HBO announced that filming is officially underway on the third season of House of the Dragon back in April, and we now have some fairly late casting news that fans of George R.R. Martin's Fire and Blood have been eagerly anticipating.
Deadline reports that Annie Shapero (Red Skies, The Border) will play Alysanne Blackwood, aka Black Aly, in season 3. In the source material, Blackwood is a mighty warrior who ends up siding with Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) in the Dance of the Dragons before marrying Lord Cregan Stark (Tom Taylor.)
In the season 2 finale, Rhaenyra and Daemon (Matt Smith) put their differences aside and joined forces as they prepared to launch a full-scale attack on King's Landing.
We'll be meeting quite a few new faces in season 3, with James Norton (Happy Valley) previously joining the cast as Ormund Hightower, along with Tommy Flanagan (Sons of Anarchy, Gladiator, Braveheart) as Ser Roderick Dustin, aka "Roddy the Ruin," and Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts, A Complete Unknown) as Ser Torrhen Manderly.
Showrunner Ryan Condal confirmed that the plan is for the show to conclude with a fourth season during a press conference last August, though Season 4 of the Game of Thrones prequel series has yet to be formally greenlit.
"This is certainly our biggest season to date, both in terms of ambition and just the practical size, the amount of sets," Condol tells EW. "We're cresting that narrative parabola here and starting to come down into, if not the endgame, the midpoint and getting into the late Act 2 and moving onto the start of Act 3. Anybody that's read that book knows that the narrative gets bigger and grimmer as it goes along, and the show has to match that ambition as best it possibly can."
“I will say that the war this season goes very hot, very, very quickly,” he added. “I think the people that were waiting and waiting for all of the horrible, brutal, pitiless bloodshed will be getting it in copious amounts.”
Check out the recent season 3 production video at the link below.
"The prequel series finds the Targaryen dynasty at the absolute apex of its power, with more than 15 dragons under their yoke. Most empires—real and imagined—crumble from such heights. In the case of the Targaryens, their slow fall begins almost 193 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when King Viserys Targaryen breaks with a century of tradition by naming his daughter Rhaenyra heir to the Iron Throne. But when Viserys later fathers a son, the court is shocked when Rhaenyra retains her status as his heir, and seeds of division sow friction across the realm."
House of the Dragon season 3 sees Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans reprise their respective roles. Additional returning cast includes Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Jefferson Hall, and Matthew Needham.
Season 3 directors include Loni Peristere (episodes 1,6), Clare Kilner (episodes 2,3,4), Nina Lopez-Corrado (episodes 5,7), and Andrij Parekh (episode 8).