Watching pop culture bicker with itself is a rare hoot. Last Sunday, HBO premiered “House of the Dragon,” the network’s first “Game of Thrones” spin-off; tacitly acknowledging the medieval fantasy misery fest’s brand, the pilot episode builds to a birth scene shot with grisly excess and ending with mother and child wrapped in funeral shrouds. This week, Apple TV+ kicks off the third and final season of its own “Thrones” spin-off, “See,” with a birth scene that cares about such antediluvian details as tension, stakes, and basic empathy. Dethroned tyrant queen Sibeth (Sylvia Hoeks) is in labor. The outlook is bleak. Then, Maghra (Hera Hilmar), Sibeth’s sister and the reigning queen, tenderly frees the babe from the amniotic sac, thumps him on the back, and gets a cry in return for her trouble.
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A miracle. A relief. A better-timed dramatic reveal in post-Roe America, where southern politicians, their dimwitted constituents, and rogue judges collectively agree that moms’ lives don’t matter. It isn’t “House of Dragons” showrunners Ryan Condal and George R.R. Martin’s fault that June 24th happened; it is their fault that the series prioritizes shock value over the fundamentals of storytelling and that audiences reacted to the tragic birth in kind, not because the show gave them a reason to grieve but because it gave their jaws reason to drop. “See” is the beneficiary of that sensational apathy, though, since its first season, creator Steven Knight has demonstrated a sound understanding of when restraint or abandon is appropriate.
That has not changed in season three. Months have passed since the battle of Greenhill Gap in season two’s finale, “Rock-a-Bye,” an hour-long smorgasbord of severed limbs coated in arterial spray. Maghra has arranged peace between her kingdom, Paya, and her enemies, the Trivantians; Sibeth has decided that motherhood suits her, fie upon the inconvenient truth that the dad, Maghra’s son Kofun (Archie Madekwe), is resistant to fatherhood on account of Sibeth being his aunt; the Trivantians, represented by their new de facto leader, the ambitious scientist Tormada (David Hewlett), have devised a shiny new weapon to tilt their conflict with Paya in their favor; and Baba Voss (Jason Momoa) is in self-imposed exile with his wise, weed-loving friend, Ranger (Michael Raymond-James), fearful that staying with his adopted family–Maghra, Kofun, and Haniwa (Nesta Cooper)–will put their lives in danger.
Momoa has for years been Hollywood’s go-to guy for characters whose role breakdowns are summarized as “A dude who’s rad as hell.” Watching him brutalize hapless opponents is part of his appeal. The other part is the “rad” part. Momoa’s easygoing cool gets its best use yet in the season premiere, “Heavy Hangs the Head,” where his hangout scenes with Raymond-James offer the best entertainment. Ranger is the Yoda to Baba’s Luke Skywalker and the Cato to his Inspector Clouseau. The two play a game where one tries to sneak up on the other; the winner gets bragging rights, and the loser gets a fistful of shit smeared over their face. Only survivors in a post-apocalyptic dystopia would turn to a game like that to stave off boredom.
But weird, grody details like that, however trivial they seem, give the world of “See” even sturdier grounding. At this point, that’s arguably unnecessary. Anybody still hanging with the series is firmly on board with what Knight, his writers, and Anders Engström, who directs each of season three’s episodes, have constructed here. The fact that they’ve found new ways, big and small, to flesh out their ever-expanding setting is appreciated, particularly given the deliberate pacing of the season’s early narrative. Little “happens” in “Heavy Hangs the Head,” though everything happens. A rabble of religious zealots opposed to their rulers’ edicts on the sighted – because in a land where everyone is blind, people who can see must be witches – is on the prowl for heretics; Harlan (Tom Mison), Maghra’s king by necessity, is enjoying a fling with the Trivantian ambassador, Trovere (Trieste Kelly Dunn); Haniwa is running out of patience for her mother and brother’s approach to governance, which, of course, is patient; and Baba just can’t get rid of this pesky dog he saves from a trap, and who follows him around out of gratitude, like, well, a lost dog.
Knight’s decision to up the humor in “See” is shrewd. Most shows like this tend to avoid jocular warmth. They’re too fixated on being serious. “See” takes itself seriously, but the idea that no one’s telling jokes in the wasteland is one the show rejects. Ranger’s stoner insights and Baba’s defensiveness over the dog run close to hilarity, which makes “See”’s more horrifying moments go down smoother and hit harder. The Trivantian weapon is nothing special: It’s a bomb made with compressed coal. But “nothing special” in “See,” where everyone fights with arrows, swords, and spears fashioned from scrap, is actually very special. When Tormada demonstrates his simple explosives’ power to Wren (Eden Epstein) and her company of Trivantian soldiers, she recoils in abject fear. Even she, a sighted warrior, has no concept of a minefield’s lethal elegance. The wholesale massacre of the stocked army bearing down on her meager one should be good news. It isn’t. She’s mortified by the aftermath.
“See” doesn’t capture the same feeling from Wren’s blind comrades’ perspectives, but there are, at least, stray shots of background actors clutching their ears in pain. That’s better than nothing. Besides, in every other department “See” gives viewers everything: Action choreographed with purpose (and lighting that, even at its darkest, is still sufficient), a web of plots that dovetail nicely rather than tangle up, deep investment in its characters’ humanity, even Sibeth’s, and a cast game enough to make the soap opera at the heart of all “Game of Thrones” aspirants palatable. Today’s TV shows generally lack awareness of their own expiration date. They stay on air long after they should be canceled. That “See” is winding down to its conclusion is a bummer, given how the show has grown by leaps and bounds over its years, but it’s a credit to its future legacy that it knows when to call it a day. If the remainder of the season makes good on the promise in “Heavy Hangs the Crown,” then “See” will at least go out on a high note. [B+]