How ‘Home of the Dragon’ staged Daemon’s Harrenhal invasion

Home of the Dragon Season 2, episode 3, “The Burning Mill,” brings viewers again to certainly one of Westeros’ most infamous castles: Harrenhal. And what a return it’s!

The episode sees Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) swoop into Harrenhal together with his dragon Caraxes, however that is removed from the triumphant conquest he envisioned. Castellan Simon Sturdy (Sir Simon Russell Beale) is all too prepared to show the fortress over to Staff Black, no combat wanted. On high of all that, Harrenhal is supremely spooky, its melted ruins exposing anybody inside to the weather.

“The Burning Mill” makes use of this spookiness to its fullest extent as Daemon first steps foot in Harrenhal. He prowls down lengthy, empty corridors and staircases. Rain and thunder crash in from above, bats burst from the rafters. Within the palms of director Geeta Vasant Patel, the fortress turns into a maze that Daemon should wander alone, a solitude made all of the extra isolating following his argument with Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) in episode 2. For each Patel and Smith, grounding Daemon’s Harrenhal entrance within the aftermath of that argument proved essential.

“When you look at the scene for what it is, it’s very easy to just treat it as if it’s out of line with the timeline. What I wanted to do is make it emotional and concurrent with what had happened in episode 2,” Patel advised Mashable. “It’s not just about a man who comes to Harrenhal and is walking around scared. You can put that anywhere in the season. Why [we see it] now is that in episode 2, he’s been tossed aside by Rhaenyra. He has never been this low.”

Rhaenyra’s presence lingers even on this scene. Lengthy earlier than Daemon experiences a imaginative and prescient of younger Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), you possibly can hear her faint, disembodied voice calling to him as he seeks out Simon Sturdy.

Creating Daemon’s emotional vulnerability throughout the Harrenhal invasion began together with his flight into the fortress. “If you’re just grounded in reality, this is a man who’s on a drinking binge in a car,” Patel stated. She labored with Home of the Dragon‘s VFX staff to make Caraxes’s actions extra reckless, like a “drunken dragon” mirroring his rider’s instability.

Daemon’s journey throughout the fortress itself is near-labyrinthine, highlighting each the size of Harrenhal and Daemon’s personal uncertainty. One level of inspiration Patel cited for each her and Smith was the scene in The Silence of the Lambs the place Clarice (Jodie Foster) makes her method by means of Buffalo Invoice’s (Ted Levine) home. In each sequences, the digital camera follows our uneasy protagonist by means of an unfamiliar place, whipping from doorway to doorway as they ponder what’s subsequent. There isn’t any music, simply the eerie sounds of the surroundings.

Harrenhal’s creeping, scary loneliness serves as the proper reflection for Daemon at this cut-off date. “This place represents what’s in his soul right now,” Patel stated.

She continued: “As Daemon’s going from corridor to corridor, it’s a metaphor for him thinking, ‘I don’t know where I am in my life. I’ve never been here before. I’m actually scared for the first time in my life, and I’m angry.'”

Daemon takes that anger out on a Sturdy soldier passing by — the one violence in his takeover of Harrenhal, and a second that wasn’t within the authentic script. “In the script, the guy was just running away. But as Matt and I were working through it, we were both thinking, ‘This doesn’t feel like Daemon, where’s he’s at in the story.’ Daemon needs to pummel that guy and take everything out on him,” Patel stated.

Whereas the beatdown is a really Daemon transfer, Patel hinted {that a} keep in Harrenhal may be a significant catalyst for a change in Daemon. “One thing [Matt and I] spent the most time on was the question of, ‘How do we stay Daemon, but also start allowing a shift in him?'” Patel defined. “Since we worked on [the finale] together, we knew where Daemon was going, and we wanted to see how it started in episode 3. Luckily, we both got to work together on the bookends of his experience at Harrenhal.”

New episodes of Home of the Dragon air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.