in that Tumbleton three-dragon shot, go ahead and let me know, cause I'm stumped.
- Speaking of being stumped. Roddy! Turns out it was his nasty arterial spray that served as the thermal exhaust port to the Death Star that was Ser Ormund Hightower. They set it up from the beginning. I gotta … hand it to them.
- Another season down. Big thanks to alla y'all for reading these, and to my indefatigable editor Clare Lombardo — go ahead and try to defatig her! You can't do it! — who patiently corrected the spellings of aell thaese ridiculous charaecter naemes, and helped me keep Black from Green.
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