The first season of House of the Dragon came out on HBO in 2021, and it went over very well. It had all the drama and splendor of Game of Thrones wrapped in a shiny new package. Also there were a lot more dragons, which always helps.
Clare Kilner directed three episodes of the first season: “King of the Narrow Sea,” “We Light the Way,” and “The Green Council.” That last episode, the penultimate of season 1, ended with an explosive scene where Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) interrupted the coronation of her nephew Aegon Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) by bursting through the floor of the Dragonpit atop her dragon Meleys.
A while back, Collider asked Kilner if there was any scene that she was particularly proud of, or that was especially challenging to pull off. She pointed to the Dragonpit scene. “It was huge because in the actual script, it’s about five lines at the end of the episode, ‘And the dragon emerges,’ but what it entailed is it was a very big, complicated sequence because we were shooting in a studio that was not as large as what the dragon pit would be, which the dragon pit is actually would actually be the size of a football pitch.”
"So, for starters, everything we had to shoot, we had to do a lot of CGI. So apart from the dragon being CGI and people falling into pits that didn’t exist and all of that, we had to – For example, when Rhaenys (Eve Best) enters, and she watches the coronation, she had to just be staring at a blue screen because then we shoot the coronation, and we have to make it smaller to fit in the correct perspective from her point of view, for example. And that scene, I did a lot of research on footage of people who had been in large spaces and being crushed, like some awful footage, actually. But I wanted to try, you know, I just wanted to base it on some sort of reality since we’re working in this very sort of fantasy space.Then the other thing we had to do when we were shooting the coronation and shooting Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and the dragon emerging, we had these huge wind machines and someone with a blue ball holding a stick, and then there’s me on the microphone going, “And then the dragon emerges and there’s dust everywhere, and you can’t see everything!” [Laughs] So it’s like you become a bit of an actor, you become part of it because there’s so many people in that space, you’ve got to get them all trying to really be truthful in very unreal and strange circumstances.I think we had about something between 350 and 400 extras, but then we did defining. So then we’d just shoot a group, we’d direct them, you know, and once again, I sort of talk to them to really try and also get each person to have a little, a different story in their head. You want different reactions within the group, so it looks real.Then the other thing we had to do, initially in the script, it said Aegon came in on horseback, and for various reasons, I think to do with the timing that we had to shoot the scene, that wasn’t gonna be possible. So I looked at a lot of footage of military processions and things and I came up with the idea of the swords, so he goes through this archway of swords, and I loved the idea of the sound of the swords sort of going down each time as he walked through. We had a military consultant who came in and trained up the supporting artists who weren’t actually from the military, in a day, to do that. I think some of the supporting artists were in shock because he was like, “Okay, again, again, again,” but it had to be done with military precision."
And now I complain about the Dragonpit scene for 500 words
I get a bit of a sinking feeling in my stomach reading about how much care and craft went into this scene, because it is, in my opinion, one of the low points of the season.
I don’t blame Kilner for that; I think she was executing on a script that was not well-conceived. I have so many whiny superfan problems with this scene, including:
- Hypocritical framing. The episode portrays Rhaenys as both badass (she has cool armor, a cool dragon, and a bunch of hero shots) and merciful (she doesn’t kill the greens even though she could). But it pays no mind to the dozens (possibly hundreds) of innocent civilians she slaughters as she makes her entrance. At best, it sends a very mixed message to the audience, one that looks unintentional.
- Obliterating tension. At this point in the story, Aegon’s father King Viserys Targaryen has died. Aegon’s immediate family is trying to crown him king before Viserys’ daughter Rhaenyra finds out and crowns herself, thus creating a successful crisis that could blow up into war. In George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, the most interesting thing about this stretch is how no one wants to come off as the bad guy. If the greens kill Rhaenyra, they’ve drawn first blood and her supporters will feel justified in retaliating. If Rhaenyra and her blacks strike first, the greens will feel the same way. Adding in a scene where Rhaenys commits mass manslaughter on civilians attending Aegon’s coronation before flying off to tell Rhaenyra what happens flattens all of this. The cold war turns hot way too soon. (Also, for those who have read ahead, Rhaenys’ destruction of the Dragonpit takes some of the air out of another scene that will go down here later on.)
- Improper focus. By the end of the season, Westeros has two crowned rulers: Rhaenyra Targaryen and her younger half-brother Aegon. But while Rhaenyra’s coronation in Episode 10 is given the space it needs to breathe — it’s a great scene — Aegon’s is interrupted by Rhaenys. Ultimately, Aegon’s coronation isn’t about Aegon at all, but about a character who will go on to support Rhaenyra. I don’t like this because I think it robs the conflict of needed texture. In my opinion, the show should present people on both sides of this war in a way where viewers could plausibly favor one side, the other, both or neither; we should be fighting this war in our own minds as surely as the characters are fighting in on the screen. But scenes like this make it feel like House of the Dragon is really only writing about Aegon and his followers so it can get back to Rhaenyra and Daemon. That’s weak.
- How did Rhaenys not hurt her head coming up out of the floor? Like, for real?
As much as I enjoyed the first season of House of the Dragon, I did have some problems, particularly in Episode 9. As it happens, I have one other big issue with the season, and it involves another episode that Kilner directed…
Why did Criston Cole pop off and kill that guy at Rhaenyra’s wedding in House of the Dragon?
Kilner also directed the fifth episode of the season, “We Light the Way.” I like that episode a lot more, except for one big thing: the moment near the end when Ser Criston Cole, a knight of the Kingsguard, snaps and beats Ser Joffrey Lonmouth to death at Rhaenyra Targaryen’s wedding. Here’s what Kilner had to say about that scene:
"I think the whole time, what was hard about the wedding is you could have shot everybody’s story and stayed on them for the whole wedding. You could have done the whole story of Criston Cole, like what Fabian was doing standing there the whole time watching Rhaenyra finally go with Daemon, and watching, and having [Joffrey] come and sort of take the piss, and rile him. Or, I don’t know, it’s everything that he was seeing made him feel like he lost himself, and I guess he’s got like anger management issues [laughs], you know, and he was triggered. I don’t know, Joffrey must have said something, and I think that was the last straw, but I think he had lost himself at that point. I think he literally had a break with reality because – and I think, the thing is, that it’s hard for us to understand in those times what an oath meant. It was like an oath to serve the king was everything, and if you broke that oath, you die."
I have a few big problems with this scene, and Kilner seems to be gesturing at some of them. It’s so weird to me that she seems to be guessing at Criston’s motivation. “I guess he’s got anger management issues.” “I don’t know, Joffrey must have said something.” “It’s hard for us to understand in those times what an oath meant.”
This is a majorly important moment that will help define the relationship between not only Rhaenyra and Criston for the rest of their lives, but between the blacks and greens, the two major forces in this war. I think we should understand exactly what happens and why. We should know how seriously Criston takes his oaths, and how torn up he is about having violating one by sleeping with Rhaenyra earlier. Of all the major characters we meet in the first season, I think Criston is the shallowest, because we just don’t learn much about what makes him tick. And that hurts the show, because he pushes the story forward in some major ways. We need to understand him.
I also have big issues with the lack of follow-up to Criston’s deadly tantrum, but I’ve already complained too much. Generally speaking, I thoroughly enjoyed the first season of House of the Dragon, but there are a couple of moments that got under my skin. Writing about them like this is almost like an attempt to suck out the poison and go into season 2 with an open heart.
Thanks to professionals like Kilner, I know that House of the Dragon can be moving, funny, dense, tragic and thrilling. I want it to be like that the whole way through in season 2, which is coming to HBO and Max sometime in 2024.
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