House of the Dragon returned to HBO with one of Westeros’ most consequential battles ever, but not every shocking moment in “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood” involved war-related violence. As the smoke settles and the dust clears from the season three premiere, two of the show’s stars explain what it was like filming the scenes that made viewers gasp the most.
Probably the episode’s most crucial moment—the one that will no doubt reverberate throughout the season—is one that George R.R. Martin book readers were already anticipating: the death of Jacaerys Velaryon, aka Jace, aka Rhaenyra’s oldest son and the heir to her throne. Before he meets his end, Jace makes the decision to lock Rhaenyra in her room, preventing her from taking part in the battle.
Viewers were screaming at the betrayal, but Jace is convinced it’s the right move.
“I think it all came from a really good place,” Harry Collett, who plays Jace, explained at a recent House of the Dragon press day attended by io9 and other outlets. “Everything’s for the protection of his family. So I think it was a good decision. I know he lost his life, but his mother could have lost hers.”
Jace’s dramatic death comes after his dragon tangles in midair with an out-of-control wild dragon (ridden by his cousin, Rhaena, who’s in way over her head). Once he’s in the water, Jace is then nailed by arrows launched from a nearby Triarchy ship. Again, if you read Fire & Blood, you knew Jace wasn’t making it out of the Gullet alive. Still, it was a poignant farewell.
“I was told what would happen in season one,” Collett explained. “So I’ve been preparing for this, and I’ll always be grateful for being in this show in the first place … I filmed all of the battle stuff before, and then I left House of the Dragon, went and shot a movie, came back, and then basically played all the dead bits, and my last ever day on set was me dead. But what a great way to go. It’s a really impactful episode … it’s been done amazingly, so I’m very, very happy.”
Elsewhere in the episode, tensions ran high in the Red Keep as Alicent (Olivia Cooke) frantically tried to get her troublesome son, Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), to fly his dragon out of King’s Landing ahead of Rhaenyra’s return. She strokes his ego and leans into his deepest fears, using every tactic in her well-honed manipulation toolkit. Finally, he declares he’ll leave—but he also plants a lingering kiss on Alicent’s lips.
It crosses the line from the usual sort of affection a son might show for his mother, and House of the Dragon makes sure we can see it from Alicent’s point of view. She keeps her reaction hidden from Aemond, but her eyes reflect just as much repulsion as you’d expect.
“Aemond is [the child] that she has least control over and least sway over, so it’s already quite tricky to get him to listen to her and to hear her and take heed,” Cooke explained at the House of the Dragon press day. “But the relationship changes in that instant when he kisses her, and I think she is trying to calculate what this means [and trying] to not show any rejection on her face because that could spell her death. She’s trying to tread very, very carefully. And then ultimately, I think she’s been left with, well, ‘I can only try and use this to force him to leave the castle.’ But yeah, it comes out of left field for Alicent, for sure.”
A new House of the Dragon episode arrives Sunday on HBO.
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