‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Episode 4 Review – Ormund Hightower Steals the Spotlight, Even if the Rest of Westeros Gets a Little Crowded

Four episodes into its third season, ‘House of the Dragon‘ has settled into a rhythm where every hour has to juggle half a dozen storylines scattered across the map. That approach has worked well when the show slows down long enough to let a single location breathe, and it stumbles a little whenever it tries to cram too much in at once. This week’s episode, centered on the newly occupied town of Tumbleton, falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and it mostly works because of one towering new performance.

The episode belongs to Lord Ormund Hightower, played by James Norton, who has quietly become the season’s most compelling addition. Ormund marches fifteen thousand soldiers into Tumbleton, a town that had already pledged loyalty to Rhaenyra, knowing full well that she cannot burn him out without slaughtering the very people who support her. It is a cold, patient kind of villainy, and Norton plays it with an unbothered confidence that makes every scene he is in feel a little more dangerous.

What surprised me most was how the show uses Ormund’s relationship with young Daeron to say something uncomfortable about how cruelty gets passed down disguised as guidance. Ormund insists he wants Daeron to lead with fairness, but every lesson he actually teaches is about dominance dressed up as decency. By the time he hands Daeron a sword and orders him to execute a man for striking one of his soldiers, the show has built enough dread that the moment lands like a gut punch rather than a shock for shock’s sake.

Norton himself has described the character’s motivations in blunt terms, calling Ormund essentially the pushiest of all pushy parents and explaining that his drive to crown Daeron comes from pure self interest rather than affection, speaking to Gold Derby about the role. That framing tracks with everything on screen. Ormund never once looks like a man who loves the boy at his side, only a man who sees a very useful tool.

Away from Tumbleton, the episode spreads itself thinner. Rhaenyra’s small council scenes continue to mine real tension out of her fragile hold on power, particularly as she wrestles with a fabricated story about the rider of a wild dragon and quietly lets a lie slide because the alternative is politically messier. Daemon’s detour into the Vale gives Matt Smith a handful of sharp exchanges, and the reveal waiting for him at the end of that thread is genuinely well staged, even if it arrives a little abruptly.

The weakest stretch belongs to Aegon and Larys, whose disguised journey through the Crownlands has an interesting premise but keeps circling the same beat of humiliation without much forward motion. I understand the intent, stripping a king down to nothing so he can rebuild himself into someone worth rooting for, but four episodes in it still feels like the show is spinning its wheels rather than building toward something. A subplot involving an attempted assault on a soldier’s family also gets handled with more bluntness than nuance, functioning mostly as a way to demonstrate Ormund’s brand of performative justice rather than as a story about the woman it actually happens to.

Visually, the episode remains as sturdy as ever, with the dragons continuing to feel like genuine characters rather than special effects showpieces. There is a small, wordless moment between Daeron and Tessarion that says more about the boy’s internal conflict than any of his dialogue does, and it is the kind of detail that reminds you how much care still goes into this show even during its busier hours.

Taken as a whole, this is a strong entry that occasionally trips over its own ambition, elevated significantly by a new villain who already feels essential to where the season is headed. The Tumbleton material alone would carry a weaker episode, and everything surrounding it ranges from solid to merely serviceable rather than genuinely bad. I am landing on 8 out of 10, a score that reflects how much Norton’s performance and the Ormund and Daeron dynamic elevate an hour that otherwise has too many plates spinning at once.

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