What To Know
- House of the Dragon Season 3 will premiere on June 21 and feature the epic Battle of the Gullet.
- The production set a world record by igniting 23 stunt performers in one take.
- Showrunner Ryan Condal promises unprecedented action sequences and reveals that Season 3 will be the series’ most action-packed yet.
House of the Dragon’s upcoming Season 3 is set to be explosive, narratively and physically. In fact, a pyrotechnic stunt on the set of the Game of Thrones prequel series set a world record.
The news comes from the HBO show’s SXSW London panel on Friday night — where, according to The Hollywood Reporter, a teaser reel touted that Season 3 involved 15,000 stunt crowds, 3,500 props, 25 tons of propane, and the world-record feat of “23 stunt performers ignited in one take.”
Fans of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series are eagerly awaiting House of the Dragon’s depiction of the Battle of the Gullet, the fulcrum of the Targaryen family’s civil war and the deadliest naval battle in the history of Westeros.
And that epic showdown will come in the Season 3 premiere, scheduled for Sunday, June 21.
“These sequences, I will confidently say, are unlike anything that’s ever been done on television before,” Ryan Condal, House of the Dragon’s showrunner and co-creator, boasted at the June 5 panel.
Filming the battle involved a wet tank, a dry tank, an underwater tank, four boat sets, 3 million liters of water, and weeks of stunt choreography for the actors.
“The amount of construction that [the crew] did for just the one episode is kind of crazy and frankly irresponsible,” Condal joked. “But it was necessary to tell the story, and this is such a seminal moment for the show. … I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and I always said it’s like if you were making Lord of the Rings, and were like, well, maybe we could just say, ‘Man, Helm’s Deep! That was a crazy battle! You shoulda been there! You shoulda seen it!’ No. You have to show the Battle of Helm’s Deep.”
Condal also previewed the Battle of the Gullet in a TV Insider interview, saying the “design and function of the wet tank” was the production team’s biggest achievement. “Two different interactive ship sets built in the same tank, operating on separate, independent gimbals,” he said. “Production built these beautiful, photo-real medieval galleys and then beat the absolute hell out of them. No one has practically produced anything like this before. You won’t believe it until you watch the wonderful behind-the-scenes documentary The House that Dragons Built.”
He also said the explosive action will continue well past Season 3’s premiere. “This is by far our most action-packed season,” he teased. “The Gullet is huge… but it is only the beginning.”
House of the Dragon, Season 3 Premiere, Sunday, June 21, 9/8c, HBO & HBO Max