One of the many dangling threads at the end of House of the Dragon season two came with King Aegon’s decision to flee King’s Landing with Lord Larys Strong. As season three begins in “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood,” we get a glimpse of their road trip in progress, as both characters start to question their choice of companion for this spontaneous adventure.
As fans will well recall, Aegon has reason to fear for his life—his younger brother, Aemond, would love to see him perish ahead of schedule and free up the path to the Iron Throne. It’s Aemond’s fault that Aegon was horrifically injured midway through season two at the Battle of Rook’s Rest, and the king has barely recovered enough to hit the road when Larys tells him it’s his best option for survival.
Larys’ plan is for them to sneak to the coast, hop a boat to Braavos, and wait out the Dance of the Dragons—living off the gold Larys has stashed just for such an occasion. Then, once the dust has cleared, King Aegon can return to Westeros and reclaim his throne before his adoring subjects.
In reality, the scheme gets off to a rocky start. Larys didn’t remember to pack the Milk of the Poppy that Aegon has grown so fond of! Rude. Then, the pair, who are traveling in a cart full of caged ravens, are pulled over by Rhaenyra’s army. They become hostages when Aegon refuses to bend the knee to his greatest rival, and Larys tells Team Black his true identity.
As season three progresses, no doubt we’ll see more of this uneasy partnership as they pursue their hasty plan. At a recent House of the Dragon press day attended by io9 and other outlets, Tom Glynn-Carney, who plays Aegon, and Matthew Needham, who plays Larys, talked about their characters.
Though Aegon’s default mode is still “whiny and entitled,” Glynn-Carney does think he’s evolved since House of the Dragon viewers first met him.
“There’s something that’s just inherently in there … this steely determination. A lot of that is born from a place of ego and entitlement and sort of self-sabotage and pride and all these things that sort of make him quite a complex, unpredictable bomb of a character,” Glynn-Carney explained. “Almost especially because he’s been through what he’s recently been through in terms of his injuries and the way his life has changed, I feel like that could either go one or two ways. And we’ve been down the route where he’s [self-pitying] and the wallowing kind of overtakes him. We started to dip our toe into the waters of, kind of, back into the motivation and the determination. That’s not to say that that doesn’t disappear and we’re back into the self-pity, and then we’re out of it again, and there [are] lots of ups and downs. But yeah, he’s complex. He is full of rage. He’s an exciting character to play. I do have a lot of fun with him.”
Aegon has also undergone some physical changes thanks to his injuries. Glynn-Carney says the special effects make-up he now wears to play Aegon is “impossible to ignore. It serves as a constant reminder of his injuries and his discomfort. And although I’m not in pain when I’m in the prosthetics, it is uncomfortable.”
But he also said it’s helped his performance. “[It’s] over-stimulating and anxiety-inducing, but it’s great; you just kind of let those feelings bleed into the scenes and how the character feels, and it informs the way that I move and the way I speak,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to have a reason to discover a different version of a character that you’ve been playing for a few years now. It’s nice to shake it up a bit.”
Away from the protective womb of the Red Keep, traveling with just Larys by his side, Aegon is in uncharted territory. “It’s interesting to need somebody as much as he needs Larys. He’s never been in that position before where he’s relied so heavily on someone,” Glynn-Carney said. “[He’s gone from] being in a position where he’s got all the people around him giving him everything and serving him and treating him like the king, so [to] have that pulled away and to be stuck in the back of a rookery with loads of raven shit everywhere and Larys Strong next to him, it’s like, ‘Well this man has more of a plan than I do, so I’m just gonna hand myself over to him, I guess, because what’s my other option? To stay in the Red Keep and be killed by my own brother or someone else?’”
Speaking of Aemond (played by Ewan Mitchell), Aegon sees him as a threat second only to Rhaenyra at this point. “He hates the guy,” Glynn-Carney said. “There’s just so much rage in the pit of Aegon, bubbling away this whole season. It’s a real driving force for him. It’s actually probably a good thing that he feels the way he feels because it keeps him going and it gives him motivation. And in a similar way to how he feels about Rhaenyra, even though Rhaenyra is very much end goal … Aemond [is] kind of on the way to achieving the super objective. So yeah, there’s so much there. There’s a lot of fuel on the fire because of him.”
As for Lord Larys, he’s now in the unfamiliar position of not being fully in control of everything and everyone around him. In the wilds of Westeros, anything can happen.
“I think he accepts [his lack of control] during the course of the story,” Needham said. “He thinks at the beginning that he can control Aegon. I think he feels he’s got Aegon in the palm of his hand. Events transpire, and he realizes he doesn’t have any control. And he realizes that Aegon is such a live wire, such a loose cannon. I think [Larys] realizes he’s bit off way more than he can chew, which is really fun to play.”
But backing Aegon—after spending a lot of time in earlier seasons currying favor with Alicent—is still what Larys believes is best, at least for now.
“[In season two] you see him realizing that Alicent’s power is waning and that the next person in line is Aegon. And that fluctuated a little bit when he thought that Aegon was dead, but it really is quite simple. I think it is his only option,” Needham said. “Who else really would it be on that side who has a chance, who the people would get behind? I think Larys has created a story in his head, which is we come back in a few years when people are sick of all these people in charge, which you see in the world now. People get sick of the people in charge. And it’s so easy to come back in with a few little stories about, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if there was someone else?’ I think he’s got it all mapped out. He’s got a plan, and it makes complete sense for Aegon to be king, but they just need to catch a break.”
As it happens, Aegon and Larys make such an odd couple that—thanks to the friction between them—their scenes are among the most humorous on House of the Dragon, especially as they have to think on their feet outside of their respective comfort zones.
“I think our thing was just to play it as real as possible … and not to play it for comedy or anything, because I actually think it’s really emotional what’s happening. It’s really scary what’s happening. So I think that we just tried to play as straight as possible,” Needham said.
“It’s inherently funny to see two people not have a plan and be panicking about their future and how much danger they’re in and how high the stakes are, and to see people at rock bottom and play the truth of that rather than play it for the comedy,” Glynn-Carney explained. “It’s always going to be funnier and more impactful if you steer away from playing for laughs.”
House of the Dragon drops new episodes Sundays on HBO.
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