‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Breakdown With Showrunner and Co-Creator Ryan Condal

♪ Greetings, and welcome to House of R. Very special episode. We have Ryan Condal here with us today, House of the Dragon showrunner, to talk to us about the Season 3 finale, Season 3 overall, the series overall. We're just going to dive right in, but if you're wondering, where's the deep dive? It's still coming. Coming tomorrow. Coming tomorrow. Also, to cut you off, I should just say, that's Mallory Rubin, I'm Joanna Robinson. Just in case you're tuning in for the first time to see Ryan Condal, that's who we are. This is House of R. We go deep on House of the Dragon every single episode. So if you're just hopping in for this Ryan Condal interview, we will be back again tomorrow. We will be back tomorrow with hours upon hours of discussion of the finale. Instant reaction already up with Chris Ryan for Talk the Thrones. Check that out. And stay tuned to see what else awaits the rest of the summer, the fall. We got all sorts of good stuff coming. Follow along on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the Ring of Verse YouTube channel and follow at House of R Pod. We're huge book readers, but there are no book spoilers in this conversation with Ryan Condal. Correct. All safe for you to enjoy if you're just a show watcher. Yeah. And I'm excited for you to hear what he has to say. This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. Black Friday is happening now at The Home Depot and they've got just the tree for your style, space, and budget. Make the holidays merry and bright with artificial trees starting at $49. Then make it your own with ornaments and trimmings for every holiday style. Find your perfect tree at the number one Christmas tree retailer and get low prices guaranteed on all your festive favorites at The Home Depot. Exclusions apply. Visit homedepot.com slash price match for details. From the studio that brought you WandaVision. I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore. The Vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. You sure about that? I had a father called Vision. How is this possible? Don't miss the two-episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family together quite like Mortal Jeopardy. Now streaming. Only on Disney+. All right, what a treat. Back on the podcast for, I believe, the fourth time, which might be a record. Wow. Season two primer, a brief appearance on a House of Recommends episode, and, of course, the props extravaganza. It's House of the Dragon showrunner, Ryan Condal. Welcome back. Hi, guys. Very good to be here. Thanks for coming. We're thrilled. We have 975 questions for you. Correct. We'll try to cut it down as we go in real time. We'll see. Hot off the finale, we have so many things we're excited to dive into and discuss. Theme, lore, character. Want to start with morality. The moral gray. Okay. Because Team Black is, by design, increasingly hard to root for as the story unfurls. And, obviously, the finale gave us some nice child murder and betrayal and a slaying of the man of the cloth. Et cetera, to further that. Team Green, meanwhile, has proven to be, I think Joe and I would both say, more empathetic than we or most book readers ever dreamed possible. How, as you now wrap up season three and think about season four and just in general adapting this story, how do you balance living in the moral gray that is so essential to the story's core intention and certainly to the core focus of the corrupting nature of power while giving audiences characters to root for? Or is part of the appeal to you interrogating what it is that we root for and why and what the limits of that devotion and empathy might be and assessing, you know, why and how people lose their way, whether, and when they do, whether there's a path back from that descent? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think you hit the nail on the head there, Mallory. The, the, I think, you know, Sarah and I were much more interested in, in the exploration of the moral gray and feeling like the original show gave us the kind of classic goodies and baddies within a morally gray landscape. But we can all pretty much agree that, like, everybody at some point was rooting for Jon Snow and Daenerys and everybody was rooting against most of the Lannisters at some point, whereas this show felt like to take the thing and kind of move it on. Not that we're trying to make all deplorable characters, but it felt like we needed less of that, of that sort of white hats and black hats that we had had in the original show because the show had done the hard work of establishing this world where that doesn't really generally exist. And we were just more interested in, in portraying these very complex characters that at times you could find, you know, sympathy and empathy for, and times could be rooting for, and other times you could be kind of, kind of horrified by them and their actions. And I think we've done that, you know, fairly successfully throughout the three seasons as it kind of goes up and down. And I love the response following episode seven, because we're recording this before anybody has really reacted to episode eight. The public has reacted to episode eight. But I love the response to episode seven, where so many people have, like, texted me and they're like, basically like, "You fucker, I'm rooting for Aegon now. How did that happen?" Yeah. I was like, "Yeah." And also credit to Tom Glenn Kearney's wonderful performance. I mean, it's just, it's so, it's such a, it's such a human sympathetic performance and the things that he's been through this year in the Crucible. I love all that. And I, I think we, we always promised as a show that you would, you would kind of flop back and forth between team green and team black. And that didn't mean that you would be doing that in episode three of the show. It just meant that like, over the course of the series, you would have these kind of tugs and pulls any, in either direction. And I think what this series has revealed this year is everybody loves an underdog. And now that the table is totally flipped and Rhaenyra and Daemon are in the power position and Aegon and Aemon and all the people that you thought would be all powerful for all time, now that they are the underdogs, people are kind of interested in what they're doing. Sunfire, taking the world by storm. Sunfire. Yes. Everybody, everybody likes a little, I've learned that people really like kind of disfigured dragons in, in Sheepstealer and Sunfire, two of our most popular market research testers. Considering everything you just said about Aegon, Rhaenyra, Daemon, all the rest, and, and where you wanted to land here at the end of the season, was there a particular character arc that going into the season, knowing where you were beginning and knowing where you wanted to end by episode eight, you were most, I don't know, concerned about, focused on, you were like, this is the one we really, really have to nail this season, and it's going to be the biggest challenge. Well, it just felt like Aegon and Rhaenyra. It felt like the two, now that those two are kind of sitting at the center of the dance, which was again, always the plan. It just takes, takes a couple of seasons to get there. Um, it felt like if, if we could, if we could do the magic trick of taking Rhaenyra into the sort of the edge of the abyss, perhaps, you know, starting to cross over and then bringing Aegon back from it and having this redemption, this kind of Arthurian, uh, redemption arc where he draws the, the dragon from the stone, so to speak, um, and has people rooting for him. It felt like we could really, then, then we really, we had, we had done our jobs because you've really taken the audience. On a ride and ended them in an unexpected place. And then in a, in a way that vaults you hopefully rather excitingly into the final chapter of the final act of this thing, because really then hopefully the feeling is that I don't know where any of this is going in a good way. Um, I, I don't know what to expect. I can't predict the end of, of this and how it's going to go and who I'm, who I'm going to be rooting for or feeling, feeling sorry for, or the unexpected tragedy, uh, those kinds of things. We really want to put, put people to rest. I can't predict the end of, of this and how it's going to go and who I'm, who I'm going to be rooting for or feeling sorry for, or the unexpected tragedy, uh, those kinds of things. We really want to put people to rest. Yeah. Uh, that he represented and that he espoused has undergone real evolution, especially in the last couple episodes. Um, curious, can Rhaenyra, you know, the two wolves inside of us all, like balance pushing past the idea of living in that shadow and feeling like what Viserys, the peaceful said had to be the policy or the approach that Rhaenyra tries to enact. Um, curious, can Rhaenyra, you know, the two wolves inside of us all, like balance pushing past the idea of living in that shadow and feeling like what Viserys, the peaceful said has undergone real evolution, especially in the last couple episodes. Yeah, I mean, I think that was the big question for Rhaenyra over the course of the season is could she could two things be true at the same time? Could she hang on to the things that made Viserys kind of a questionable king, but made him choose her to be heir and also be an effective ruler as a female during wartime? And that's the thing that she's struggling with the entire season. And that's why we kind of set up the triangle of Mysaria, Daemon, Rhaenyra, because while Mysaria's political message is slightly different from Viserys, it's more of a kind of populist message. She is Rhaenyra's conscience and the reminder of the lessons that Viserys taught her over the course of the season, whereas Daemon is Daemon, fire and blood, right? The prophecy justifies anything that we need to do. We need to burn out our enemies. You need to kill Daeron. All the things he's telling her, we're empire builders. You're thinking about your work. You're worried about the missing coin in King's Landing. We should be thinking about Dorne and conquering Essos and all those things that one would totally expect Daemon to do. That's completely the right lesson for Daemon to take away from his experiences at Harrenhal last year. It's like, well, now we can do anything we want because it's meant to be. So that's Rhaenyra's pull is can I have enough of Daemon in me to be strong and be seen as legitimate and be taken seriously and feared enough to rule and still be Viserys? And she's trying and trying and trying. She's trying all season long. And then Daemon lies to her. She catches out his deception over Rhaena and Sheepstealer. Mysaria is in her ear about this is why you can't trust this guy. And then Aegon comes back. And not only that, but the brilliant political move she thought she made of just declaring him dead has now bitten her in the ass because his dragon and him have been resurrected. And you know how people love a sign, a religious sign, and he's a Hightower and the Starry Septimals. And all these things. And now she's created King Arthur, essentially. If she had just said he's missing, we don't know where he is, please help me find him. Maybe it doesn't have this. There's not this magical sort of aura around his return. But she kind of created this thing. And then she just snaps. Because the thing that she's been looking for all season is to be seen as that by the public. And then he comes back with his disfigured dragon. And suddenly everybody's worshiping the guy again because people love it. I'm an underdog and people love a male king. So that's the thing that finally sends her over the edge. And she's just like, Miss Aria has to go. And no offense to Miss Aria the person, but Miss Aria the ideology has to go. And I now have to completely throw in with Daemon's philosophy if I have any hope of winning this thing and hang on to the throne. So thanks, Alicent, for that brilliant idea to declare Aegon dead, I guess. 3D chess, maybe, Alicent. 4D chess that Alicent's playing. Oh, man. I did want to ask you about Miss Aria. You sort of answered my question as to sort of why Rhaenyra sent her away. If you're like, if she represents Rhaenyra's conscience to a certain degree, she needed to send her away. So I guess, like, if there's anything more you want to say about that, but also whatever you can say, maybe for book readers who might be thinking about Miss Aria out there. She's forever missing her ride out of Westeros, right? So she's out here in the streets of King's Landing. She might have a grudge. Book readers might be making some connections to. Some things that they know that might be coming, that Miss Aria might slot into another character. Anything you want to say about that, Ryan Condal? I mean, certainly, you know, certainly Miss Aria's business is not over. And I think, I think, I think Rhaenyra realized that she could, she could not hold the center at home with Miss Aria and Daemon playing in the same space. Like one had, one had to eventually go because it was just, it was going to come to a head in some way or another. And they're both cutting at each other behind their backs. They're in Rhaenyra's ear. And also, Rhaenyra doesn't know what they're doing outside of her, her view, right? She doesn't know who they're talking to and, and what kind of alliances they've formed on, on the side. I mean, Daemon seems less, less likely to have done that just knowing Daemon. He works more with steel and fire. But Miss Aria is, you know, secrets and whispers and lies are kind of her trade. So I think Rhaenyra is thinking about all those things. And, and, and tries to send her away in a way that's like, you know, the, the golden parachute, the golden parachute to Essos. But I think Miss Aria, that wasn't what Miss Aria was looking for. She was looking for, you know, access to the throne and, and the, the, to realize the rise that she saw over the course of the last two seasons. She's not quite ready to go yet. And then when she sees the turn in Rhaenyra, she goes, that, that great shot that, you know, that Andrii got. And that Senoya performed is the, I think the, oh, hell no shot. So we'll, we'll see, we'll see how that, we'll see how that, that goes. But, you know, I think Miss Aria's business is not done in the city. Our theory brains are activated. We're cooking. We'll say that. Speaking of our theory brains, something that, you know, when Joe and I do our deep dives, we spend a obviously astonishing amount of time talking about every detail of the show. And then at the very end, we do books. Spoiler sections. We're obviously not going to talk about spoilers here, but now that the finale has aired, we can say like one of the things we were talking about throughout the season was they're going to find a way to keep Ormond alive. Cause this is just like so fun. Right. And so there's obviously like, we knew that Ormond was fated to die at Tumbleton in the finale of the season, but James Norton was just so amazingly entertaining in the role. And Ormond was just such a like delicious villain from the word go. We're curious, even though, again, without getting into any particulars, obviously like there are story reasons for him to be gone at this point and things that will happen after. Did you consider when you saw how like instantly indelible this performance was going to be, did you consider keeping him around longer beyond the battle at Tumbleton? James is so great. He's such, he's such a delight. I just, I, you know, he's just one of those people that has that like aura around him and just. Everybody is, is just happy in his, in his presence and he's so goddamn handsome. It's really infuriating. Yeah. And I can say, you know, I'm only a couple of years older than him, but I was like, I was looking at it. I was like, how, how have we aged so differently when we're basically born in the same, in the same year, I guess, writing versus acting, maybe, maybe had something to do with it, but goddamn good genes there. But, um, no, I mean, you know, on a practical level, like one of the reasons we were able to get a fantastic actor like that. Is because we promised him it was like a one, you know, sort of a one season commitment. And I think he actually loved the, he loved, he loved doing the show and was actually very, very sad and sorry to go. And I think had a great time and, you know, he had his own experience producing a, uh, medieval, uh, action show with, uh, with King and Conqueror, uh, with, uh, friend, friend of the universe, Nikolai Kostrovaldo. So I think he came into it with this sort of, oh my God, like, look at all the toys that you have. This is wonderful. And this is so amazing. And the custom armor. And the custom story. He had this really kind of nice producerial reaction to being on the show. So we loved having him around and he was great. But I think, I think one of the things I've always, I always say, like being a good showrunner is you have to let the show speak to you and you have to be in communication with the show. And it can't always be what you want. You have to sometimes tell, have the show tell you what you want. A great example of that is like Freddie Fox, Gwaine, Gwaine Hightower. Uh, we thought he was fantastic when he auditioned, he came in, we had this plan for him and then he just delighted everybody. And it's like, well. This, this feels, and because he's a Hightower with relations sort of everywhere, bringing Ormond into the story just feels like something that, you know, we can, um, exploit to the show's, to the show's benefit. But then there are other times when I think you have to like, just leave them wanting more in a way where this was the perfect arc for Ormond and to have him go out that way, um, because of his two sort of perhaps biggest flaws, his, his, uh, his, um, smell. And substance, uh, issues and his rage issues kind of coming to a head in that, in that final, um, in that final act of the episode, it just felt like the right way to go. Plus his arc sort of serves to, to, to tee up the, the core greens who have been kind of on the run and on the lam and the work that Ormond did has empowered Egon and Amon in ways that they do not yet realize. Uh, so it felt like that it was a, it was a. Glorious sort of passing of the torch. Let's talk about the brothers, Egon and Amon. This is, um, a really, I think it's okay to say, I don't think this isn't in the book. This doesn't happen in the book that Egon and Amon get to meet in this episode, uh, like the way that they do. Why was it important to you to bring Egon and Amon together here in the Harrenhal sequence, uh, in the finale? Well, we wanted to, we wanted to tee up what, what, what was the common. And this is a good example of, though it is not in the book, it does not. Necessarily mean that it could not have happened simply because Egon sort of disappears from the record. We know he reappears over and we don't, you know, we know that he does not interact right with, with Egon again in, in, in the text, but that doesn't mean that he didn't. It just means that the historians writing the book didn't have a record of it. So there is a reasonable extrapolation that they could have crossed paths again and had plans and maybe that's why, um, you know, the famous event that is yet to come. For book readers happens in, in, in the way that it does. I mean, I think it's a reasonable extrapolation for us. This is a great example of just like the difference between a T. show and a book you you have to you you have to exploit moments like this to bring your core central characters back together at at moments of high drama and we're heading into the final act here and it's so clear now the sides have been so you know well kind of set up you have you have raniera and damon at the core on on the black side you have amand and egg on the core on on the green side with uh allison out there and uh kind of you know free perhaps a free agent so to speak we'll see we'll see what happens when she comes back to king's landing in possession of all the valerian soldiers that have her and and then you have you know you have the other sort of you know the black free agents that are that are out there you know bayla and reina etc etc but but that core the sort of core for raniera damon amand egg on it feels like that was the right place to set us up going you know vaulting us into season four because that's largely who the story is going to be about at this point in the telling star wars the mandalorian and grogu is now streaming on disney plus what are you waiting for hop on the must-see galactic adventure comes home on disney plus this is the way our only chance is to work together i like this kid always wear your seat belt star wars the mandalorian and grogu now streaming on disney plus raid pg-13 um i think you know since you hit there the distinction between a book a text and and making a tv show i want to kind of linger there for a second um and ask you about the public declaration of the prophecy because uh in case there's anybody in the world whether or not they're on the zoom right now who has been like how did this not work i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know make the history books if damon said it at a small council meeting and then of course you know let's by an order of magnitude expand that one raniera shouts it from the the words of the sap really curious to hear how how you've been thinking about this because um you know on the one hand of course westerosi history is is peppered with like slight tweaks and variations of some sort of savior prophecy that kind of feels like of a piece and and and of the same um textual heft and you know to go back uh a few seasons in a few years when house of the dragon started like i remember joe and i were sitting next to each other at the premiere watching it and like gasped when agon's dream the song of ice and fire was introduced in the story and you know from that minute onward it's been such a a source of fascination to us not only for all of the character rich reasons like what do you do if this is a thing hanging over you right we've talked about that probably every single pod we've done since but also just thinking about these questions like okay when did this version the targaryen specific version of this prophecy maybe get lost who passed it along when when raygar's discovering something in the scrolls is it the dagger of prophecy like we've been nerding out about this stuff for so long and so i'm curious like how did it not make the history books this specific version of it if raniera uh made a big stump speech about it in front of uh the masses or like were they all like we've got we're focused on the the new eye makeup and the look i love i love the eye makeup could be that yeah emma came to me one day and they were like yeah i'm gonna do this and i was like okay wow a genuinely incredible choice yeah sure sure um yeah when when emma darcy and then you know amanda knight who did all the makeup for all the harry potter movies and then every you know basically every big thing since so they're like this is our plan you're just like yep that's cool um as was were those materials available many times yes they were cool i i'm i'm good with it there you go um uh so i mean that's a great question i you know i think i think this falls into the category of you know targaryens probably say some crazy shit during the darkest parts of the realm of their reign and we know that raniera was looked down upon at this point by the public and look in the book you know admittedly she kind of locks herself inside and uh is grieving and gets thick of waste and all the things that the book tells me we needed a more yeah yeah we need we needed a more we needed an active character to to be the main character of this show you know that was not that doing that story in its sort of you know fullness would not really have worked um on on you know in this in this tv series so that's where we come back to you have to look at how how histories are written and it feels like if you read fire and blood with the eye towards the you have these three historians that sort of have an agenda or at least two of them because you know mushroom his agenda is just the horniest version of history possible yeah but these two history is a story it's two historians that kind of have an agenda to it not not to like be all team green but to kind of lay the blame for this horrible war that killed so many and that killed off the dragons and that weakened the Targaryen dynasty at the feet of, if not just Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra and Alicent sort of for, you know, for starting it. That was a very interesting place for Sarah and I to work from in the crafting of the show. And that's not to say nothing in the book happened and we throw it all out. It's just, we had to take, we had to have certain looks at, meta looks at the way histories are put together and written. And it just feels to me that that is something that if you're trying to reconcile that, you know, versus, versus the book, this is part of the Maegor with Teet's story and Rhaenyra becoming this despot and really desperately hanging on to power. And if you think of all these small folk who have never heard anything about magic and prophecies, and then the, you know, the crazy lady from the Red Keep comes out in the Joan of Arc suit of armor and then says a bunch of shit about, you know, being the chosen one. It just, and that's also why we had her say the Prince of the Promise in High Valyrian because none of them know what she's saying. So look, it's, we're taking liberties clearly. But it felt, you know, right and correct for the television show. And it feels like, it feels like with a sort of, you know, broad objective eye towards the way history is written generally, it feels like it could possibly have just not made the record simply because they're doing the, do we believe that this happened? Do we believe that or not? But we know that she was sort of an angry despot at this moment in, you know, in the history. Um, I have the next question. I just want to really quickly, and our editor is going to apologize that I'm like plunging into darkness. It's very dramatic, moody lighting. Really nothing I can do at this point. And I, our producers were like, hey, Joanna, if you rely on sunlight, that might not go well. So listen. This is your version of, this is my new eye makeup. Yeah. And it's going to really set the tone. Dark night of the soul over here. Sorry about that. Are you just going to be two, two like daffy duck cartoon eyes in the darkness? Possibly. Okay. Um, speaking of sort of, uh, I don't know, taking liberties or I, I, I wouldn't put that way for this part, but like the backstory for Alice Rivers, you get to write a backstory for Alice Rivers, who's such a mysterious character in the book. What was it like to come up with that backstory? And, and what were some of the, you know, why this version of her origin? I wish I could remember who pitched that. And it's, it's one of those things where it came so out of the collective. And this is one of the things that we, and, and this came, this, this came in the course of breaking season two. Uh, so this is something we've been sitting on for a while because there was a lot of it was like, well, how do we, you know, Alice is great fun, but how do we just keep her from just being the, the creepy witch lady that seems to know the right things at the right time? She has to have her own kind of internal story and backstory and the reasons she's actually here. And you can definitely get less of that with Damon. Cause I think she was, she was playing Damon, a different, a different way. She, I think Alice sort of sees, can read people and know what they need. And definitely Damon needed somebody more at arm's length and Amon needed somebody very close that could kind of get in his head, get in his soul and really appeal to him. So we really did a lot of work on that, uh, you know, on her and we were kind of around and around about it. We had a lot of great ideas, but it's like, how do we knit all this together into a cohesive thing where you can look even back at the Damon story and go, Oh, I get what, what this all, what this all, what this all was. Um, but it was really exciting when, uh, when that, you know, when that came forward, uh, in, in the room, because it's sort of was the grand unifying theory to sort of bring all this together. And we know, you know, we now know Alice's motivation in the where's and why's and, um, yeah, I mean, it just, it was, it was exciting in a way to tie back to the history of the castle and the, uh, the, the great lore around that. I mean, that's probably other than the ancient Targaryens, it's probably the most sort of wondered about character or characters or house, right. House Harren. Yeah. Uh, uh, uh, or no, it's house four, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which just, you know, so Alice, we were doing sounds like something Damon would say. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, or maybe your name wasn't out Alice at the, you know, at the time, maybe she was just going by Alice or rebrand, you know, whatever. I mean, I imagine that I imagine lady Harren's name was not Alice because people would just go, oh, that's weird that they have the same name. um but yeah it was it was really it was really exciting it was it was it was fun to play with it it kind of knit everything together and also kind of leaves open the idea that you know maybe this is also just the story that alice told which is also a distinct a distinct possibility yeah um intriguing but we we we really like it and uh and um you know certainly it helped gail out a lot in portraying the character and she got many many stern warnings from me as you do press remember this this comes out in the final episode so please don't yeah speak about it as you're motivating uh uh uh resin to try from what the things you're doing in like the second episode so um i would say that other than vampires and musicals joanna's most fervent passionate life is which stuff go correct so we'll we just hit that and we'll move into my number one passion which is dragons but it's all uh you know of a piece in terms of magic and the fantasy that's right so it's a good crossover for you guys i mean just an absolute thrill for us the opening of the creative eggs this season we uh we had a blast um you know i have like cried on this podcast before talking about the way that this show has captured something really elemental about what fantasy lovers like lovers of genre stories who find something about that connection and that bond uh can appreciate when they're watching something like i don't know maylies and and rainies sharing a look in their final moments together right so i'm curious this was such a fascinating season for um exploring things that could in some ways feel like they are contradictions or at odds with each other but ultimately are are all part of the this is where my baltimore accent uh comes out and joe makes fun of me part of the story so i'm curious what you guys think about this season and what do you think part of the brew going down to the ocean on part of the brew um the dragon bond the centrality of that we've got the warnings about the hubris of control the illusion of control right the viserys harbingers and other characters have voiced you know very recently at the penultimate of the season we had helena voicing a lot are you not altered right we're hearing this throughout the series and it's something that's on our minds we're watching gullet etc uh the shipbreaker bay of the dragon bond and we have a little bit of a sequel to that as well but we're going to have a little bit of a sequel as well but we're going to have a little bit of a sequel as well but we're one of our favorite like subtle examples of that this season was karaxi's telling damon to fuck off as he's going to the mountain of the moon as damon is about to go lecture reina on the dragon bond right just delicious so we have that and then we have agon and sunfire on and on the list goes uh vagar's eye flashing and amon's dream the examination and genuine sincere interest of the dragon bond love and appreciation for uh centering this bond we talking we've talked a lot on the pod about uh you know the fire and blood passage that we love about like the the dragons can channel their writers love and hate and obviously so much in the canon about the nature of that bond is like mysterious and still shrouded in questions so you know i think one of the things that i love so much about the the show is the way that the aspects of the dragon riding lore and mythology when they are brought to the fore and fleshed out for us it's it's consistently done through character arc and theme and i'm wondering just like as an adapter and as the person you know making the show which part of that is most interesting to you like is it that you feel the that it is an important paramount thing in a fantasy story in the dance of the dragons or dragon war and the cost of dragon war men are like dust beneath their feet this has to be centered it has to be questioned the doom of old valeria or is there something about the way that the dragons center the questions about power and power and power and power and power and power strength the choices we make the hubris that can lead us astray that you find yourself drawn to when it comes to unlocking the thematic questions that are most central for the human characters yeah i mean i'm interested in all of it i mean i the the big thing we're making the show that has you know 17 dragons in it and like look whether we see every little one of them but there were 17 dragons at this time in history there better be distinguishing factors amongst them that aren't just like what color are they right um and and and if you're going to make them if you're going to spend all the money and all the time and effort doing this they better damn well be interesting and the way that you make them interesting is by interlinking them with the human characters in the show and also weaving them into the thematics of the show and one of the big thematics of this of this show is particularly this season is this idea of mutually assured destruction and the fact that you're you have these nuclear weapons on both sides of the conflict that happen to be living sentient beasts with minds of their own that and some of them have been put in a position where they're put into hands of the untrained and people that do not have years of uh of loyalty and legacy behind them like the alfs and the hues of the world to keep keep them in line because alf isn't worried about dishonoring his house because he has no house right um and uh so all of those things kind of feed into thematics and then and then character interaction and we felt like the way to because look you you know you sit there for i mean really i don't see i don't see proper dragons until like april before the show comes out i'm looking at guys and blue unitards yeah exactly bless him killing it bless him totally committed all the time committed forever but that's what you're looking at is you're cutting the show and trying to make this emotional story about the riders and their dragons so we the the i think the fear going into it was we better care about the you know renee reneera's bond with cyrax if we're ever going to care about cyrax and um so it kind of started there and then i thought that stuff was really effective and then you know lo and behold the dragons uh they look they look great yeah they're they're there's tons of character in their animation and people actually really care about them yeah linked to and also independent of their riders so it was sort of working from both ends so i was really interested in all that and then i'm a big theme guy so i'm just really interested in all all those thematics and one of the big things that i've been doing is i've been working on a lot of the things that you know i was really hammering way way back in the crafting of season one is we have to feel like these dragons aren't aren't totally in control because that's that's how you keep the stakes up for the series that this idea that you have you have a nuke but like it has a brain of its own and has this human sentience to it and it can just fly out of the silo when it wants and turn on you turn on the rider or turn on another dragon yeah that stuff was really interesting because it does create a lot of tension and it's a lot of tension and it's kind of anarchic chaos that feels reminiscent of the very doom we don't really know what the cause of it was but the thing that brought down the valyrian empire in the first place feels very similar to the the warnings that came from that feels very similar to the kind of themes and things that are going on in this particular period in the history um so that's stuff that we spend a long time you know working on because you want to ground the dragons and feel like as dave hancock said you know they're big stinky warplanes um with with a with a need for abundant fuel sheep goats you know pigs all the all the things that you know taking the feet away from the people so all that stuff is part of interesting on like a you know building your little civilization board and the economics of now we're at war so the dragons are hungry because they're flying all the time so they need all the sheep and then the people don't have food and they get hungry and they don't have wool and all that stuff gets really interesting so there's like practical aspects of that and then there's a kind of meta sort of magic bond thing that makes you care about it and then you have it but all that stuff we've been working very hard at that because it feels like that was something that was particularly unique to house of the dragon versus game of thrones where dragons were brand new and every time they flew overhead everybody had to look up because nobody had ever seen a dragon before whereas king's landing they fly overhead all the time and right and it's just there's a dragon infrastructure there's dragon keepers and dragon pits and dragon months and saddlery and and training and and all that and yes medical attention too so as we've as we've learned they need it yeah yeah yeah um as i continue to plunge into darkness um i want to ask you it's really great guys so happy it's it's very on theme with uh episode uh season three episode eight it's true it's true it's true this is my own doom that's happening around me um let's talk about something very dark that happened helena where helena goes out the window uh we book readers knew it was coming but it was still i mean all the work you fia did and and the writers did all season to sort of build up to this i thought was really incredible and a dramatic visual as well a couple details i want to ask about uh the butterflies and sort of your your idea of that metaphor of the butterfly what allison sees what the the hints we got earlier in the season and then uh the tapestry of renera which i think i'm interpreting as like her covered in cuts on the throne which is very renera in the book is that what we're meant to take from what renera sees on helena's tapestry left by the window um well to uh i'll answer the tapestry one okay first i mean i i think you know i think you should take another close look at the image thank you um when you when you can freeze frame it um i have a question for you guys actually but just to just to to take a slight detour for a moment when you get these early screeners how are how are you watching them are you watching on like a big tv with loud speakers is that possible you're not watching on the ipad okay no yeah there's a there's an apple tv app for the screeners app have it full screen yeah okay if i'm just really stresses me out because i watch you know you watch this thing on like this big mixtape it's like a million dollar room you're sitting in yeah and then i'm i'm thinking of these people that are like covering the show watching it on an ipad or on their laptop or something like that especially an episode like that let's just pretend let's pretend i have already gone back and freestramed and looked at it why don't you just pretend that i got it right and tell me what i was looking at well i think there's a lot to pull out of the i think there's a lot of interpretation to pull out of the image so i don't want to i don't want to speak to it i don't think it's helpful to i think it's more interesting to be left a little out to interpretation what i will say is that you know raniera is not seeing a positive reflection of herself in the tapestry and i think so much of that final moment that you see with her is her choosing what is she what is she going to do if she actually believes that helena is the dreamer that she is and she's seen the rest of the tapestry helena has been stitching her her own demise for quite some time now yeah if she chooses to believe that helena is this thing that the saris insisted existed and helena told raniera that amand was at harrenhal and amand was at harrenhal um then she has to maybe also believe that what she's looking at is her now or a future depiction of her right so i think i think that's the that's the thing that she's she's struggling with in that final moment she has to decide what what am i going to do with it and then of course you see her drop it and then close close the window and we go to black so i think you can i i i want to leave some of this stuff up to interpretation because i think that's the that's the fun but i would just take a you know the the tapestry that the embroidery work and on that and the art that was done the art department would would like draw the image and then send it off to this incredible embroiderer that made uh that made the tapestry it was just it was just an amazing delight to uh to to watch um uh so it was it was something that we were really excited about for helena across the season because it was something that was super visual that we could play with and play back to and see her working and not see what exactly what she's working on you get these little snips of it and then to end the season with this really this big kind of reveal of what she had been seeing or thinking about yeah before her end and the and the butterflies the butterflies um so you know so many characters in the over the course of the season are going through this kind of metamorphosis this transformation and we knew from helena going back to season one when she was played by you know a different actor uh helena has an obsession with the uh the insect kingdom and uh the the idea this season of helena kind of going through her own metamorphosis of being very much a for her life a kind of caterpillar in a cage and then put into this kind of pupil state putting into being put into reneara's prison and being obsessed with their out of season all the little little snips that you get across the season and then we and then uh sarah sarah actually had this um this great image of of allison having this premonition at the end while she's on the road back to king's landing having seen helena deal with these caterpillars over the course of the whole season seeing this cloud of butterflies come up and just having this she doesn't know anything but she just it's that that motherly instinct that something horrible has happened um and and we just really liked that image and we liked the sort of visual metaphor and how tied back into helena's character um and uh and her the sort of sad tragedy of it is helena setting herself free you know finally freeing herself and being given wings is is she had to you know take her take her own life and the life of an unborn child in the in the process right um from from one just gentle lovely soul to another darren yeah i you know we we longed we waited we yearned and we were rewarded because this is just a wonderful rendering of the character a wonderful performance and we are i don't know we've had we've had evolutions of who are we shocked to be most invested and i think for a long time laris and agon is like our favorite duo to spend time with was a shock to both of us um but i think we would love to see more of them in the future we would both say that you know laris is your favorite of mine you're a laris lady and you always have been even though he cowardly tucked tail and ran and claimed that he would make sure that all of agon's great deeds or intelligently chose sure i'll try to defend him yeah what what was he gonna do he wasn't gonna do he wasn't gonna he wasn't gonna fight it would have been it would have been very out of character for him to stand stand around and die die for that i guess i'm team tyler lannister which is again that shocked me but i do think that gawain and darren are just top of the list for us in terms of pairings that we are so just riveted watching and really emotionally invested in at this point on the darren front you know he's introduced into the story midway through the series other than obviously some mentions in season two but like it's really about you know we're setting up in these last few episodes these big things with darren he's a character who's really taking seriously what does it mean to be a good king and not performatively like he is earnestly assessing that right what went into deciding to make something like darren the daring as his moniker uh an ormond pr play rather than something that darren earned out into the in the field you know to keep tessarian chained in the sept rather than entering battle at this point in the story uh you know and for to position darren as really at this point one of the few characters in the show who we would like credibly believe would say i have no fear of insignificance like that's not that's not how i make my decisions that's not how i see what's right and wrong yeah i mean we i mean that's great to hear i mean that was uh it's it's a thrill i mean that i think the tumbleton story is one of our proud accomplishments this season just because it was brand new and to get everybody you know ramped up and that invested and and and just a couple episodes was very exciting to see and it's a credit to all the performances of those tremendous actors um that uh you know that played played part of that triangle and we and when we hired uh ben who's uh benjamin evan ainsworth who plays uh plays darren um and alternatively uh at times also playing an elf in hyrule that's right yeah yeah we uh we we needed him for like a little pickup so they had poor kid had to like fly halfway around the world in in march to say like one line that we just didn't catch we didn't have the right angle of the right angle of the saying one line so we had to have him come back all the way through from new zealand get the red wig back on yeah exactly yeah that's right that's right take off the ears and put on the wig and um but we told him when we cast him that basically ormond is the domineering father figure in your life and whether you literal father or stepfather however you want to look at it kind of that that he plays the father role and then guayne is the kind older the kindly older brother who's trying to protect you from the you know the at times abusive father and that was sort of the basic way that we we gave him but this kid who came in and just a very young actor and just has this incredible uh worldliness and emotional intelligence to him that could could extrapolate from all that and come up with these little these little things and the way he picks at his nails and that was not something that we gave him he watched all the shows and picked that up from allison and said i really want to i want to do the thing that my mother was doing when she was my age and because that's the way that people will kind of see our connection and so much of that that he you know that he he brought to the role and giving him the hair you know the the hair that makes him look literally like you know like like his mother and just like kate rose james casting and just finding these faces that that look alike in in a way that's credit they're credibly related it's just it's just incredible um so we're excited about all that and then but then also like how do we turn this thing on its head and make you know we know that darren was the most in the book the most sympathetic probably of the of the siblings yeah um in the story you know elena probably as well but the most sympathetic of the boy is certainly the sons allison's son yeah but do we need to just make this kind of arthurian hero out of him to do that or is there another way about it that can explore character for both darren and then also for for ormond to realize how he has um worked his way close to the throne because ormond is one of these great political operators and in in the great thronesian tradition of my plan is not to be on the throne my plan is to be standing at the foot of it as your hand because that that is actually where the true power lies um and for ormond to do that he has to domineer darren control him a little bit lift him up make him feel great about himself knight him when it's important and also keep his dragon chained up because the dragon is the thing that's a real threat to you know a threat to ormond and certainly i think ormond would have deployed to sorry and in battle if he had needed to and gotten there in the fight but i think the feeling was with caraxis on the field and then vermithar showing up and with with silverwing hopefully in play to sorry and would really only be under threat at that point it would kind of be a it would it would seem maybe like a you know a a poor side ass move um for him uh in in that in that case so it's not i don't think the plan was never to use and deploy to sorry and the plan was just to you know save that save that piece until he needed it and not and to keep darren in in his place and also alive because that's all ormond's power is derived from darren being alive and having a claim to the throne right uh well the rats have eaten all the towel and the candles uh where i am um so i think i think i'm done except i guess here's my it's not a question this is my last thing that i'll say it's not a question on behalf of house beesbury my faves i need to say that the line honey holt a trifle really hurt me personally on behalf of house beesbury and i just wanted to protest log my complaint from the darkness here uh yeah it's big good buzzing yeah yeah stinging at you if i could so yeah sarah sarah had this great this great joke and and we of just you the beesbury army coming and they're coming over the hill and you just you just hear i mean you just see all the little shapes be wonderful beware our sting yeah yeah but yes but i'm i'm very i'm very glad that um beesbury got its spotlight in the night of the seven kingdoms it felt like that guy was very proud uh that night was very proud to be the king of the seven kingdoms and i'm very proud to be the king of the seven kingdoms and i'm very proud to be the king of the seven kingdoms and i'm very proud to be the king a member of house beesbury and took took his his his bee theme very seriously oh my god when he came to the tournament and it's the the the died mustache iconic what an insight into the coffin procedures later um ryan thank you thank you for being so generous with your time thank you for joining us we hope you come back come back in season four talk to us again i'd love to i'd love to talk to us again i'd love to talk to us again i'd love to talk to us again i'd love to this is very it's very caravaggio it's becoming very house of the dragon here house of the dragon season one maybe there you go um but you know i would i would just say to you guys i just you know thank you for you know all the um you know the very passionate uh coverage that you make for our show and i think for other shows in the universe i think the internet has become such a fraught place of kind of rage bait and clickbait these days that to have a place where you can go where you can have thoughtful discussion of something and look there you know with warts and all kind of you know honest sort of debate over over the genre work that all of us work so hard to make is a really you know it's just a really good resource to have because it just feels like there's so many other places where it's just trying to make people either click or click angrily or some combination of both so i think this is uh i think i think you know house of r is just a a great resource and we're we're all you know lucky for it better for it as as nerds the united thank you ryan seriously thank you ryan honorary the r and ryan house of our honorary member thank you so much for joining us thank you so much okay how much did you enjoy um the light source constantly draining out of my side of the video on that mallory as i told you i thought it was very compelling dramatic moody i i quite liked it i quite enjoyed it what a wonderful chat ryan's the best just a complete joy to get to hear all of his insights on the season all these character arcs and uh all of the twists and turns and surprises in the finale i feel like we got a a solid verbal that we'll chat again in season four so that's exciting already something to look forward to i still don't know exactly what i'm supposed to be seeing on that tapestry i have looked at the freeze frame since you mentioned it hobbs and dragons if you if you have any uh deeper insights into what is on the tapestry and speaking of deeper we will see you tomorrow evening ish for the deep dive depending what time zone you're in that's right on the season three finale of house of the dragon sad it is sad i'll miss it season four a couple years away we have a lot of really cool plans cooking for this fall though i'm really excited we'll see you then bye from the studio that brought you one of i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus