House of the Dragon season 1 concluded by setting the stage for war and, well, Sunday night's season 2 finale did the exact same thing. It's made this latest batch of episodes feel a lot like filler, though we at least know the end is now in sight.
In Daemon's latest vision (which is all he's really contributed to the prequel series this year), he was visited by Queen Helaena - confirming she's a dragon dreamer - and decided to finally return to Rhaenyra's side.
However, he also witnessed the same prophecy that Aegon the Conqueror experienced, including the eventual emergence of the White Walkers and Daenerys Targaryen's rise to power.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly (via SFFGazette.com), House of the Dragon season 2 director Geeta Vasant Patel said, "I was excited because it's a moment where Daemon understands the future of what's to come, and that House of the Dragon connects to Game of Thrones. It was thrilling for me, as someone who's also a fan of the world of Game of Thrones, so it was very exciting to be able to connect the two time spaces."
"All of that was footage that I shot," she added. "The way that the vision, as we call it, started I got the script, and [co-creator] Ryan [Condal] sat down with me and went through the beats that needed to be in that vision."
"Then he communicated what that vision should be... and what that vision was supposed to convey to Daemon, and that it was a moment that would convince Daemon to look outside of himself and help him realize that he's part of a bigger picture and, for the first time, perhaps convince Daemon to do what's for the better good of the world rather than what's good for himself and his ego."
Patel was asked how they pulled off Daenerys and, while she dodged the question of whether that was Emilia Clarke or a stand-in, the filmmaker talked in detail about how they achieved the standout sequence.
"I don't know about some of those things, because they were above my pay grade. The big thing that was exciting about the vision is that we had this gigantic soundstage, and the stage had different pieces of the vision set up on it, so it was like you had these mini shoots happening. We had the White Walkers, we had Daemon walking through the dead corpses that was supposed to signify the end of dragons, we had the Daenerys section where you have the dragons coming back, we had the eggs, we had the weirwood tree, so it was just amazing to walk onto that set. I thought production did such a great job of organizing how we were going to shoot everything very quickly."
"This was one of those moments where you really feel the beauty of cinema. I put together these storyboards, then the storyboards goes to all the departments, so you've got costumes, you've got casting, you've got Jim Clay, our production designer, basically creating everything off of these storyboards. For example, I was saying, "These roots to the tree, let's make them look like umbilical cords, as if this is your history, this is where you came from, Daemon." Jim Clay brought it to life, and then they went to visual effects where they brought the roots to life so that they were palpating like an umbilical cord. All the different areas of filmmaking came together for that vision, and it truly was a vision. Lastly, of course, Catherine Goldschmidt, our brilliant cinematographer, made it all come together through light and shape."
"This was one of the most rewarding and challenging moments of my career in television. When I got this vision on the script, it was pretty much bullet points of these visuals, and then it was a collaboration between Ryan and me and Sara Hess, our writer of the episode and executive producer, so it was just awesome to be able to take things one step further and sort of write the transitions of all these moments. I've never been able to do something like that with my job in television, and I'm quite honored that I had the opportunity. I loved every minute of it."
The entirety of House of the Dragon season 2 is now streaming on Max. While Patel wouldn't confirm whether that was a body double portraying Daenerys, we can now confirm it was thanks to some newly revealed behind-the-scenes photos...