RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 8 sourcesEmma D'Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen in "House of the Dragon." Ollie Upton/HBO
"House of the Dragon" wrapped its third season with a major battle and multiple character deaths.
Showrunner Ryan Condal broke down the finale's biggest moments and the season's key takeaways.
Condal also spoke about the pressure of "landing the plane" in the show's fourth and final season.
Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "House of the Dragon" season three.
As season three of " House of the Dragon " comes to a close with characteristic fire and blood, showrunner Ryan Condal is already anticipating scrutiny of the next one.
In an interview ahead of Sunday's season three finale, Condal confirmed that HBO's tentpole "Game of Thrones" spinoff will end with its fourth season. As Condal and his team map out a final eight-episode arc for the Targaryen dragonlords embroiled in a civil war, the franchise's history and its fiercely devoted fans loom large.
"It's hard enough to make a season finale," Condal told Business Insider. "Try making a series finale that tries to be all things to all people, and also have a distinct point of view and thing to say and place to leave off all the characters."
Based on George R. R. Martin's fantasy book "Fire & Blood," "House of the Dragon" follows the dynastic struggle between Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and her younger half-brother, Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), which ultimately devastates the royal family and decimates the dragon population.
In the season three finale, Queen Rhaenyra descends further into tyranny and messianic delusions, while Aegon II rises from the literal ashes with a resurrected dragon and a plot to retake the Iron Throne. Elsewhere, Rhaenyra's Hightower enemies and loyal allies alike are massacred in the big-budget, game-changing Battle of Tumbleton ; a dangerous dragonrider deserts her cause; and a beloved former queen plummets to her death .
With plenty to unpack (and even more death and destruction to expect in season four), Business Insider caught up with Condal to discuss season three's biggest scenes, central themes, and the one character he found especially hard to kill.
On executing the Battle of Tumbleton and expanding Ormund's character for the screen
Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen in "House of the Dragon." HBO
Aside from the Battle of the Gullet , were there any scenes from the book that were extra challenging or labor-intensive to bring to life?
Ryan Condal: The two this season definitely were the premiere and the finale — the two mega-battles. Each was its own challenge in its own right. But those were definitely the two that got the most attention in terms of planning, consternation, resources, anguish, despair, all that, and then hopefully victory at the end.
What were the particular challenges of filming the Tumbleton battle?
Unlike the Gullet, which was an engineering challenge of, "How the hell are we actually going to do this?" this was more of, "What can the schedule and the budget absorb in terms of the ambitions of the script?" So that was more of a classic negotiation between creative ambition and what is actually practical and can happen, while holding onto the subjective element of the storytelling — meaning all of the POVs of the characters that we're with down there on the ground in Tumbleton.
One of the things I'm proudest of is how we were able to bring so many POVs that we've been following across the season all together in this one place, and then blend them in a way that felt earned and organic: Black and Green coming together and interacting with each other in a way that was paying off these eight episode-long arcs that we had been exploring across season three.
James Norton as Ormund Hightower in "House of the Dragon." HBO
A big part of that narrative payoff is watching Ormund Hightower get his comeuppance. In the book, he doesn't get much characterization beyond being a military leader. Tell me about expanding his character for the show and giving him so much texture — the religious fanaticism, the smell sensitivity, all these details.
That's the great fun of an adaptation of a book like "Fire & Blood." Because so much of it is a sketch, particularly in the character realm, just because you're not inside the characters' heads the way you are in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels.
Those are all written in POV, whereas this book is written — it's an anti-POV. It's written in the POV of these three historians who are sort of arguing over what happened when to whom, and over whose account ends up being the more accurate account. So you just don't get the internal thoughts of these characters, which creates a ton of latitude to be creative and create, and to honor the book.
Ormund, we know, is a great military leader. He led the Hightower host. He was with Daeron the Daring, and he planned and tried to win valiantly in this very epic, table-turning Battle of Tumbleton, and then ultimately came up short in the end.
So we knew all of that, and then we were very free to design a character around him. And it really opened us up to being able to go in and do something really interesting and "Thrones"-y, I think, in a way, where he's flawed and complicated and this master operator who has two core weaknesses — one being something he can't help, which is his oversensitivity to smell and texture and all that, and then two being his rage issues, which maybe is something that he could do something about with a little therapy and breath work.
I love the throughline that begins chronologically with Ormund, reappears in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," and then pays off at the beginning of "Game of Thrones," which is this anti-Targaryen, anti-dragon suspicion breeding among the people of the realm. Did you consider this theme while writing his character?
Yes, very much. It was sort of built into who Ormund was.
This is a theme that we've set up that you're going to se...
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