[NOTE: Spoilers for events of the first two seasons of HBO’s “House of the Dragon]
The trailer for the upcoming third season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” ends with a sound very similar to one in trailers for the most recent round of Hollywood “Godzilla” movies.
This is only my best estimation, but it’s some sort of baritone or bass stringed instrument with effects on it to mimic the sound a monster like Godzilla makes when he draws in his breath after roaring. It’s very effective — it gave me goosebumps when I heard it the first time, and it almost did the same at the end of this new trailer.
I say “almost” because, honestly, up to this point, “House of the Dragon” — a “Game of Thrones” prequel about a civil war between factions of the dragon-riding rulers of Westeros, the Targaryen family — has been kind of a depressing slog.
The first two seasons brought much of the political intrigue and scheming that made “Game of Thrones” so popular, but what it didn’t bring was very many likable characters. Among the main protagonists, there isn’t one person who would fit into the “Lawful Good” corner of the “Law vs. Chaos/Good vs. Evil” rubric.
Complicated characters have been a hallmark of “Thrones” author George R.R. Martin all along. And maybe that’s a big part of why HBO chose this as its first new series set in Westeros — to illustrate the destructive tendencies of powerful people clawing to get even more power.
In aid of that destruction, of course, is the real reason for this series: Lots of dragons breathing lots of fire. And that’s where the trailer for the third season hits things dead on the mark.
We saw plenty of dragons in the first season, and a handful of them started wreaking havoc as the second season shuffled along.
That brings us back to the “Godzilla” noise.
Godzilla began life as an unsubtle metaphor for the nuclear destruction of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Martin himself has explained in the past that the dragons are a similarly unsubtle metaphor. The Targaryen family conquered Westeros because they were the only ones who could ride them. In “House of the Dragon,” you essentially get a family feud where both sides have nukes.
And season three is where it’s going to kick into high gear permanently.
The current King of Westeros, Aegon III, was nearly killed when his own brother tried to roast him alive and caused his dragon to crash to the ground. His half-sister Rhaenyra, who was named heir to the throne in season one, has found herself two more people with just enough Targaryen blood to claim dragons of their own.
In modern terms, everyone’s nukes are armed and we’re about to go to Defcon One.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this is what most people watching this show have waited for — big dragon, big fire. It’s part of the reason it’s taken multiple years between seasons. The poor F/X department has to create about six films’ worth of CGI each go-round. That’s a tall order, and it’s paid off in the beautifully terrifying dragon action we’ve gotten.
Again, the dragons are meant to mimic nuclear weapons, not just in their tactical advantage, but in the true horror they create on a battlefield that has no answer for them. If the dragon is big enough, the mere act of landing kills any soldier, friend or foe, who happens to be in the way.
“Doom and ruin surround us. We will all become beasts before our end,” says Ser Criston Cole in the new trailer.
Cole is one of the aforementioned extremely unlikable characters. He has been a giant bag of arrogant trash throughout most of the show, but last season, he got caught up in a battle involving dragons and saw firsthand the horrors of this kind of warfare at ground level.
It’s in that particular way that I hope “House of the Dragon” can begin to live up to the very high bar recently set by the newest Westeros show, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”
The setting is really the only similarity between the shows. “Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is telling a very small story that will expand as its seasons progress, whereas “House of the Dragon” is an epic civil war story with fantastical beasts.
But Rhaenyra was only able to find her new dragon-riders by subjecting a bunch of peasants to death by dragon fire. Her aunt’s epic interruption of Aegon III’s coronation also murdered several hundred innocent attendees for no real reason.
“Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” did a very good job illustrating the way that medieval society’s structure presses down and crushes its less fortunate members. I think “House of the Dragon” could achieve something similar by showing not just the cost of the Dance of the Dragons on the ruling class (losing nearly all their dragons), but also on the people who have no choice but to fight in their wars, with the threat that — at any moment — multiple nuclear warheads with wings could come flapping over the horizon.
The third season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” will premiere June 21.