Written by John Aspler
As House of the Dragon enters the back half of Season 3, “Unbent and Unbowed” continues HotD’s hot streak. Perhaps the weakest entry in an excellent season, it nonetheless remains a strong episode (the bar is just that high). It has everything: deathwishes, bats, dragon chess, guerilla resistance, mommy issues, labour concerns, and so much more!
Spoilerphobes beware, it’s time to dive deep into the latest entry in the Game of Thrones Cinematic Universe.
“Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken” are the words of Dorne’s House Martell; words that Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel, Task) has chosen to die by. Haunted by the knowledge that no man can stand alone against the might of dragons (Westeros’ very own WMDs), he does what any sensible person would do in his place: he commits to waging a hopeless and painful campaign of guerilla warfare against a significantly larger force of Riverlanders and Northmen. At first, Team Nihilism seems to be winning, but after some setbacks, Cole is left with nothing more than his burning desire to not be burned alive, while still aiming to go out in a (non-dragonfire) blaze of glory.
The common-born son of a steward, Cole has been trapped by power his whole life. Despite his meteoric rise, from Knight to Kingsguard to Lord Commander to Hand of the King – and his status as toxic manosphere ex-boyfriend to not one but somehow two queens – he remained nothing more than a pawn to the powerful. Initially portrayed as a nice-seeming Dornish fuckboy with a flair for fighting, when his romance with Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy, Truth Seekers) ended poorly, he didn’t handle rejection in a super healthy way. Specifically, he brutally murdered a queer character in one of the Game of Thrones Cinematic Universe’s most gruesome deaths (a true achievement in a Cinematic Universe riddled with gruesome deaths) and joined Team Green against Rhaenyra. Much later, with the honour of his oaths and his white cloak having already been sullied, his affair with Alicent (Olivia Cooke, Katie Says Goodbye) is partly responsible for a failure to stop Blood and Cheese from killing Prince Jaehaerys.
Which is why it’s so shocking to find so much discourse in agreement that no one’s problematic fave Criston Cole is now one of the show’s most compelling characters – and perhaps has been since experiencing dragon-induced PTSD mid-to-late Season 2. More than almost anyone else on the show, he knows what it means to be powerless. Even his relationship with Rhaenyra started on pretty iffy footing – how was a man like him, in his position, supposed to say no to a princess’ advances? Rhaenyra’s recent attempts to court and serve the smallfolk are not how she felt about them as a teen, when she argued that “[t]heir wants are of no consequence.”
And so, his new resolve having been forged in flame, unburdened of his need to serve or be loved by the powerful (almost – he still wants Alicent to remember him through songs celebrating his death), Criston Cole will not go gentle into that good night: “I have been a servant all my life. To green or to black. I have defined myself by oaths, through unyielding devotion. And the highborn have made much of me while it pleased them to do so. But I will not let them diminish me now. I will not return spurned, rejected. I am the realm’s greatest warrior. And I will die as such. Clear-eyed. Unbent. Glorious in battle. And not in their service, finally. But in my own.” What hubris, the hypocrite who can’t take accountability for his role in these events. And yet I understand and find myself feeling sympathy for a character I once loathed. That’s storytelling!
Extra special shoutout to Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox, The Great), one of the few remaining honourable men on this show, who keeps trying and failing to save Cole from himself, and who makes very good, very sad and defeated faces all the while.
From there, connective tissue spins out of Cole’s story into most of the other plots this episode – from his guerilla campaign to Ormund Hightower’s (James Norton, House of Guinness) resistance (and from his metaphorical smashing of the chessboard to Ormund literally smashing the chessboard), and from Cole finally trying to break free of the chains of power to Alicent finally recognizing patriarchy as the villain in her own story (one she had previously propped up).
Alicent, like Cole, is stuck. A prisoner in the castle she ruled for so long, she has had enough of powerful men and the religions they twist to justify their actions. Orwyle (Kurt Egyiawan, Skyfall), one of her few remaining allies, no longer feels able to serve her and so he provides her with one last parting gift: an abortifacient for the road. She just wants to escape with Helaena (Phia Saban, The Last Kingdom), her only daughter, and perhaps her only kind child. However, her plans are thwarted at every turn. Helaena refuses to take the tonic, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno, Ex Machina) catches her trying to escape (though Alicent rises to the political moment and possibly convinces Mysaria to be less subservient to Rhaenyra), and the audience is left on a cliffhanger with mother and daughter trapped in the dark in a secret tunnel beneath the Red Keep.
While Alicent seems to have finally recognized the gilded cage in which she has locked herself, even more so than after her own son Aemond (Ewan Mitchell, The Last Kingdom) – currently bedridden, missing the dragon that gives his life meaning, being cared for by mommy Alys – stole the regency from her, she also turns around and uses its existence as a weapon. Has she truly realized the toxicity of the patriarchy, or is it just a rhetorical flourish to help her escape?
Meanwhile, Rhaenyra continues desperately to try to rule well, while also descending into paranoia – potentially for good reason, as a Hightower-funded resistance (led by some guy the Previously On… reminded us existed) eviscerates her brutal Gold Cloaks. At the same time, her uncle-husband Daemon (Matt Smith, Doctor Who) seems convinced the King’s Landing cops can be paid in dreams and promises. The man who taught Rhaenyra the importance of the smallfolk in Season 1 (“they’re of great consequence if you expect to rule them one day”) is focused more on paying the guards than feeding the hungry. Sadly for him (and the Gold Cloaks) they are all horrifically murdered and displayed in a grotesquely stunning tableau one can only describe as ‘Hannibal’s Last Supper’ – which the show labels in blood “A Feast for Traitors.”
Finally, even with some tremendous speeches from Cole and Alicent, it turns out that the best speech of the episode was delivered by supervillain Larys Strong (Matthew Needham, Napoleon). Sick and tired of Aegon II Targaryen’s (Tom Glynn-Carney, Dunkirk) constant whinging – the latter of whom goes full John Locke from LOST (Terry O’Quinn) when he shouts “Stop telling me what I can’t do!!!” – he finally lets Aegon know that “[he was] a terrible king. But worse than that, [he is] a terrible man.” Tough words delivered by a contender for most evil character on the show. There’s nothing like rock bottom for an arc – will Aegon learn to be good, or will his anger harden into bitter resentment? Are he and Rhaenyra now foils, with her triumph slowly turning to ash and Aegon’s failures leaving him nowhere to go but up? And who was that guy with the beard, do you even remember Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall, Vikings)?
There is also a lot to say here about disability and empathy in the Game of Thrones Cinematic Universe – too much for this review to meaningfully capture – but it remains an important theme in the writing of George R. R. Martin. We can see it in complex characters like Tyrion, Bran, and Jaime, and we can also see it in characters like Larys and Aegon. Does the stigma of disability lend itself to building more empathy and understanding for those around us? Can or should prejudicial assumptions about disablement be weaponized and turned against the stigmatizers?
We don’t yet know what direction Aegon (or Larys) may go from here, but these are important questions to be asking ourselves as we wait impatiently for next week’s episode!
House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 5 “Unbent and Unbowd” is now streaming on HBO MAX.
