3 Of House Of The Dragon's Highest-Rated Episodes Share The Same Thing In Common

Warning! Spoilers ahead for House of the Dragon’s season 3 premiere.

House of the Dragon’s third season just got off to a thrilling start with its first episode. The House of the Dragon season 3 premiere is what the season 2 finale should’ve been: all-out war. The Battle of the Gullet is exactly the big military spectacle that season 2 was building towards, and would’ve ended with if it hadn’t been slashed to eight episodes. But, regardless of whether it was released at the right time in the right season, it was an awesome episode, and the enthusiastic response points to fans’ favorite thing about this Game of Thrones spinoff.

When the season 3 premiere first dropped, it tied with season 2, episode 4, “The Red Dragon and the Gold,” to become the highest-rated episode of House of the Dragon on IMDb, with a near-perfect score of 9.4. It’s no surprise that “The Red Dragon and the Gold” is so beloved; that was the episode where Rhaenys died dramatically in the heat of battle, a scene that was strikingly similar to Jacaerys’ death in the season 3 premiere. Clearly, House of the Dragon fans love seeing a dragon rider die dramatically on the battlefield.

House Of The Dragon Fans Clearly Love A Dramatic Death On Dragonback

A couple of days after the premiere episode aired, when more House of the Dragon fans had had time to catch up and register their ratings on IMDb, the episode’s overall score dropped down to 9.2. But that’s still really high; “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood” is still the fourth-highest-rated episode of House of the Dragon on IMDb. It fell below season 1, episode 8, “The Lord of the Tides,” the one revolving around the Driftmark succession and Viserys’ accidental naming of Aegon as his heir, and season 1, episode 10, “The Black Queen,” the season 1 finale featuring — you guessed it — a dramatic death on dragonback.

Obviously, dramatic deaths of dragon riders are what the majority of House of the Dragon fans are tuning in to see. Whether they’re getting snatched out of the sky in a prank gone wrong or getting yanked underwater by a heavy anchor, House of the Dragon fans love to see dragons die a horrible death as their riders panic and mourn and, more often than not, die with them.

When Game of Thrones was on, the biggest complaint was that the show kept promising dragons, but wasn’t delivering them. It was years before we saw dragons at all, and even longer before we saw them blazing a trail through the battlefield. House of the Dragon remedied that right off the bat by featuring plenty of dragons all the time, doing really cool things like scorching an entire army with a single breath or swooping down to chomp smaller dragons out of the sky. The natural dramatic conclusion of that dragon-riding action is the heartbreaking death of the rider.

Jace Was Killed By His Own Hubris

Jace is shot in the water in House of the Dragon

Jace’s death is sad, but not surprising. He’s a victim of his own hubris. He flew into the Battle of the Gullet because he thought he was more capable than his mother, not realizing that ambition doesn’t equal experience. Jace and his dragon Vermax got some good licks in, but they ended up being yanked underwater.

Rather than staying to die with his dragon, Jace freed himself from the saddle and swam to the surface, but as soon as he found a piece of wood to float on, he was taken out by a wave of arrows. Jace’s death is a classic case of F.A.F.O. He just met one of the most tragically ironic fates in the entirety of House of the Dragon. Playtime’s over.