Matt Smith, Graham McTavish, other stars film House of the Dragon in Derbyshire

Lately, Amazon has been a lot of press for its upcoming high fantasy series The Wheel of Time, but HBO has something big cooking too: House of the Dragon, a prequel series to Game of Thrones.

Filming on the show, which is set some 180 years before the original series, has been going on for a while, but we haven’t seen much lately, which implies that there’s been a lot of shooting on sets. But over the weekend BBC brought us news of the cast and crew at work in Castleton, Derbyshire in England, where they filmed at Cave Dale, Mam Tor and Eldon Hill Quarry.

Peter Morris, landlord of the Bulls Head Hotel in Castleton, said crew members what they were there for, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. “[I]t was obvious what it was because of the way they are dressed, people have put two and two together.”

"There is security everywhere and a bit of excitement in the village. Someone said they saw horses go through the village and guys in Game of Thrones outfits…I have not seen any actors. I know Matt Smith was up in the village on Thursday."

Don’t worry, Reddit has you covered there:

"A new picture of Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen (photo of goodgardening4 on IG) from HouseOfTheDragon"

What is House of the Dragon about?

Matt Smith is playing Daemon Targaryen, the younger brother of King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) and uncle to the the king’s daughter Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy and Miley Alcock), with whom he eventually enters into a relationship. (You know how they always talked on Game of Thrones about how incestuous the Targaryens were? They weren’t kidding.) The story of House of the Dragon involves a civil war that breaks out after King Viserys dies and Rhaenyra fights her half-brother Aegon II Targaryen for the Iron Throne.

You may have noticed up there that I said that Rhaenyra was played by two actors: Emma D’Arcy and Miley Alcock. We don’t know quite how the show will break this up yet, but D’Arcy is playing an adult Rhaenyra and Alcock is playing her at a younger age. The show is doing the same thing with the character of Alicent Hightower, King Viserys’ second wife and the mother of his son Aegon. As a teenager, she’ll be played by Emily Carey. As a adult, she’s played by Olivia Cooke.

So far as we can tell, Rhaenyra and Alicent are the only characters the show is doing this with, perhaps because the evolution of their relationship — they go from being friends early on to bitter rivals for the throne — is so important to the story. The Daily Mail has pictures of both of them on set (Alcock is acting opposite a giant blue apparatus we imagine stands in for a dragon), as well as images of Outlander star Graham McTavish dressed in full knightly regalia; we suspect he’s playing Ser Harrold Westerling, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard under King Viserys.

On top of all of this, the Spanish publication Hoy reports that House of the Dragon will film in the city of Cáceres‎ in October. We don’t know what they’ll shoot there, but on Game of Thrones Cáceres‎ stood in for both King’s Landing and Oldtown.

So it looks like House of the Dragon’s days on indoor sets are over! The show will premiere on HBO and HBO Max sometimes next year, probably in the spring.

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h/t Los Siete Reinos