HBO followed George R.R. Martin wishes when it came to dragon designs

The first season of House of the Dragon is over, but we haven’t seen everything from it; that’s reserved for House of the Dragon: The Complete First Season, which is available on 4K Ultra HDTM, Blu-RayTM and DVD as of today, and which has been available for digital download for a while already.

ET has a preview of one of the special features from the boxset, where the cast and crew talk about the dragons on the show, starting with Fire & Blood author George R.R. Martin. “You see dragons on some of these shows and they’ve got, like, little bitty wings and they’re big fat things,” he said. “They’d never get off the ground. The aerial dynamics just don’t work. They have to have very large wings, and a relatively slender, kind of serpentine body, a long tail, a long neck.”

To Martin, dragons should look “more like pterodactyl or dinosaurs.” And House of the Dragon showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik waned to follow through on his ideas. “George really wanted the dragons to be recognizable from afar as unique and individual characters,” Sapochnik said. And indeed, it’s easy to tell, for instance, Rhaenyra’s dragon Syrax apart from Daemon’s dragon Caraxes at a glance.

We’ll see more dragons in House of the Dragon season 2

According to Milly Alcock, who played young Rhaenyra Targaryen, “they started basing the personalities of the dragons off of animals and that Syrax was based on an eagle, which I thought was really interesting.” As for Caraxes, actor Matt Smith says that “the dragon itself is sort of a cantankerous loner — a bit like Damon [Targaryen] in many respects. He’s obtuse, he’s difficult, but if you’re in, you’re in, and if you’re out, you’re out.”

We saw several dragons in House of the Dragon season 1 and we’ll see more by the time the series is over. “They’re sort of inextricably linked to this story, particularly where it goes,” teased showrunner Ryan Condal.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until 2024 to see more of them in action. That’s when House of the Dragon season 2 is expected to premiere.

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