Right now HBO is filming the third season of House of the Dragon, its lavish Game of Thrones prequel set around 200 years before the main series. House of the Dragon covers a brutal civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, where rival branches of House Targaryen tore down their own dynasty in a dispute over who should sit the Iron Throne. By the end of the show's second season, armies are on the move and the war is about to begin in earnest.
That's not to say there haven't already been casualties, though. The biggest clash of season 2 was the spectacular Battle at Rook's Rest, where dragons tore each other from the sky as armies battled far below. House of the Dragon season 2 may have had some ups and downs, but I think we can all agree that Rook's Rest was one of the most incredible dragon-on-dragon battles ever put to the screen. And it sounds like season 3 is aiming to top it, with "two enormous, enormous sequences" on the way.
"That was the hardest thing we pulled off last year, simply because it's such a multimedia effort to bring something like that together," showrunner Ryan Condal told Gold Derby about Rook's Rest. "You're dealing obviously with the digital dragons, but then you have the production design element of it, with [production designer Jim Clay] building the walls of the castle on our backlot, and then finding a real location, which Game of Thrones started the tradition of. We had to marry those three things, and it was a year of work to get there. It was so rewarding to bring it to life, and one of the things that I'm proudest to have been involved with creatively."
House of the Dragon season 3 will try to top the Battle at Rook's Rest
Gold Derby did a joint interview with Condal and Jim Clay, the show's production designer who engineered its immense sets. When there's a large battle in the script, Clay is the person who has to figure out how to make it all work on set during filming. When the challenge of filming Rook's Rest came up during the interview, Clay teased that "we have two episodes in Season 3 that are going to push it even further."
"Yeah, we have two enormous, enormous sequence that both eclipse Rook's Rest, that we're working on this year," Condal replied.
Those sequences won't just be filmed on a closed soundstage, either. "We're proud of our locations, and we choose them carefully, because the locations root us in the reality," Clay explained. "We want to be rooted in reality, and that allows us to go that little bit further with the designs and the things we actually build. It is such a collaboration between all of the departments. The advantage of doing Season 3 is because we're working with the same teams. We've developed this shorthand, so we can refer back and move forward much more quickly."
How will House of the Dragon beat the Battle at Rook's Rest?
Condal has previously teased "four major events" from George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood which will appear in season 3. It sounds like the show will keep to the formula from season 2 of having two of those be big show-stopper sequences, at least in terms of the production size. We can safely guess that one of those will happen right at the start of the season: the Battle of the Gullet, where the pirates of the Triarchy attack Corlys Velaryon's blockade in the waters outside of King's Landing. That's one of the most important battles in the Dance of the Dragons and was originally supposed to appear in season 2, so Condal and company haven't been shy about telling us it's coming.
In fact, just last week we reported that Steve Toussaint, the actor who plays Corlys Velaryon, hyped it by saying it will be something that's never "been done on television before." Condal didn't talk too much about the Gullet in this new interview, but he did gush about the incredible set Jim Clay had made for Corlys Velaryon's flagship, renamed from The Sea Snake to The Queen Who Ever Was by the end of season 2 in honor of Corlys' fallen wife, Rhaenys Targaryen.
"It's all completely real. That is the craziest thing that Jim has built so far," Condal said of the ship. "It is huge on screen, but it's so much bigger when you're standing there. Everything essentially was real for that, except for the sea, just off the end of the dry dock. The hull is all there, and you could walk around on the deck, and on and off the dock. That was just an incredible world. When Steve Toussaint walked on, he had the reaction of, 'Even though I've been on House of the Dragon, this is the biggest thing I've ever seen.'"
So we know the Battle of the Gullet will be one of the two "enormous sequences" Condal and Clay are referencing. What of the other? To my eye, the best two guesses are either the Fishfeed/Butcher's Ball, or one of the Battles of Tumbleton.
In the book, there are two exceptionally bloody battles in the Riverlands, called the Fishfeed and the Butcher's Ball. Both are very important to the narrative, and have grave consequences for Ser Criston Cole and his campaign in the region. It's possible House of the Dragon may combine these two events into one mega-sized battle or something, since the show has so much ground to cover still in the story. But whether it includes one or both of these battles, I'd expect them to be important turning points in the war.
The one huge caveat to both the Fishfeed and the Butcher's Ball is that there aren't any dragons involved. Those are battles fought by human armies alone, with all the gritty ruthlessness that you'd expect from Game of Thrones. So while they'll be crucial clashes, I'd be surprised if they were as hard for the production to pull off as anything involving its magnificent (and magnificently expensive) dragons.
I think that means it's even more likely that the other "enormous sequence" Condal is referring to is the First Battle of Tumbleton. Tumbleton is a small city in the Reach which gets caught between the advancing Hightower army and Queen Rhaenyra's dragonriders. The bastard dragonseeds Ulf White and Hugh Hammer play a major role in this clash, as does King Aegon II's youngest brother Daeron Targaryen. Later on, there's a Second Battle of Tumbleton which is even more devastating, so this is an important part of the Dance of the Dragons civil war. Tumbleton was even foreshadowed in season 2, so the show has already started laying groundwork; it's the town Hugh Hammer's wife Kat wants to escape to when things get bad in King's Landing.
Unlike the Fishfeed or Butcher's Ball, the First and Second Battle of Tumbleton both heavily feature dragons as well as armies on the ground. Considering that Tumbleton is a massive turning point for the war as well as Rhaenyra Targaryen's character arc, I'd say there's a good chance House of the Dragon is going to make a massive event out of it.
We'll know soon enough! House of the Dragon is currently filming season 3. I'd expect to see it on our screens sometime in 2026.
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