House of the Dragon finale is one of the director’s “proudest achievements”

After nine weeks of fiery action and family drama, the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon is about to come to a close. This Sunday’s finale, “The Black Queen,” will mark a huge turning point for the show. Last week Alicent Hightower and her faction of green loyalists usurped the Iron Throne; in the finale, we’ll see how Rhaenyra Targaryen responds to having her birthright stolen. There will be dragons.

“The Black Queen” is being helmed by director Greg Yaitanes, a longtime TV veteran who has worked on a ton of shows over the years. Beyond directing Episode 2 of Dragon, “The Rogue Prince,” his directing credits include acclaimed series like Lost and House, the latter of which he won an Emmy for in 2008. Yet despite his prestigious career, Yaitanes is pointing to the House of the Dragon season finale as one of his proudest achievements. “If I have five things that I, in 30 years [of directing] am most proud of, this is absolutely on that list,” he told Vanity Fair.

House of the Dragon director “really connected” with big season finale scene

Yaitanes is keeping quiet about what viewers can expect in the show’s first season finale, but he did drop a few titillating hints. Episode 9 focused heavily on the greens, and next week the tables will turn as we spend more time with the blacks. “You have to imagine, who haven’t you answered for in episode nine?” he said. “And what would they be experiencing with the news that is going to inevitably reach them?”

There is one very important sequence from Fire & Blood that book readers are expecting to see in the upcoming episode. We won’t go into details, but it’s not much of a stretch to say it’s the first big moment in the Dance of the Dragons civil war. Yaitanes was among the first to learn that it would feature in the season finale, since he read the scripts for the entire season of the show in a single weekend. Yet despite being one of the most ambitious scenes on the series, Yaitanes was far more excited than nervous about filming it. “I really connected with it,” he said, though he wouldn’t specify his favorite bits.

House of the Dragon director on Game of Thrones season 8

Though he also directed “The Rogue Prince,” Yaitanes was first slated to direct Episode 7, “Driftmark,” instead. Scheduling conflicts meant that he had to switch to a different episode, and this was after he was originally tapped to helm Episode 3, “Second of His Name,” on account of his experience directing action-heavy sequences on shows like Quarry and Banshee.

And even before that, Yaitanes and Westeros had been circling one another. The director says he was approached to direct episodes on Game of Thrones , but scheduling prevented it from happening. Still, he was already very familiar with the original series. To prep for House of the Dragon he rewatched it all, for the third time. Somewhat surprisingly, the part of his rewatch that stood out to him the most was his feelings about the show’s much-maligned eighth season.

“I know that it took it on the chin a little bit, but I really appreciated that last season,” he said. “When you really watch it straight through, everything is earned, and it’s right there, and it’s been telling you everything all along. And the fact that I could sit in those episodes, which were kind of mini-movies at that point, I ended up really having love for it…not just for the whole experience of the journey, but really that last season.”

For Yaitanes’ money, the success of Thrones is a huge part of why House of the Dragon has been successful, not just with fans but also on set:

"It literally felt like I was building on the shoulders of giants. In a way, this was Game of Thrones season nine. We had the infrastructure, we had the knowledge [from Benioff and Weiss’s work]. Even though the world needed to be created [again], I cannot undersell how much it helps you when you’re not building from scratch—you know what the Red Keep looks like. You can spend that last bit of energy making it a little unfamiliar because it’s changed over 200 years."

Miguel Sapochnik brought Greg Yaitanes onto House of the Dragon

Despite his respect for the work of David Benioff and Dan Weiss, it was another Thrones director who officially got Yaitanes on board to do House of the Dragon: Miguel Sapochnik, who helmed some of Thrones’ best episodes and served as co-showrunner on the first season of the prequel. In a fun twist, Yaitanes was once the person who got Sapochnik his start in television, when he brought him over from the movie biz to work on House.

Despite the Game of Thrones prequel’s success, Sapochnik will not be returning for season 2. Yaitanes gets it. “He is a true artist…I can see his fingerprints all over the work of this season. And I completely understand when you feel you have nothing else to prove, you want to move on to the next creative endeavor.”

That said, Yaitanes is pretty excited to finally be working in Westeros himself, and is hoping it’s the beginning of a longterm journey. “I’ve been directing for 30 years,” he said. “When you’re coming into those years, you want to choose whatever those last 10 projects of your career are going to be and where you’re going to want to put your time, and more importantly, where you want to trade time with your family. And this is an endeavor. The payback for being gone [from them] for as long as I was is my kids are able to drive up and down Sunset [Boulevard] and see House of the Dragon [billboards] everywhere. Getting those cool-dad points are pretty valuable!”

It’s hard to think of a way to get more cool dad points than working on House of the Dragon, especially on its upcoming, dragon-heavy finale.

“The Black Queen” premieres this Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.

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