There's One Thing All House Of The Dragon Fans Can Agree About

HBO

After two years, "House of the Dragon" is finally back. When it debuted in 2022, the series helped to restore confidence in HBO's ability to adapt George R.R. Martin's fantasy novels after the disastrous final season of "Game of Thrones." Unfortunately, the terribly paced "House of the Dragon" Season 2 served to undo much of that goodwill. Now, Season 3 is hitting the ground running with a giant battle and a major narrative development, both of which definitely should have taken place at the end of Season 2 instead.

The issues don't stop there. Showrunner Ryan Condal's "Fire & Blood" adaptation features some huge departures from the book, which has led to Martin basically disowning "House of the Dragon." At its worst, the series misunderstands the very point of its primary conflict, aka. the Dance of the Dragons, and focuses too much on the pointlessness of war by having seemingly every tragedy in its narrative be the result of some kind of miscommunication. In contrast, Martin's original book is chiefly about people doing increasingly horrible things in order to gain power, even if that means having to commit one atrocity after another.

Still, as controversial as "House of the Dragon" can be, and as polarizing as its creative choices are, there is one thing that everyone appears to agree on: composer Ramin Djawadi is doing incredible work here. Indeed, when other aspects of the show fall short, giving rise to scenes that lack the necessary epic scope or dramatic potency, we can always count on its score to be consistently great. That remains true during the low points in Season 2, with Djawadi delivering rousing music that makes everything feel that much more grand and emotional.

Ollie Upton/HBO

The "House of the Dragon" Season 3 premiere is the kind of epic hour of television that fans have come to expect from a Westeros-set show since the early days of "Game of Thrones." The much-anticipated Battle of the Gullet alone delivers naval spectacle worthy of Peter Weir's film classic "Master and Commander," albeit with the addition of the flying nukes that are living, breathing dragons. It's a visual marvel, even if somewhat hard to wholly care about the characters involved in the carnage.

Once again, though, Ramin Djawadi's score is crucial to making the episode work. Not only does the composer know how to create great and memorable sounds, he also weaves in leitmotifs and themes to remind you of the people at the center of the story. Specifically, Djawadi uses music to gradually build up anticipation and dread in the Season 3 premiere, with the score starting out relatively quiet, slow, and heavy on the piano. But once the Battle of the Gullet itself gets going, the score picks up the pace and adds percussion instruments to signal the start of the action.

It's yet another example of how Djawadi can make a good scene even better or, during an otherwise dull or nonsensical moment, elevate the proceedings with his triumphant, moving music. No matter where "House of the Dragon" goes from here (as /Film's Jeremy Mathai notes in his review, Season 3 has so far elected to take "a mixed-bag approach that will please some fans while further inflaming others"), at least we can always count on the score to get the job done.

"House of the Dragon" is streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes of Season 3 dropping on Sundays.