HBO is currently hard at work on the third season of the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon. The second season ended on a bunch of cliffhangers thanks to a late-in-the-game change that reduced the number of episodes the producers had to work with. Season 3 will hit the ground running with a major battle scene originally meant for the end of season 2, and hopefully it's onwards and upwards from there.
The cast and crew aren't giving away spoilers, but their hype game is excellent. Loni Peristere, who directed the season 2 episode "The Red Sowing," teased up a storm talking to GoldDerby. "It's definitely everything that the fans want," he said. "Everything they've read in the book, everything that they know is coming. This season goes to 11."
House of the Dragon is based on George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, which details a brutal civil war fought between rival factions of the Targaryen dynasty over 100 years before the events of Game of Thrones. The show has changed a lot from the book already; some of it worked well, like making King Viserys more of a tragic figure with a degenerative disease. Some of it has rubbed me the wrong way, like having Alicent Hightower work with Rhaenyra Targaryen despite them being on opposite sides of the war. My favorite episode from the second season was "The Red Dragon and the Gold," a big action set piece that stuck very close to the text.
Showrunner Ryan Condal has promised that we'll get four big events from the book in season 3. The Battle of the Gullet is definitely one of them, and we have ideas about the rest. I hope they remember that the book doesn't just describe the events, and that there are character moments fans would love to see too.
Loni Peristere only directed the one episode of season 2, but it was a standout. "The Red Sowing" climaxed with a bunch of Targaryen bastards trying their hands at claiming a dragon, mostly with disastrous results.
Peristere will direct two episodes in season 3, the first and the sixth. Given what a great job he did with the action sequences in "The Red Sowing," I have to imagine those will be action-heavy hours.
Also returning for season 3 is cinematographer Vanja Černjul, who worked with Peristere in season 2. "The thing that I noticed when I came back, and I was very happy to be back, was that all other key collaborators came back as well, which says a lot about how much we enjoyed this opportunity to be part of building this universe," Černjul said. "It’s really a family now. But the fact that everybody was happy to come back says a lot about the experience that we have on set."
Except to see new episodes of House of the Dragon sometime next year. If you want to check out some of Peristere's other work in the meantime, might I recommend the marital arts drama Warrior, one of the most underrated shows to come out in the last several years?
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