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House of the Dragon season 3 is ready to take flight. The World of Westeros show is now halfway through the Dance of the Dragons – the Targaryen civil war that leaves the all-powerful dragonriding dynasty in embers – with the bloodiest battles and biggest losses still to come.
It's a pivotal moment for the show, with House of the Dragon season 3 set to finally deliver on the promise of season 2's abrupt finale with the Battle of the Gullet – one of the craziest episodes of TV ever made, according to showrunner Ryan Condal. If our House of the Dragon season 3 review, which covers episodes 1-4, is anything to go by, they're off to a winning start.
During a conversation with GamesRadar+ during the SXSW London festival, Condal spoke at length about House of the Dragon season 3's sizzling opener, the long arc of Rhaenyra's evolution as a character, the conflict between adaptation and a faithful rendering of George R.R. Martin's Fire and Blood, and the story he'd like to see told next in the World of Westeros. Can't wait to see what Condal and co. have cooked up? Head over to our House of the Dragon season 3 release schedule, for all the latest on when and where new episodes drop.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
GamesRadar+: When there's an event as huge and consequential as the Battle of the Gullet coming up, how do you begin to plan and execute on a vision for something of that scale?
Ryan Condal: Big to small, sort of like: What story do we have to tell? And then how the hell will we do this? [I had] long conversations with Kevin de la Noy, who's my physical producing partner. He has this massive film background; he was the production manager on Titanic. As he tells everybody: "I literally sunk the Titanic." So it seemed like a good place to start because he had experience with water and just talking through like, "How do we do this? Are we going out to sea? Are we building a tank?" No one's ever done this on television before, not this way.
We looked at Black Sails and some of their production methodology. And then it was just figuring out the pieces that we needed because the thing that makes the Battle of the Gullet unique is we've seen naval battles before, we've seen sequences with dragons before. It's the unique combination of these things and then the fact that it's medieval combat, which means that there are no real ranged weapons. It makes for much better drama because you get that face-to-face interaction. But it makes for incredibly complex production logistics. Doing this for one episode of television is the most insane thing that I've ever seen in my history as a TV producer and being allowed to do it. So I'm very grateful for it!
Was it a challenge to thread the needle in a way that serves both character and the scale of the Gullet?
Well, look, the scale and spectacle mean nothing if you don't care about who's going through it. We talked a lot about how we're kind of doing a little bit of Wrath of Khan and the chase through the nebula – Kirk versus Khan being the Sea Snake versus Sharako. Khan didn't have this massive battle going on around it with space dragons [laughs], but at least for their head to head, that was what we talked about a lot. We watch movies and reference things and it was all rooted in this character story for the Sea Snake versus Sharako, and then on a separate scale: all the dragon riders that come into the battle and what they have going on in their individual stories. So it tries to be very intimate in terms of POV and then maximal on a spectacle and scale level at the same time.
What effect has moving the Battle of the Gullet from the end of season 2 to the beginning of season 3 had on this latest season?
You know, some of this was simply out of my control. And so much of my job as showrunner is to take the lemons that I'm given and make a delicious drink out of it. Sometimes, that leads to great circumstances, which, I will say, I think this episode is better for where it sits right now. But it did not change anything about our plan. I've always looked at this as one large story necessarily broken into seasons simply so that we can produce the show and not die in the process [laughs]. In terms of what happens next, nothing has really changed. [It] has always been in the grand sort of plan and scheme for how the show is going to unfold until its endgame.
Emma D'Arcy has spoken about making Rhaenyra more active this season, and that it was something the two of you worked on together. Why was that so important at this stage in the story?
Nothing that's happened was unintentional, I would say. So much of Rhaenyra's story is about the frustration of being the challenger and the frustration of being the female challenger. And, also, she knows that Viserys chose her because he trusted her not to take this incredible power that their house had and burn the world down, which is the thing that he was worried Daemon was going to do. So I think a lot of the consternation over what is perceived as inactivity of Rhaenyra is her trying to honor what her father wished for her as a sovereign. But when all these outside pressures come in and her desire to win, it creates for a really interesting character cocktail.
And I think the character in the book is incredibly inactive and shuts herself away from the battle in a big way for much of the story. So for us, it's honoring that, and then trying to figure out ways to grow and expand it in a way that makes for a compelling television narrative. With a character as big and complex as Rhaenyra, you want to see her go through these multiple different phases as she figures out who she ultimately wants to be as a sovereign. And we're only halfway through that so far. So stay tuned because there's lots of dynamism and change to come.
One of the benefits of knowing your endpoint is that you can fully map out a character arc over four seasons.
Exactly. And we've done that. We've really done that with everybody. And that's the biggest gift that I think [Fire and Blood] has given to us as writers of the show and also to the fanbase that so fervently follows it, is it is a complete tale so that we're able to break it down. We don't know every single little beat in the story, but we know the big waypoints all the way through. So once you can see what the next waypoint is, it's easier to paint in the detail to get there, and we know when and where we're going to end. We've been able to plan and write to that for a long time now.
Three years into adapting a non-traditional source, do you feel that you've hit an ideal point between a faithful rendering of the text versus necessary adaptive changes?
This is the thing that has weighed on me the most since the beginning. The creative writer in me was so excited by the challenge of adapting this kind of Rashomon fake-history telling of the story, where some of the details are very scant, some of the things don't exist at all. You know point A and point Z but you don't know anything that happens in between. That gives [a] tremendous amount of latitude for growth and invention and a faithful rendering of the text that at the same time is something that is uniquely ours, the writers of the show. But also with that comes the fear, as a devoted fan of these books and of Westeros, that my rendering of it is not going to be the rendering that everybody had in their mind reading the book. There's so much room for interpretation within it. Why did that character do that, or how did they get there can be totally different, but they will think that they read it on the page because it's such a vivid telling. So those two things – my fandom and my job as a screenwriter – sometimes they're in step and then, other times, it's tiny versions of me on my shoulders at war making me bald and keeping me up at night!
As a scholar of Westeros, what would you like to see explored in this universe next on screen? Even as a fan, not a filmmaker?
Oh, fascinating question. I don't know that I'm a scholar. I think I'm a well-employed super-fan!
Look, that's the richness of this world that there are so many opportunities for new stories to be told. Ira Parker is doing such a wonderful job with that in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. We're so used to the stories [about] the 1% of the 1%, that's the story, certainly, of House of the Dragon. Game of Thrones was the 1%, we're the 1% of the 1%! And then Ira is telling the story of the 99%, which I just love, and I think that show shows that you can do different sort of models and tonal explorations.
To actually answer your question, the opportunity that I think excites me is to see a story where the Targaryens are still at the height of their power in terms of controlling the kingdom, but don't have their dragons anymore. We know that from Game of Thrones, where we start with no dragons. Our show has many dragons. But there's an in-between point where the Targaryens are still ruling as a powerful dynasty. And I think there's a really fascinating story to be told there, in the fresh wake of our particular period of history: how do you pursue rule when you don't have the threat of these nuclear weapons at your fingertips, like you did in your recent past? That seems like an interesting place to explore for me.
House of the Dragon season 3 streams on HBO Max in the US from June 21, and on HBO Max and NOW in the UK from June 22. For more, For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming Game of Thrones movies and shows or all the new TV shows on the way.
