House of the Dragon shot scenes of Rhaenys and Meleys after the battle, but they were cut

The newest episode of House of the Dragon features a full dragon-vs-dragon fight in the sky, somethings fans have been itching to see practically since the series began. On one side, Aegon Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) and his brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) flew in on their dragons Sunfyre and Vhagar. On the other, Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) flew alone on her dragon Meleys. By the end of the fight, Rhaenys and Meleys were dead while Aegon and Sunfyre were badly injured. Now that the dragons have begun to dance, the war has entered a new phase.

“This is the first nuclear conflict,” showrunner Ryan Condal told Entertainment Weekly. “At the end of this, the world has effectively seen mushroom clouds on the horizon, and they know that we've now moved into a different era of the war. The whole strategy of the war changes after this because everything is so different. This is the thing that Viserys was terrified of. This is the thing that Rhaenys, sitting at her council table, was terrified of.”

We even got a bunch of explosions to pound the point home; whenever the dragons have a hard landing, there's a burst of fire. “We really talked a lot about how, when the dragons land, they're fire made flesh. So that's like nuclear bombs going off on the ground,” Condal said. “You see the devastation that Sunfyre leaves in the woods.”

Birds of prey, Paradise Lost, Jaws and House of the Dragon

The battle was carefully set up; Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) led a Green army to the small castle of Rook's Rest, hoping that Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) would respond by sending out one of her dragonriders to protect her allies. And that's exactly what happened.

But tactics pretty much go out the window when dragons start fighting, and it becomes about these awe-inspiring moments. How about the bit where Vhagar grabbed Meleys from underneath and Meleys started tearing at the belly of the larger dragon? Director Alan Taylor got the idea for that moment while studying the movement of predatory birds. “It's very common in the predatory bird world if you're being attacked to do this maneuver where you go upside down and engage talon to talon," he said. "You see these birds going into a kind of pinwheel chaotic fall. We stole that idea and applied it to Vhagar and Meleys. It became one of the centerpiece action moments.”

Taylor also got the idea to show Rhaenys strapping herself into her dragon saddle extra tight ahead of this maneuver; remember, she's the most experienced warrior in this battle and knows how things are likely to go. “I thought it'd be fun to have her actually anticipate that [maneuver],” Taylor said. “She tightens her seatbelt so that she can be prepared for the upside-down move. For me, it was one of those martial arts movements where the hero finally is going to get really serious now.”

We also get an epic moment when Vhagar shows up; the soldier on the ground see her massive wings over the trees and know things are about to get even worse. "My idea was that we would see wings flapping barely through the trees like sharks going through waters, which is basically Jaws," Taylor told The A.V. Club. "You see it and you know this is bad. And then we cut from that to the soldiers on the field to Cole. We never go objective on the arrival of the dragon. It’s always about its arrival being experienced by people. We’re already connected to them."

Or how about the moment where Vhagar and Meleys tumble out of the sky together in a descending spiral? Ryan Condal revealed a very unlikely inspiration for that one: John Milton's Biblical epic Paradise Lost, which Condal spent years trying to make into a movie. “I can't say that those images weren't in my head of when God casts the archangels out of Heaven and nine days they fell, and seeing these beautiful winged creatures being ruined on their descent into Hell,” he said.

Scenes showing the aftermath of the battle were cut

But none of this splendor would work without the character beats, and they found them. The climax of the scene belongs to Rhaenys, who chooses to battle on even when victory is starting to look unlikely. “That decision became the tentpole of the scene, shaping everything else around it,” Taylor said. “It goes way back to season 1, to her decision not to toast the Greens when she could have, and to the death of her grandson [Elliot Grihault’s Lucerys Velaryon] at the hands of this very beast. She has to go back in.”

Actor Eve Best characterized Rhaenys' decision as one befitting the "honorable, noble, f---ing cool-ass warrior queen" she is. "The honorable thing is that she could have escaped, and then she's like, ‘No, we've got to go back.' Because there's the potential to end it. I think she knows she's going back to die, but she has to try because if Vhagar can be taken down, then it's done. It's cauterized. The potential for nuclear war is cut down.”

But in the end, Rhaenys and Meleys fall, crashing into the castle of Rook's Rest in a deadly fireball. They're dead. In George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, there's an illustration by Doug Wheatley showing the dead Meleys and the charred body of Rhaenys lying on the ground, but we don't see that on the show.

But we almost did! Taylor reveals that they did shoot scenes of Rhaenys and Meleys on the ground after the fight, but they were cut. “It’s always like that,” he said, also noting that they cut moments involving Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox). “I think the impulse behind that choice was to make sure that we stayed focused on the key storylines.”

That said, the final image of Aegon and Sunfyre does recall that illustration. “That image comes from the same impulse: There is a beautiful connection between dragon and rider," Taylor said. "I really liked this idea that, even in death or [when they're] in really bad shape, they are almost protectively coiled around the rider.”

Cut scenes or not, this episode was an absolute banger. New episodes air Sunday nights on HBO and Max.

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