Logo text
Just before the cast and creators of HBO’s House of the Dragon sat down for a highly-anticipated Friday night panel at SXSW London, a teaser reel played, crowing about the many ways the third season, premiering on June 21, will be bigger and badder than anything that’s come before it.
And while numbers like “15,000 stunt crowds” and “3,500 props” and “25 tons of propane” were plenty impressive, the one that stood out, flashing across an image of a giant warship exploding in a ball of fire, was “23 stunt performers ignited in one take — a new world record!”
Soon, series showrunner and co-creator Ryan Condal declared, “These sequences, I will confidently say, are unlike anything that’s ever been done on television before.”
Book readers know immediately that he’s referring to The Battle of the Gullet, an epic and gruesomely bloody clash that takes place across land and sea and is the defining centerpiece of Targaryen civil war in House of the Dragon that predates the events of The Game of Thrones by about 200 years. The entire series has been leading up to this moment, which even fictional historians would deem to be the bloodiest naval battle in Westerosi history, and — hooray, dear viewers! — we’re getting it straight away in episode one of the new season.
