All 11 House of the Dragon characters being replaced by older actors
By Daniel Roman
Aegon II Targaryen
Next up, we’re back to the Targaryens, specifically the children of Alicent Hightower and King Viserys. We’ve already met two of them as babies in House of the Dragon, but in the years to come, they’ll grow up. What kind of people will they be? Since this is Westeros, probably complicated ones.
Above we have Aegon II as a baby, played by twin child actors Jake and Rory Heard in the third episode of the season. He remains toddler-aged up until the 10-year time jump that happens after Episode 5, at which point he’ll be played by Ty Tennant.
Ty Tennant — who is the adoptive son of Doctor Who veteran David Tennant — will be playing Aegon II for an undisclosed amount of episodes. But he isn’t the final actor to inhabit the character. That distinction goes to Tom Glynn-Carney, who will play Aegon as an adult:
This isn’t the first time that Tennant and Glynn-Carney have portrayed the same character at different ages. Both actors featured in the Tolkien biopic as younger and older versions of the author’s friend Christopher Wiseman.
The fact that there are so many actors for Aegon II also tells us something very important about the back half of House of the Dragon season 1: there will be another substantial time jump. It may not be 10 years, but at some point, the show is going to have to skip far enough ahead that Aegon and his siblings can become adults. My money is on Episode 8 or 9.
Helaena Targaryen
Next up we have Aegon’s sister Helaena Targaryen. We first met Helaena properly in Episode 4 of House of the Dragon, where she’s played by an uncredited child actor.
After the 10 year time jump, we’ll meet Helaena as a teenager. She’ll be played by Evie Allen.
And lastly, Phia Saban will play Helaena as an adult. Saban played Lady Ælfwynn in the final season of The Last Kingdom, so we know she can pull off this kind of medieval period drama pretty well.
Saban will play Helaena for the remainder of House of the Dragon. Now that we know the show is getting a second season, we look forward to Saban playing out some particularly compelling scenes that lie in her character’s future.