George RR Martin called it the Butcher’s Ball. It was a Greens massacre by Roddy the Ruin and friends, in the run-up to the (first) Battle of Tumbleton, and the inglorious moment when Ser Criston Cole finally met his fate. This is where Episode 6 of HBO‘s House of the Dragon Season 3 begins, as Cole and his men fight through an ambush, only to spot Roddy and Ser Oscar Tully on a nearby rise, licking their chops. “One of me against the two of you,” the realm’s greatest warrior calls. “Will that be enough to make a fight of it?” These are his last words. Three arrows from Alysanne Blackwood (Annie Shapero) meet their mark, and Fabien Frankel’s eventful two-and-a-half season run on HOTD ends to sad notes drawn on a cello. Alicent’s favor falls from his death grip as his troop is overrun. 

This is a win for Rhaenyra and Team Black, but it doesn’t feel like one. Not in another episode where death and dark destinies cast shadows everywhere. Not when Rhaenyra allows her frustrations with rule and mounting paranoias to curdle into hard-edged self-preservation. She is cut by the Iron Throne’s sharpest points as if in rejection, and to Smallfolk pleas of privation she angrily shuts the Red Keep’s huge doors. Daemon also finds King’s Landing increasingly hostile. The gold cloaks not yet assassinated quit, and it’s up to the prince to don their armor and draw out the ringleader of Ormund Hightower’s city agents. “You can burn us, you can kill us — you’ll never make us embrace her. We are the people of the Seven Kingdoms, and we are everywhere.” Daemon drives a dagger into his ear anyway.       

Stalking the streets, Daemon also runs into Ulf, who’s conducting a forbidden bender. This guy. Ulf the White? More like Ser Gripesalot. The ale in Fleabottom better be the best beer from King’s Landing to Storm’s End, because he is choosing it over his unlikely bond to a hundred-year-old dragon. And the bad dragonseed vibes do not end. Ser Hugh parks Vermithor, infiltrates Tumbleton, and reaches his wife Kat, whose weeping at the sight of her husband twists into rejection. She cares not that he has become a dragonrider. Certainly not after the unspeakable horrors she has experienced. Kat needed Hugh with her on the ground, not chasing glory in the skies.

And what the hell is happening inside the three-Hightowers dynamic of Ormund, Daeron, and Gwayne, who has reported to T-Town? The boy’s uncle bristles at Ormund dripping “His Grace” all over Daeron; their bond from his time at court in Oldtown is more brotherly, and Daeron tells Gwayne he hates being Ormund’s “puppet, fool, child,” but being pushed toward the throne is his only real protection. (Daeron: “You left me alone with him. You know what he is.”) While the kid asks after his mother at King’s Landing, he and Gwayne both endure Ormund’s sexualized taunts.

And while Gwayne is no fan of his first cousin or his overconfidence regarding hostile takeovers of the realm, he is still a Hightower of the Greens. The Blacks’ momentary win over Criston is further tarnished when Gwayne sniffs out Rhaenyra’s play to murder Ormund and Daeron in their chambers. The queen sent killers under the guise of fawning envoys from House Baratheon. Covered in filth, to Ormund’s olfactory displeasure. (Nice one, Rhaenyra.) But Gwayne and Ormund’s vassal knight Jon Roxton (Joplin Sibtain) murder them all as the preening Hightower lord vomits profusely. While we wait to see if Ormund’s throne-y schemes come to fruition, James Norton is doing some of the best work of this HOTD season.

Alicent has been recovered from inside the Red Keep walls. But this also makes Helaena’s pregnancy apparent. Rhaenyra declares she must not be seen. “If she’s known to carry Aegon’s heir, I will be forced to do what you fear.” Notably, Mysaria lies directly to her queen about having any knowledge Helaena was with child. Even more notably, Rhaenyra’s tone with Alicent shifts toward the same anger she showed the Smallfolk in the throne room.

The dowager queen makes a desperate move to save herself and her daughter. She tells Rhaenyra of Helaena’s foresight, which startles her ex-friend but excites her, too. “She dreams,” muses Rhaenyra. “She’s a dreamer. Like Daenys, who foresaw the Doom.” And in Alicent’s Helaena reveal is a confession of Aemond’s whereabouts, dragonless and seemingly exposed at Harrenhal. Rhaenyra forces her to travel there, where she will become the assassin her son would never expect. Of course Alicent is horrified. She’s even more horrified to leave Helaena with Rhaenyra. The young woman’s needlepoint offers some starkly-colored foresight of its own.

Vhagar is still missing from Harrenhal. But that does not mean there aren’t dragons there. When Aemond pledges to depart in search of his mount, Alys Rivers kills a stable boy to keep One-Eye’s presence a secret, and keep him at Harrenhal. With her. Because she’s sick of being cursed and alone, and believes Aemond is, too. She dusts off a wooden chest full of powerful secrets. Inside are five dragon’s eggs, hatched one hundred years before by Dreamfyre. Forgotten by the histories, these eggs, still warm, will become this dark new power couple’s fortune. “Let the gods turn their backs on us,” Alys says, moving closer to caress Aemond’s face. “I will be the Lady of the Water, and you the dragonlord by my side.” They kiss with dreams of princeling sons bonding with more dragons than Rhaenyra and Team Black could ever know.       

Hot D’s for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 6: 

• Lord Corlys, prideful but loyal, was prepared to garrison King’s Landing with additional Velaryon soldiers when Jon Roxton raided his field encampment. It’s a murky scene, but Corlys seems to have become a prisoner of Ormund Hightower and the Greens. Chalk up another Team Black loss. 

• This was after Alyn visited his father, still seeking his approval. When Alyn reaches out to Baela Targaryen, she says she can’t help him with Corlys, because men like him will always deny their ghosts in favor of action. “Don’t you ever want to forget it all, do what you want?” And suddenly Baela and Alyn are kissing passionately. Evidently we misread her Episode 5 connection with his brother Addam, Baela’s fellow dragonrider.

• And finally, we catch a brief moment of tension in the Vale. Jeyne Arryn is tossing somebody into the Eyrie’s bottomless pit, but turns to cruelly strike Rhaena Targaryen across her cheek. It’s her punishment for nearly revealing her asylum in the region, and role in the Gullet, when Sheepstealer caught sight of Baela flying on Moondancer.    

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.