We’re just a few weeks away from the return of House of the Dragon, and all signs point to the bloodiest, most destruction-heavy season yet. The marketing thus far has screamed “war” and “agony“; the show’s co-creator and showrunner, Ryan Condal, has promised “arguably the craziest episode of television ever” with the season-opening Battle of the Gullet. At the recent ATX TV Festival, he again emphasized how wild the Dance of the Dragons is going to get, going so far as to use nuclear war as a comparison.
As reported by Deadline, Condal spoke about how many practical effects are involved in the first episode of season three, which will vividly bring the seafaring excitement to life. However, there’s another element to Westeros warfare of this period that goes well beyond ships firing on each other: those Targaryen dragons blazing at each other in the sky.
“There is a lot of dragon action,” Condal teased. “There are new ones that we haven’t really spent any time with at all that you’ll be very excited to see, and some old favorites come back in and get lots of exciting screen time and action.”
When dragons are involved, that raises the stakes to a new level, which Condal used the language of nuclear war to describe: “mutually assured destruction.” It’s something we didn’t see in Game of Thrones, which did have some dragons in play, of course, but not on the level of the battle-ready beasts that populate House of the Dragon.
“I think the thing this show contends with that the original Game of Thrones did not contend with, at least until the very end, is this idea of there are nuclear weapons in play, and there are nuclear weapons in play on both sides,” he explained. “So really you have this classic Cold War standoff of mutually assured destruction. Of course, the characters in the show would not have those words, but we as a modern audience that can see that [do].”
In season two, as the Dance of the Dragons was getting underway, “Nobody wants to make the big move that is going to break down the wrath of [the dragon] Vhagar or Daemon, because they realize that if it goes too far, you could just have ash left over,” Condal said. “But, of course, that builds and builds and builds, and at some point the cork comes off the champagne bottle, and that’s where we begin here in season three.”
Spoiler alert: Westeros itself does survive, since it’s still around for Game of Thrones several generations later. But we can assume a lot of castles and landscape and people and dragons won’t be making it through this clash of Targaryens. House of the Dragon season three begins June 21 on HBO.
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