At long last, work is starting up on the third season of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon, with the cast having met just the other week to read through the new episodes. Steve Toussaint, who plays Lord Corlys Velaryon, posted a picture of himself at the table and revealed more than he meant to, including a character list of everyone appearing in the fourth episode. Kieran Bew, who plays newly minted dragon-rider Hugh Hammer, was a little more discrete, merely posting a photo of his name plate on his Instagram:
Kieran Bew (Hugh Hammer) postou uma foto da mesa de leitura do roteiro da 3ª temporada de House of the Dragon. 🐉🔥 pic.twitter.com/miYluq1ukc
— House the Dragons (@housethedragons) March 19, 2025
Hugh Hammer was introduced in the second season of the show. He's the bastard son of Saera Targaryen, a Targaryen princess who was ostracized from the family years ago. He, along with other illegitimate Targaryen children, answered Rhaenyra Targaryen's call to find new dragonriders. A lot of people died in that attempt, but Hugh emerged as the new rider of Vermithor, one of the biggest and oldest dragons alive.
The other new dragonriders include Ulf White and Addam of Hull; another dragonrider who has a prominent role in George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, Nettles, appears to have been cut, which upsets me but that's the way it is.
The House of the Dragon team is building a set for a town called Tumbleton, a place that Hugh Hammer and the other dragonseeds visit in Fire & Blood. On the show, Hugh has a wife named Kat, who mentioned in the second season that she wanted to leave King's Landing, which is becoming the center of a war between Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and her half-brother King Aegon, for Tumbleton, which she thinks will be safer. It's all coming together.
I don't know if this is worth noting, but when Bew posted the image from the season 3 table read, he set it to the sound of "Rainbow in the Dark" from the heavy metal rock band Dio. "When there's lightning, you know it always brings me down," that song begins. I could see someone burning villages from dragonback to this song, sure.
But we won't see anything like that happen for a while. With filming just about to start, we won't be watching new episodes of House of the Dragon until sometime in 2026.
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