The thing about the titular flying beasts of House of the Dragon is that they aren't native to Westeros. They and their white-haired masters, the Targaryens, came from another continent to conquer the Seven Kingdoms we know so well from Game of Thrones. They've been in this nation for centuries, but their subjects still view them as outsiders. And many consider the dragons to be abominations who have no business being involved in the affairs of men, and who will eventually grow beyond the control of the riders and set their world ablaze.
The people who make House of the Dragon, on the other hand, are all-in on the value of the mammoth fire-breathing creatures. Within 10 seconds of the start of the HBO fantasy epic's third season, we see a dragon soaring through the sky, preparing to consume a poor goat that's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Throughout the four episodes given to critics for review, we see the dragons in flight, in battle, in their pens, everywhere. It is consistent spectacle on a level which Thrones took years to approach.
But while the dragons look amazing in close-up, particularly on the ground, the series continues to have mixed success depicting them in action, particularly with their human riders involved. When we see a Targaryen hanging onto their saddle and steering the dragon, one or both of them start to look like CGI blobs, wholly unrelated both to one another and to anything or anyone else in the scene.
That struggle to make the human characters seem real and vivid unfortunately extends to most of the scenes set on terra firma, without the dragons in sight. We're several years into this series, and other than childhood friends-turned-archenemies Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke), almost no human characters have clear motivations, nor compelling reasons to watch them as everyone jockeys for power. In many scenes, it can be a challenge to even remember who some characters are, and how they relate to one another.