House of the Dragon Season 3 Finale Somehow Makes the Worst Character One of the Best

I’m struggling to remember a character who has given me more whiplash than Ulf throughout House of the Dragon Season 3.

For most of the season, I’ve been wondering whether I was watching a really bad adaptation or some elaborate piece of fan-fiction.

And Ulf has been a huge part of that.

I’ve never been able to take him seriously because he feels like a character who wandered in from Our Flag Means Death and somehow ended up in the middle of a Targaryen civil war.

He doesn’t fit the severity of the situations he’s constantly being thrown into, and I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what the writers were actually doing with him.

But then House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 8 happened.

And I’ll admit it: Ulf finally got me on his side.

The finale was one of the best episodes this show has produced. We had political maneuvering, the Battle of Tumbleton, a ridiculous amount of death, and, for once, the feeling that everything happening on screen actually mattered.

Then there was Ulf.

House of the Dragon Flips the Script

He spent the first half of the episode drunk, disappeared for another chunk of it, and then came back and burned down Tumbleton.

I genuinely thought he was going to get killed during the battle. Instead, he decided to Dracarys the entire city and both armies fighting over it.

What the hell?

And yet, somehow, it made perfect sense.

I’ve never been particularly surprised by Ulf turning on Rhaenyra. She and Daemon expected him to be grateful for everything they’d given him and then unthinkingly follow their orders.

Ulf wanted more.

Ormund knew that and thought he could use it to his advantage on House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 7. He promised Ulf the world, convinced him to join the Hightower cause, and then immediately went back to treating him like something he’d scrape off his shoe.

That was probably the biggest mistake anyone could have made with Ulf.

Because Ulf finally stopped trying to play the game everyone else was playing.

He just did whatever the hell he wanted.

And honestly? I found that far more satisfying than watching him desperately chase power.

For the first time all season, I wanted more of the character.

That’s a pretty impressive turnaround considering I’ve spent most of House of the Dragon Season 3 practically begging someone to kill him.

I’m still not going to pretend Ulf suddenly became one of my favorite characters. He didn’t.

But I am genuinely curious about what role he could play on House of the Dragon Season 4.

His chaotic energy could actually be useful now that the story is heading into its final stretch. He’s unpredictable, he’s powerful, and clearly nobody has any idea what he’s going to do when he’s given even the slightest amount of freedom.

Will Ulf Survive?

Of course, there’s a very real chance he doesn’t even make it to House of the Dragon Season 4.

Vermithor and Caraxes are after him and his dragon, and this is House of the Dragon we’re talking about.

Nobody is safe, and the show has never been particularly shy about killing people in spectacularly horrible ways.

Still, I have a hard time believing Ulf would disappear off-screen after the role he played in the finale.

And that’s what surprised me most about this episode.

After all the whiplash I’ve had with House of the Dragon Season 3, I finally feel like the show has reached that point of no return where everything is about to come crashing down.

The Battle of Tumbleton gave us some of the most brutal deaths we’ve seen in the Game of Thrones universe, but the bigger achievement was making the future feel genuinely uncertain.

Compare that with the end of House of the Dragon Season 2, which felt like the show was treading water.

The House of the Dragon Season 3 finale didn’t feel like that.

It felt like a finale.

It felt monumental. It felt dangerous. And it made me curious about what comes next.

Even if that means watching Ulf stumble around with a dragon again.

I hate to say it, but after everything we’ve seen, I’m actually looking forward to it.

What about you, House of the Dragon Fanatics?

What’s your take on Ulf after the House of the Dragon Season 3 finale?

Are you re-invested in the show again?

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
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