House of the Dragon’s final season 3 trailer released

The Game of Thrones spinoff returns in less than a month

It looks like House of the Dragon is poised to pay off its debts, because the final trailer for the show’s upcoming third season is a scorcher.

After HBO's Game of Thrones spinoff built up a massive conflict between Rhaenyra and her foes, season 2 of House of the Dragon ended on a brutal cliffhanger. The trailer makes it seem like audiences will finally get their big payoff. Battlefields brim with swords and shields, boats burn, and trebuchets fire shrapnel into packed troop formations.

[Fair warning: HBO's new trailer for House of the Dragon season 3 might contain a few too many spoilers amid its big action scenes. But if you're hungry for fire and blood, the show's new trailer delivers.]

It seems a major point of contention this season will be how Rhaenyra Targaryen chooses to use her fleet of dragons. While at the beginning of the trailer, she calls for causing as little harm to King’s Landing and its people as possible, by the end, she appears a bit less concerned about collateral damage. Her greatest frenemy, Alicent Hightower, commends her initial mercy but warns that the crown tends to squeeze any good intentions out of a person.

Beyond this, we also see Aemond further asserting his control over his faction of House Targaryen as he stabs dissenters and continues to look very cool with an eye patch. At least at first, it seems Aemond’s group opts for a more subtle approach to the situation, attempting to undermine Rhaenyra’s rule through political theater and mean graffiti. Eventually, though, all hell breaks loose as Northman storm the battlefield, and at least one naval battle plays out. It will be interesting to see if Rhaenyra fully comes into her own this season, or if there will be more somewhat frustrating scenes of her getting positively roasted by her stiff-necked council.

For those out of the loop, House of the Dragon is a prequel set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones. It’s based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, a novel presented as an in-universe history book on Targaryen dynasties written by a scholar. The TV series follows a slow-burning House Targaryen succession crisis that eventually spills into outright war. With the increased focus on this big, bloody conflict, it seems that House of the Dragon will further differentiate itself from its decidedly more low-key cousin, the excellent Game of Thrones spinoff Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. For some fans, House of the Dragon is on a bit of thin ice after a slow second season. If nothing else, what we’ve seen so far of the next season makes it feel like its showrunners are responding to those criticisms in the most expensive way possible: massive battles and more dragons.

House of the Dragon season 3 premieres on HBO on Sunday, June 21.