Major spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3, episode 1. Beware.
As Lord Corlys Velaryon says, “Rough seas lie ahead,” especially for the major players in House of the Dragon‘s long-awaited, colossal naval contest, the Battle of the Gullet.
We’ve known this was coming for two seasons, with the all-important blockade omnipresent in civil war strategy meetings on both sides of Team Black and Team Green. And in Season 3, episode 1, the Triarchy finally takes on the mighty Sea Serpent’s fleet in one of the most bloody, shocking, devastating, and nail-biting sequences in the series yet.
Mashable unpacked the House of the Dragon battle with cast members Steve Toussaint, Abubakar Salim, Abigail Thorn, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, and Harry Collett.
Shot over several months in a massive Warner Bros. Studios set in Leavesden, England, the battle is a major turning point, particularly for Corlys Velaryon (Toussaint) and his son Alyn of Hull (Salim).
“The important thing about the whole battle is just the sheer violence of it,” Salim tells Mashable in the video above. “That is mainly seen, obviously, through the actual physical nature of it, but also through the people participating in it. That was something that was really important to tell this story of the Gullet, just like, how terrifying and violent it was.”
It’s a rare moment for Corlys, commanding his fleet in full Sea Snake mode.
“It was a joy, because in a way I’ve been waiting to show that side of him,” said Toussaint. “Other than the Battle of the Stepstones in Season 1, we’ve not always seen him in action. Most of Season 2 is like, ‘My wife’s dead and my son doesn’t love me.'”
“Other than the Battle of the Stepstones in Season 1, we’ve not always seen him in action.”
In the other corner, the relentless Sharako Lohar (Thorn), the rugged Triarchy admiral, who Thorn based on Captain Ahab.
“She’s a pirate, and historically, in real life, pirates were pretty democratic, and I think she definitely has the inspiration of all her men,” said Thorn. “There’s a pivotal moment in the script, just after something big happens, where she swears at her men for the first time, and we start to see that style of egalitarian command giving way to something more authoritarian. She starts getting more cavalier about throwing their lives away.”
As for the major aerial combat players in the battle? The wild card of the Gullet, undeniably, is Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell), whose first run on her dragon Sheepstealer does not go to plan — especially when she comes way too close to her also-flying sister, Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antonia), and spirals out of control in the air.
“Hard relate, you know? Where I go into things thinking I’ve got this and just… so it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling,” said Campbell. “But yeah, that realisation of ‘I have no control over this, there’s nothing I can do,’ I think we can all relate to that in some way.”
And then there’s Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett), the young prince and Queen Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) heir, whose moment of misguided heroism becomes the climactic moment of the episode.
“I had loads of meetings with Loni [Peristere], the director of the episode, and Ryan [Condal, creator and showrunner] just talking about how I can portray feelings while being up in the air and having all this stuff going on around me,” Collett said. “We would make up scenarios that would happen with Jace that didn’t happen in the show, which really helped me get into character…It was really fun this time around, because I finally get to get out the offices.”
That sure is one hell of an off-site. You can watch the whole House of the Dragon cast interview in video above.
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House of the Dragon
