‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Scorches ATX with Fiery First Footage of the ‘Bloodiest Naval Battle Ever’

At the ATX TV Festival's Opening Night event, showrunner Ryan Condal and select cast members debuted exclusive footage of Season 3's hotly anticipated premiere, featuring the Battle of the Gullet.

“There’s the time before the Gullet and then there’s the time after the Gullet.”

Right now, we’re living in the before, but come June 21 when “House of the Dragon” Season 3 makes its long-awaited return, “Game of Thrones” fans will witness the Battle of the Gullet — a spectacle showrunner Ryan Condal has called “the craziest episode of television ever made” — and cross over to a better place.

Condal reiterated his stance Thursday night in Austin, Texas, while taking part in the ATX TV Festival’s opening night panel and first-look presentation. Much of the hourlong discussion focused on the Battle of the Gullet, which Condal described as “the bloodiest naval battle ever fought in the recorded history of Westeros.”

“It really is this amazing achievement on a filmmaking and artistic level, with all the crafts that go into it,” he said. “You’ll see how much stuff we actually had to build, and I think that’s going to be the surprise to everybody. … So much of this episode is practical. In the water, there are multiple ships interacting that are real physical sets, and the fire, and the dragons, and all these things are knitted together to make it seem like it’s all happening in the same place and the same time.”

Regarding his previous comment about the Season 3 premiere being the craziest episode of television ever made, Condal said there’s at least an argument to be made that it’s in the running. 

“It’s, of course, up to the audience to decide what they think of the episode, but the things we had to engineer and figure out how to do just to make this episode of television what it was — pretty damn crazy,” he said.

Condal was joined on the panel by Steve Toussaint, who plays Lord Corlys Velaryon (the former Master of Ships also known as The Sea Snake); Abubakar Salim as Corlys’ son Alyn of Hull (and a sailor); Harry Collett as Jacaerys Velaryon, a dragonrider who bonded with the dragon Vermax; and Bethany Antonia as Lady Baela Targaryen, another dragonrider who befriended Moondancer.

Toussaint teased Corlys’ Season 3 journey by saying he’s “trying to make amends with his illegitimate son and not doing it very successfully.” Later, he added, “We’re going to take the character who has everyting, and slowly take it all away from him — that was my arc.”

“Alyn is getting deeper and deeper into the family politics — not by choice, really,” Salim said. As for Jacaerys, Collett said, “He’s extremely angry and he knows what he wants and he’s going to get it.”

In the first exclusive video shown to the audience, HBO provided a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Battle of the Gullet. It said 123 stunt performers were set on fire in a single take — setting a new world record — and 25 tons of propane were used to set the sea ablaze.

“This is the defining turning point of this war, The Dance of the Dragons,” Condal said during the panel. “There’s the time before the Gullet and then there’s the time after the Gullet. … The thing that’s so exciting about it is it just feels like the skirmishes that have happened on the fringes of this [war] here and there — dragons die and things like this — this is where it really goes all out. Then there’s a snowball effect from the events of this battle that ripple through the entire war and into the Targaryen dynasty. … It’s the bloodiest naval battle ever fought in the history of recorded Westeros.”

Condal also briefly joked about the frustration fans felt over the way Season 2 ended: on the precipice of a battle they wouldn’t see for years, after a season that didn’t offer an adequate substitute.

“And everyone was totally OK with that,” Condal said about the finale, before laying out his vision of the first three seasons.

“Season 1 we had to introduce this very complex, multi-layered family — three generations of this family, sometimes with multiple different actors playing the characters — so that everybody understood the underpinnings of this generational feud that was in a slow boil,” Condal said. “We didn’t want to have everybody talking about that past tense; we wanted to show how that all happened, which is why we did Season 1 in two parts.”

“Then Season 2 was the slow boil to war,” he continued. “And I think what this show contends with, which the original ‘Game of Thrones’ did not contend with — at least, until the very end — is this idea that there are nuclear weapons in play. And there are nuclear weapons in play on both sides. So really, you have this classic cold war stand-off of mutually assured destruction.”

“The war really does kick off in Season 2, but it’s done in fits and starts because nobody wants to make the big move that’s going to bring down the wrath of Vhagar [the dragon] or Daemon [Matt Smith] because they realize if it goes too far you could just have ash left over. But, of course, that builds and builds and builds, and at some point the cork comes off the champagne bottle, and that’s where we begin here in Season 3.”

Condal also promised “a lot of dragon action” in Season 3, including “new ones” and “some old favorites.” The cast and showrunner were otherwise tight-lipped about spoilers, but they did share one scene from the battle (featuring Corlys and Alyn making plans in between attacks) and close with a sneak peek at the final Season 3 trailer (which you can see below).

“I describe it as being on a theme park ride but you are the ride,” Salim said.

In just a few weeks, fans the world over can experience it for themselves.

“House of the Dragon” Season 3 premieres Sunday, June 21 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.