How ‘House of the Dragon’ Staged Daemon’s Invasion of Harrenhal

Dragon House The third episode of Season 2, “The Burning Mill,” takes viewers back to one of the most notorious castles in Westeros: Harrenhal. What a reward!

In this episode, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) raids Harrenhal with his dragon Carax, but it’s far from the victorious conquest he imagined. Lord Simon Strong (Sir Simon Russell Beale) is ready to hand over the castle to the Black Team without a fight. Above all, Harrenhal is utterly eerie, its melting ruins leaving anyone inside exposed to the elements.

“Burning Mill” takes this weirdness to an extreme when Daemon first sets foot on Harrenhal. He wandered down long, empty corridors and staircases. Rain and thunder crashed from above, and bats burst from the rafters. In the hands of director Geeta Vasant Patel, the castle becomes a maze that Daemon must wander alone, and after a run-in with Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) in the second episode, This loneliness becomes even more isolating.

“When you look at the scene closely, it’s easy to think that it doesn’t fit the timeline. What I wanted to do was make it emotional and concurrent with what happened in episode two,” Patel told Mashable. “This isn’t just the story of someone who came to Harrenhal and was scared. You could put it anywhere in the season. Why [we see it] Now in episode two, he’s tossed aside by Rhaenyra. He had never been so low.

Even in this scene, Rhaenyra’s presence remains. Long before Daemon has visions of young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), you can hear her small, disembodied voice calling to him as Daemon searches for Simon Strong.

Daemon’s emotional vulnerability during the invasion of Harrenhal begins with his escape into the castle. “If you ground yourself in reality, this is a man who was drinking heavily in a car,” Patel said. she had been with Dragon HouseThe visual effects team made Carax’s movements more reckless, like a “drunken dragon,” reflecting the rider’s instability.

Matt Smith in House of the Dragon.
Photo credit: Ollie Upton/HBO

Daemon’s almost labyrinthine journey within the castle underscores both the scale of Harrenhal and Daemon’s own uncertainty. One of the inspirations Patel cited for her and Smith was a scene from the movie The Silence of the Lambs Clarice (Jodie Foster) walks through Buffalo Bill’s (Ted Levine) house. In both sequences, the camera follows our uneasy protagonists through an unfamiliar place, quickly moving from doorway to doorway as they ponder what happens next. There is no music, just weird sounds in the environment.

The eerie, frightening loneliness of Harrenhal is the perfect reflection of Daemon in this moment. “This place represents what’s in his soul right now,” Patel said.

She continued: “As Damon walks from hallway to hallway, it’s a metaphor that he’s thinking, ‘I don’t know where I am in life. I’ve never been here before. In fact, I Feeling scared for the first time.

Daemon takes out his rage on a passing strongman – his only act of violence during his takeover of Harrenhal, and a moment not in the original script. “In the script, the guy just ran away. But as Matt and I were working on it, we were both thinking, ‘This doesn’t feel like Damon, where does he fit into the story.’ Hit that guy and take everything out on him,” Patel said.

While the strike was an act by the demons, Patel hinted that staying at Harrenhal may have been the main catalyst for the demons’ change. “one thing [Matt and I] The question that takes the most time is, “How do we retain Dimon while allowing him to transform?” ’” explained Patel. “Since we committed to [the finale] Together we know where Damon is going, and we want to see how it starts in episode three.

new episodes Dragon House It airs Sundays at 9pm ET on HBO and Max.