House of the Dragon is currently on hiatus with fans waiting on Season 2 and the brewing civil war within the Targaryen family tree, but there are plenty of sequences from the first season that are undoubtedly still fresh in many minds. The stunts of the Game of Thrones prequel not only recalled some of what made the original series’ battles so iconic, but also used dragons as weapons of war more tactically than Dany roasting everything on Drogon. Stunt coordinator Rowley Irlam worked on Game of Thrones before coming to House of the Dragon, and he opened up about a nerve-wracking stunt and a particularly fun stunt.
There was plenty of death, destruction, and dragon fire to go around in Season 1 of House of the Dragon (available streaming via Max subscription), and the stunt coordinator told THR about what would make him nervous and what was especially exciting for him in those episodes. With the wait on for House of the Dragon Season 2, Rowley Irlam shared:
We’ve had guys falling 25 feet while on fire. That’s always hazardous because there’s the impact of going into the big bag and you don’t want to be breathing in [while on fire]. But what got me the most excited was the jousting tournament. I started my career being in a jousting tournament when I was 19, so it was really exciting to be presented with this opportunity and to make every event in that sequence feel different so we weren’t repeating ourselves.
While Irlam didn’t specifically name the sequence with “guys falling 25 feet while on fire,” he can only be referencing the epic battle between the forces of Daemon and the Velaryon army vs. the Crabfeeder and his forces. While that battle started with Daemon Targaryen on what appeared to be a solo suicide mission to take out the Crabfeeder, the Sea Snake arrived with some ground forces… and Laenor Velaryon arrived on one of the dragons in House of the Dragon to burn enemy archers to a crisp, with their flaming bodies falling to the beach below.
The jousting tournament that the stunt coordinator named as what got him “the most excited” had a much lower body count in the world of Westeros, but still had a lot going on. He went on to share that everything was “designed to be visually high-impact” and “choreographed to look dynamic” while still being safe with no real-life broken bones. Rowley Irlam revealed that 300 breakaway lances were broken in the tournament, which also featured the first showdown between Daemon and Ser Criston Cole.
Irlam elaborated on how the joust between Daemon and Cole both looked good and advanced their characters, saying:
With Daemon [Targaryen, played by Matt Smith], the idea is that jousting is a bit like polo to him; it’s a rich man’s sport and he’s good at it, but he finds it boring. What can we do to embarrass him but not hurt him, and that hasn’t been done before? That’s how we came up with the idea of laying him on the rail. It really pressed the right buttons for his character.
Daemon’s bloody rampage through King’s Landing with the Gold Cloaks in the series premiere proved early on what can happen when his buttons are pushed; it took a little longer for Criston Cole’s true colors to show. Readers of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood (on which House of the Dragon is based) have a good idea of how much stunt work to expect from Matt Smith as Daemon and Fabien Frankel as Cole in Season 2 and beyond, even with how Season 1 – in my opinion, anyway – made the Greens look a lot better than they did in the book.
There’s good news and bad news about what’s in the future for the Game of Thrones prequel. While fans will have to wait until at some point in 2024 for what comes next and Season 2 has fewer episodes than Season 1, one HBO executive predicted that fans will love it even more and production didn’t have to stop due to the WGA writers strike. Here’s hoping that House of the Dragon will arrive earlier rather than later in 2024, with more epic stunts on the way!
