Ewan Mitchell chooses violence, chaos and fun as he hypes House of the Dragon season 2

Over the weekend, the cast of House of the Dragon appeared at the CCXP convention in Mexico to promote the second season of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel show, which starts airing in June. The first season introduced us to a whole bevy of characters, some of whom we didn't get to spend much time with before the season finale. Case in point: a lot of fans can't wait to see more of Aemond Targaryen, the one-eyed, hot-tempered dragon rider played by Ewan Mitchell. It was Aemond who officially drew first blood in the simmering war between his brother King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and his half-sister Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy). He's a bit of a sad boy psychopath, which helped him become a fan favorite.

Ewan Mitchell was leaning into this rock star persona at CCXP, wearing a mesh shirt and long leather jacket that said, "You will remember me."

He was dropping lots of spicy sound bites too. "In a show full of morally compromised, grey characters, I wanted to present a character who at this time in his life was just completely black," he said in one interview. "His appearance lends to that, so I thought I'd lean into it."

"I think Aemond and Aegon this season, you are either with us or you are against us. And if you get in our way, it is game over, baby."

House of the Dragon is about a war between two rival factions of the Targaryen family: King Aegon II Targaryen and his Greens vs Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and her Blacks. By and large, the characters on the Green side of things are a little more unstable, a little more conniving, and a bit less upstanding and virtuous. I wouldn't call them "the villains," exactly, but they're less outwardly likable.

But that also means they can be more fun, because we love watching dangerous people be messy and wrong. Ewan Mitchell seems to be having a blast with this role. At one point, he whipped out a homemade piñata bearing the face of Daemon Targaryen, Aemond's main rival on the Black side. "I made it myself," he told the audience. "I can't wait to destroy it."

Daemon, for his part, is just as violent and unhinged as Aemond, and he's also become a fan favorite. Sometimes playing the straightforward heroes is boring. There's an advantage to playing the flamboyant baddies. Ewan Mitchell and Tom Glynn-Carney embraced it as they danced onstage to the House of the Dragon theme song:

On a slightly more serious note, one interviewer asked Mitchell who he would play if he could pick a character other than Aemond. He chose the mercurial Kingsguard knight Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), who trained Aegon and Aemond to fight when they were growing up. He also compared Criston to Aemond's enormous, ancient dragon Vhagar, which I did not see coming. "In a similar kind of vein to Vhagar, [Criston] is a character who, during peacetime, is deemed irrelevant, deemed superfluous. And it's those characters that you ultimately call upon when the war does finally kick off and the realm is plunged into chaos. It's those guys' doors that you knock on."

I fully expect interesting things ahead for Aemond Targaryen in House of the Dragon season 2, which premieres on HBO and Max on Sunday, June 16.

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