The Battle Of The Gullet

Lohar is one of those made-for-TV villains that has no place in a serious television program like House of the Dragon. She is a cartoon villain who, I suspect, we’re meant to like because she’s such a girlboss baddie. She commands the unwavering loyalty of her troops. She’s smarter and better at naval tactics and sailing and battle than the Sea Snake. When she meets him in battle, her ship splits his in twain in the first broadside. She then leads her troops against heavily armored knights and men-at-arms who they cut through with ease.

Lohar’s slashing blades apparently have the Ignore Armor perk, because she cuts through these heavily armored foes like butter. She kills half a dozen before meeting Corlys in battle, and she shows him who’s (girl)boss. When his son Alyn joins the fray, she fights them both off single-handedly despite wearing only cloth and leather, up against men in plate, both trained, one an actual legend.

It’s just so tiresome. I hate when characters are written this way. Lohar reminds me of a dimestore version of Euron Greyjoy from Game Of Thrones, he of the infamous magic fleet, but somehow even more annoying.

Characters like this show up late in the game but they’re just wildly good at everything they do. Great leaders, tacticians, perfect fighters, driven and ambitious and far more clever and ruthless. She even throws Tyland Lannister and his men overboard to lighten the ship, and of course those silly Lions don’t stand a chance against Lohar!

The only consolation prize is that Alyn stabs her in the throat, though I half-expected her to rise back up out of the waves when he turned his back. Lohar doesn’t die in the book, of course, nor is Lohar a woman. Or a pirate. Lohar is an admiral and tactician and brings the Triarchy to ruin with his loss, leading to The Daughters War.

So why do I focus on these changes? This is a TV show! It’s an adaptation! A critic ought to judge it based on its own merits, not be such a stickler over changes. Well, some changes work and others don’t. And there are plenty of critics you can read who haven’t read the book and don’t care one whit about the changes.

I am not one of theses, and so I present to you the alternate version of:

The Battle Of The Gullet, Actually Adapted From The Book

We open to the Gay Abandon sailing across the Narrow Sea. The waters are calm. Viserys and Aegon play at pirates, clanking practice swords on the deck of the ship, while Stormcloud lounges nearby watching. They seem like good kids. We get to know them a little bit in this opening sequence. The ship’s crew seems fond of them. One ship’s boy, we’ll call him Scully, seems to dislike the princelings, however. We see him watching them with hatred in his eyes. Maybe a noble burned his house down and killed his parents. Maybe he’s just a bad seed.

The sun is bright on the horizon, so bright that the crew doesn’t notice the enemy ships until it’s too late. Swords are drawn. Aegon tells Viserys to hide, to disguise himself as a ship’s boy and hide his white Targaryen hair. Scully tells Viserys to come with him, and they run belowdecks. Then, as battle breaks out across the ship, Aegon mounts his dragon for the very first time and, gripping it tightly, flies aloft. Tyroshi bowman fire at the dragon, catching it in the stomach and wings, but the young dragon manages to flap beyond their reach and Aegon escapes. Aboard the Gay Abandon, the battle is lost. Scully betrays Viserys to the enemy and the princeling is taken prisoner.

Meanwhile, the Velaryon fleet is taken by surprise and suddenly finds themselves greatly outnumbered. The Triarchy admiral, Lohar, is a canny leader and has the Velaryon ships in dire straits. Things aren’t looking good. Corlys bellows commands and Alyn rallies the troops.

Aegon flies to Dragonstone. Stormcloud collapses, bleeding from countless arrow wounds. Jace and Rhaenyra find the boy, sobbing over his dying dragon and begging forgiveness for leaving his little brother behind. He tells them of the Triarchy fleet and Rhaenyra quickly organizes her dragonriders, telling Jace to lead them to Lord Corlys’s rescue. “Burn them all!” she tells her son, “And find your brother.” She’s a queen, after all. She must make hard choices, including sending her eldest son into battle. She knows she must remain at Dragonstone to man its defenses in case Aegon has other tricks up his sleeve.

Off they fly, five dragons and their riders. Make it six if you want Baela and Moondancer there or, since in the show Rhaena has only just tamed Sheepstealer, leave that pair out. Whatever the case, off they go. Meanwhile, Triarchy corsairs have boarded Corlys’s ship (awkwardly renamed The Queen Who Never Was for Corlys’s dead wife, Rhaenys, in the TV show) and a desperate battle has ensued. Similar battles have broken out elsewhere, and other ships are engaged in crossbow fire. Sails burn. Sailors fall to the waves. We have to feel how desperate this fight is, not because Lohar has some personal grudge against Corlys, but because they’re badly outnumbered and so much is at stake.

At the same time, we see a dozen Triarchy ships land at Driftmark and begin burning and pillaging the village, making their way up to High Tide where they dispatch the few soldiers manning the castle. We watch as Corlys’s treasures, from all across the known world, are set to flame, and his servants slaughtered. (Maybe before all this happens, we establish a loyal and likable steward character who we get a scene with, bidding Corlys farewell, so that when the castle is burned we have a character to anchor our sorrows to).

We also see Lohar take Viserys aboard his ship. Lohar himself (or herself if they must gender-swap the character despite this being a show with lots of strong female protagonists) doesn’t enter the fray, and when things take a turn, he flees, taking the Targaryen prince with him. Oh no!

Things do take a turn when the dragons show up and begin burning the Triarchy fleet. It’s a slaughter. The Triarchy doesn’t stand a chance against the combined might of the Velaryon fleet and Team Black’s dragons. But the Triarchy bowmen have learned a thing or two from their battles against Daemon and Caraxes. They know how to take down a dragon and, just as victory seems all but certain, Jace flies his dragon low, too low, looking for his brother, and Vermax is hit and brought down, crashing into the waves where he’s caught in a net, bleeding and struggling until he sinks below the surface and dies. Jace gets free of the harness and grabs onto some burning wreckage.

One of the other riders swoops down to rescue him. Baela if we decided to add her; Addam if not. Jace waves at the rider and all seems well as the dragon dives lower, a rope dangling for Jace to grab hold of – and then the first crossbow bolt hits him. Then another and another. When his rescuer gets there, Jace is already dead. The dragon burns the ship with the crossbowmen, but it’s too late.

Another of Rhaenyra’s sons is dead; and another, Viserys, is presumed dead since he’s not found and nobody knows what’s happened to him other than Lohar who has taken him prisoner and hostage.

In the aftermath of all this, Hugh and Ulf sit in a tavern drinking and boasting of their great victory. They’ve tasted blood and fire and it tastes good. While Rhaenyra and the others mourn, the two lowborn dragonriders drink and connive and think of their future. “After this, Hugh old chap,” Ulf proclaims, “we deserve lordships! A knighthood just isn’t enough for dragonriders like us!” He grumbles about the queen and Hugh, thinking about his family, ponders in silence. This same conversation played out in the episode itself, but not in the same context. Here, Ulf and Hugh are tasting victory and power and their resentment toward an ungrateful queen has more fuel.

My version here is, of course, the one from the book with a few minor embellishments. The show’s version also missed something that I think is pretty important: A sense of scale. The few scenes of ships engaged in battle felt cramped. I never felt like this was the largest naval battle in the history of Westeros. There was no real flow to the battle, no way to assess what was going on. Corlys leading Lohar on a merry chase felt like time better spent showing more dragons descending on more ships, more knights battling against Triarchy raiders. Corlys sailing through the shallow passage, and his glimpse of High Tide in flames, was a wasted opportunity and a gimmick.

The Harrenhal Conspiracy

There are other changes here, both small and not-so-small. Rhaenyra and Allicent, because of their long, strange friendship, have agreed to a deal. Allicent will open King’s Landing to Rhaenyra’s forces and offer up her son, Aegon, as part of the bargain. Aemond is supposed to be off looking for Daemon.

In the book, Aegon is spirited away by Larys Strong only after Rhaenyra’s dragons appear in the skies over King’s Landing. Aemond is already gone, having boasted about going to find his uncle and kill him. In the show, Allicent returns to the Red Keep to find Aemond on the throne and Aegon already absconded, having fled his own brother rather than a wrathful Rhaenyra. Aegon and Larys are captured on the road in this episode, and Larys gives him up easily enough. They’re taken prisoner.

In the show, Allicent is part of a conspiracy to topple her own son, and sends Aemond off to fight Daemon, persuading him to go and take Harrenhal. It’s just one of many ways this ongoing Rhaenyra/Allicent friendship fundamentally alters this story. Aemond and Allicent also kiss, though Aemond is more into it than his mother. (Raise your hand if you’re a little bit tired of the whole Targaryen incest stuff!)

I don’t hate this change, necessarily, though I think they do Allicent something of a disservice by making her so much more pliable and likable in the show, when she was quite a lot more bitter and prickly in the book (and older than Rhaenyra, and not her friend).

Meanwhile, Ormund Hightower, head of his House and lord of Oldtown, Allicent’s cousin and nephew to Otto Hightower, is marching his armies to Team Green’s aid. See all that green on their shields and banners? That’s where the Green in Team Green comes from. Ormund is played by newcomer to the cast, James Norton, who will always be Tommy Lee Royce, from Happy Valley, to me – a villain who makes Ramsey Bolton look rather tame by comparison. He receives a note from Allicent and says they are to remain where they are, presumably as some part of her plan to help Rhaenyra.

Ser Criston Cole the Never Aging (seriously, not even a little grey around the temples guys?) is on the march with Ser Gwayne Hightower, Allicent’s older brother. Gwayne, an honorable man, sees a village girl crying and running, naked, from one of the knight’s tents. He confronts Ser Criston about this, telling him that something must be done. They are knights and must uphold chivalry and honor. “Hang him if you want,” Ser Criston says, uninterested, but Gwayne says that’s not enough. Ser Criston must make a statement, must take a stand. Ser Criston has no interest in honor, however. He’s convinced that it’s all a farce. In a world with dragons that can simply destroy anything they please, what use is honor?

Meanwhile, in the Riverlands, we see the aftermath of Daemon’s latest military victory. As they discuss what to do, another force joins the field, bedecked in grey and black, wolf banners flying. The Starks have arrived and Roddy the Ruin (aka Lord Roderick Dustin, Lord of Barrowton) tosses Daemon the head of the other Lannister twin. “We’ve come to kill for the Dragon Queen,” he says. (Roddy is played by Tommy Flanagan of Sons of Anarchy fame).

Rhaenyra spends most of the episode locked in her chambers, complaining that “while I have the frail body of a woman, I have the heart of a king” and being generally useless, which is an odd choice for this show to make. I’d have preferred to see her decisive, sending her warriors to battle.

None of this is to say I didn’t enjoy the episode. I think I might have enjoyed it more had I not read the book. The bits of battle we do get are fun, if a little lackluster. It was great to see Alyn get such an awesome kill, and I’m so very happy that we don’t have to suffer another Lohar appearance. It’s cool to see the Starks arrive and join forces with Daemon.

As is so often the case with this show, there’s lots to look forward to, including Aemond heading toward Harrenhal; Rhaenyra’s rage when she discovers her son’s death and how this will impact her choices going forward; and the war itself, as the Hightowers and Starks join the battle and Aemond and Daemon square off. There’s plenty of twists and turns and bloody betrayals to come, and more dragons, including Allicent’s so-far-invisible son, Daeron, and his cobalt dragon, Tessarion. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for all the exciting bits to come, and hopefully these won’t be too terribly altered, though at this point so many changes have been made that I’m not sure we can ever really get the story as it happened in the book. I’m no longer holding out hope for Mushroom to make an appearance, more’s the pity. More than anything, I just want the changes to make sense, to flesh out the story or give us some surprises, rather than pull another Blood & Cheese incident.

The Battle of the Gullet was originally intended as a capstone for Season 2, but HBO cut the episodes down from 10 to 8 for Seasons 2 and 3. As a finisher for Season 2, this would have worked quite well, which isn’t to say it doesn’t work for a Season 3 opener, but the cadence feels off for a reason.

In the end, they’ll make Bran king. So there’s that. What did you think of the House of the Dragon Season 3 premiere? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

P.S. I’ve watched the first four episodes of Season 3 and I’m mostly optimistic. This feels a lot stronger than Season 2 so far and while I clearly do have nits to pick, I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the season.

House of the Dragon stars:

• Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen
• Emma D’Arcy as Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen
• Olivia Cooke as Queen Dowager Alicent Hightower
• Rhys Ifans as Ser Otto Hightower
• Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon
• Ewan Mitchell as Prince Aemond Targaryen
• Tom Glynn-Carney as King Aegon II Targaryen
• Fabien Frankel as Ser Criston Cole
• Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria
• Harry Collett as Prince Jacaerys Velaryon
• Bethany Antonia as Baela Targaryen
• Phoebe Campbell as Rhaena Targaryen
• Phia Saban as Queen Helaena Targaryen
• Matthew Needham as Larys Strong
• Freddie Fox as Ser Gwayne Hightower
• Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull
• Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers

And many, many more.

The first episode of Season 3 was written by showrunner, Ryan Condal, and directed by Loni Peristere.