War Takes Wing: “House of the Dragon” Season 3 Teaser Unleashes Fire, Blood, and Allegiance

The teaser for season 3 of House of the Dragon opens, appropriately enough, with Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) flying on her dragon Syrax. “You now have a power no man has ever wielded,” says her paramour and, at long last, her champion, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith). When we last left the Targaryens in the season 2 finale, we witnessed the most crucial and brutally delayed alliance—Daemon had finally bent the knee to his queen, Rhaenyra Targaryen, and delivered her the massed armies of the Riverlands. Daemon acknowledged that Rhaenyra was his late brother, King Viserys’ (Paddy Considine) chosen successor, a truth he had refused to accept for years. In bending the knee, Daemon strengthened Rhaenyra’s position immeasurably. She’d already successfully found fresh dragon riders to tip the scales in her favor against the bloodthirsty Prince Regent Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) and his supporters—now she had the massed armies of the Riverlands pledging their loyalty and their swords.

The teaser reveals the next step in the great game of war the Targaryens have been playing, with armies massing on either side of the battle between the Greens and the Blacks. The war between the Greens and Blacks is, in proper Westerosi fashion, a war of succession. The Greens support the severely injured Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), barbecued to a crisp by his brother Prince Aemond’s dragon, and now on the mend and seeking revenge against Aemond, complicating an already volatile war. The Greens are the Hightower Faction, led tactically and strategically by Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and her father, Ser Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), and the leader of their armies, Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel). The Blacks support Queen Rhaenyra, and are backed by leaders like Daemon and Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint). It’s a war that’s been building since season one, when King Viserys’ marriage to Alicent, his terminal illness, and his naming Rhaenyra as his rightful heir all became the fuel to the inferno sweeping through House Targaryen.

The teaser is more or less nonstop bloodshed, befitting a series that has been slow-burning toward the civil war within House Targaryen that exploded 200 years before the events depicted in Game of Thrones. 

Co-creator and showrunner Ryan Condal appeared in a video segment before the trailer’s release during the CCXP Mexico panel and said this about season 3. “This is a huge season. It’s the biggest we’ve made by any margin and by a wide measure. It is dark. It’s funny. It’s action-packed. It’s emotional. And, of course, it has lots and lots of dragons. This season demanded the very best of everybody who collaborated to make it together, and I can’t wait for the world to experience it.”

Regarding the complicated relationship between Alicent and Rhaenyra, former fast friends and now sworn enemies, Cooke said during the panel, “To hate someone, there has to be a passion that you have to set fire to,” Cooke noted. “And I think there was a great love there once upon a time. I don’t know where she sort of stands in Alicent’s heart anymore.”

Check out the teaser here. House of the Dragon season 3 premieres on HBO Max on June 21.

Featured image: Photograph by Courtesy of HBO