Spoilers below.
HBO’s House of the Dragon concluded its second season on Sunday with little bloodshed (except, of course, for the innocents in Sharp Point that Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) obliterated). Despite the fan speculation and hype, there was no big battle scene in the finale—a twist that left some viewers disappointed. Director Geeta Vasant Patel doesn’t typically read those types of reactions, though. “I obviously can’t give them something that’s not on the page, so I think that’s why I probably separate myself from those types of comments,” she tells ELLE.com. “I just hope that they feel we’ve done our job and delivered a strong episode as a directing team.” She also has “so much respect for [writer] Sara Hess and [showrunner] Ryan Condal for choosing to end the season with something that is about the words and the story and the dramaturgy.”
“The Queen Who Ever Was,” directed by Patel, spends its runtime setting up the chess board for the head-to-head battle between the blacks (Rhaenyra’s crew) and the greens (Aegon’s faction) that has been teased for two seasons and will likely be the central focus of season 3. The two sides shore up their allies: Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) tries and fails to make amends with his bastard son Alyn, who sails amongst his legion for the blacks; Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) sees a vision at Harrenhal that makes him recommit to Rhaenyra; and Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) sails to an island held by the Triarchy where he must win over “bonkers” Admiral Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn) for the greens’ cause.
While their devotees are organizing, the women behind the warring Targaryen sides meet in secret for the second time this season, this time with Alicent (Olivia Cooke) approaching Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) with her tail between her legs. She acknowledges that her sons have escalated the conflict too far and reluctantly agrees to Rhaenyra’s demand: a son for a son. Unfortunately Alicent’s promise won’t be one she can keep; Larys (Matthew Needham) is smuggling Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) out of King’s Landing as they speak.
Various shots of armies marching, including a shot of Alicent’s as-yet-unseen son Daeron flying on a blue dragon, Tessarion, culminate in two striking shots of the central women to close the episode. Rhaenyra is flanked by a cross-section of ancient scrolls, herself miniscule in the history she feels entitled to protect. Alicent, meanwhile, stands on an open landscape, finally free from the duty she’s felt shackled by her entire life.
Ahead, Patel—whose past credits include Under the Bridge, Ahsoka, and The Great—digs into those closing shots, how she approached the introduction of a new character in a finale, how she constructed Daemon’s life-changing vision, and more.
Geeta Vasant Patel.
A lot of fans were likely expecting a big battle in the season finale, but the episode was much more muted and set things up for the seasons to come. Why did the team decide to take this approach and save the battle for season 3?
It was really what’s in front of me on the page. Knowing that it was a season finale, the conversation [with showrunner Ryan Condal] was that it needs to be rising action. It needs to somehow rise from episode 7, which was action-oriented. The thing that we all were focused on was how to make sure that this beautiful conversation between the two protagonists at the end of episode 8 was as thrilling as some dragon fight. I have so much respect for Sara and Ryan for choosing to end the season finale with something that is about the words and the story and the dramaturgy. It speaks to how artful the show really is—they could have easily put a big action scene in the finale, and thought from the outside-in of what fans wanted, but instead they thought from the inside-out of what was in their heart. I really support the fact that it wasn’t trying to give fans what they were expecting, as much as it was just telling the story with pacing that was seductive and hopefully suspenseful when you watched it.
There’s a tonal reversal in Alicent and Rhaenyra’s scene compared to when we saw them together earlier this season. Why does Alicent make the decision to go to Rhaenyra and agree to sacrifice “a son for a son” at the end of the episode?
There’s a scene where Alicent is struggling with her son, Aemond, and we all see that she’s lost control of the Red Keep. And, unfortunately, she’s played a part in losing that control. She’s complicit. The sense of feeling powerless, she’s tired of it. She wants to take action and I think she’s driven to visit Rhaenyra.
Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra and Olivia Cooke as Alicent.
The season ends on two beautiful closing shots: one of Rhaenyra framed by years of history on scrolls, and another with Alicent looking out onto her horizon and future. Tell me about choosing those as the final images of the season.
I’ve done quite a few finales at this point, and the one thing that I’ve started doing is going back to the first episode. I treat the season like a film: The first episode and the last episode need to mirror each other. The very first thing that Ryan wrote in the first episode of season 2 had to do with the idea that duty is sacrifice. When we come to the finale, of course, Rhaenyra says to Alicent, “You must sacrifice. If this is what you think your duty is, you must sacrifice. I’m tired of you just paying lip service to everything and not doing anything.”
I realized Rhaenyra is trapped. This came from something Ryan said: Alicent had taken the burden off her own shoulders and given it to Rhaenyra. If you extrapolate from that, Alicent is now free, especially given episode 7 and the truth of what she felt for the first time. But Rhaenyra is trapped with the burden that she has to now wage war and do exactly what she doesn’t want to do: kill innocent people. I was looking at the scrolls, and I thought, she’s in a cobweb. She’s caught in this cobweb, and their actions are related and consequential.
I storyboarded an entire scroll wall that she’s ensconced in and she’s this tiny, tiny person. It wouldn’t work with the actual scrolls that are there but Catherine Goldschmidt, my DP, and I sat down with our production designer, and their department put together a panel for us that we can move where we wanted to and make Rhaenyra as small as we wanted. Then, for Alicent we went out to the water, and we waited for the sun to be the exact right place. We just had a few seconds to shoot that moment. We had to visually make sure everything matches perfectly, and that there’s this symbiotic relationship between the two of them. I had to make this big and yet so small.
Alicent (Olivia Cooke) in the closing scenes of the season 2 finale.
Daemon’s vision of the future is the reason he confirms that he’s bending the knee for Rhaenyra. Can you break down how that vision came about, the Easter eggs for Game of Thrones fans, and how you constructed the filmmaking?
In the script there was a list of images. The mission was to take these images and visually tell a story to Daemon that will convince him that he’s a small piece of a bigger world, and he has a part to play in this. That is a really tall order because, as we all know, Daemon doesn’t think that way. Daemon thinks of Daemon. So this was such a huge shift for him that had, of course, been helped along through the entire season, and this was the final moment where he would be convinced that he would not be the one to sit on that throne ever, that it needed to be Rhaenyra in order to save the future.
I took these images and sat down with a storyboard artist and started trying to piece them together, creating linking pieces. Daenerys was listed, but there was no description. It would be easy to just see her, but that isn’t what the story is about. That doesn’t tell you anything. Daemon doesn’t know who Daenerys is; he’s not having a fan moment. Daemon is watching the story of his world, and he knows that all the dragons were dead, that this dynasty was done, and then someone brought the dragons back. It’s a silhouetted figure—it doesn’t matter who it is to him. The most important thing is that we actually help audiences feel Daemon’s point of view, and when he sees Rhaenyra on the throne, that’s the first time you’re seeing a face.
The episode introduces a few new characters, like Sharako Lohar. What is your approach to establishing a new character in a short time span and what was most important to you to show about her?
That is a really perceptive question—it was a big part of my job this season. Usually a season finale has the same characters but our daring, masterful writers decide that they’re gonna give us this new character. There’s a lot of things that go into it. First of all, it was world building. Ryan really wanted it to feel uncomfortable for anyone that’s from the outside. So when [Tyland] Lannister came, he needed to feel like this wasn’t something he understood. He needed to be on his back heel. I thought about India, honestly. I thought about my first job working in conflict zones like Kashmir and Bosnia. I thought about Japan, all these countries that I’ve worked in through the State Department, and things that made me uncomfortable in each of those countries as an American. But it had to be its own culture that still felt real because sometimes if you put all these weird things together, it’s a fantasy film.
She had to fall into this world and also feel really authentic and not feel like she’s wearing Indian clothes and Japanese shoes. It needed to be of this place, of this culture. Sara has worked in comedy and in drama, and she literally wrote in the script, “Sharako was bonkers.” When I met Abigail [Thorn] who was going to play Sharako, she and I both felt the weight of introducing a new character and having to feel invested in her and feel that she’s authentic right away. I felt the power of doing rehearsals and improvisations of someone’s background to help the actor have the tools they need to feel comfortable in their own new skin. We started improvising Sharako’s life all the way from childhood, her pain, her loves, her journey, what secrets she’s keeping still. By the time that Abigail was shooting, she knew her character and was able to just walk in and feel of this world.
Abigail Thorn as Sharako Lohar.
Speaking of Lohar, she tells Tyland that she’d like to have children with him, though she means he’d go to bed with her wives and not her—but we don’t actually see that happen, which feels like a departure from GoT. What is your approach to sex on this show?
Actually, that’s how it was scripted. I wasn’t missing it in that section, though. As you know, I also did episode 3 where there was some nudity, and I don’t really like doing sex scenes. Most actors don’t like doing them either. But for episode 3, it was my idea to do the fellatio and to show Aemond’s full frontal nudity. My brain is a story brain, and both of these moments felt story-driven. That moment was about this young squire being taken out and they wanted to shock him with sex. That was a point of view moment. We’re always concerned with point of view on the show. We want you to feel like you’re in someone’s head. Right after he sees that, the story shifts, and it goes to Aegon giving Aemond a hard time in the booth where he’s sitting there nude. It’s about Aemond putting on his armor emotionally and not caring. And that’s why seeing his penis was important and story driven. Because would you show your naked body? No, but someone who doesn’t care would, and I think that helped us be in his point of view. So when Ewan and I talked about it, we agreed that we need to do this.
The core of the story is the relationship between two women, Alicent and Rhaenyra. This finale was penned and directed by women—how do you feel like that affects the storytelling and the filmmaking at hand?
It’s been great to have diversity on this show: backgrounds, sexuality, geography. All of that has informed the show. Sara and I are both mothers. I remember discussing the Aegon scene with her, the fact that Alicent has to give up her son. It’s very easy to think that, “Oh, she’s gonna give him up and go and that’s cool, because he’s gonna die anyway, or he’s messed up, or he’s a terrible person.” But that’s not how it is in real life. When you have a son, he’s your son, and you love him with all your might. You’re the one person put on earth to love him no matter what he does. So that scene at the end of episode 8, when Sara wrote it, was about the sacrifice. That was really important to Sarah and myself and Olivia, to convey that this is a true sacrifice. It’s not something that’s just an easy decision.
For you personally, what is it like directing and producing House of the Dragon, a piece of the Game of Thrones universe, as a woman of color?
It’s the greatest honor. I started out in scripted television as an assistant, and then I didn’t think I had any talent, because it’s very intimidating working in Hollywood. I went to Kashmir and made a documentary about the war happening there, because my background is in conflict and human rights. What I learned in that war zone has stayed with me and informed so many scenes that I’ve worked on for this show, and in general, being from India has informed so much of what I’ve done in my career. There are so many scenes I pull from things that I’ve seen, because it’s just so much more raw. There are conflicts still going on there—eye for an eye is still going on, unfortunately, between Muslims and Hindus. I finally got an agent when I was 35 years old, and I told them I want to work on Game of Thrones. It was that simple. That was like eight years ago, and they just laughed. Here I was, I just made Meet the Patels, this comedy documentary with no actors but my brother. I just kept trying to get experience, to be viable, to have the experience to direct Game of Thrones. When House of the Dragon came, I got my interview with them because they heard that I was obsessed with the show. I put together this video to show them all the shots I had designed, and put it to Game of Thrones music. I got the job. So when you ask me what it’s like to direct on this show, it’s a dream come true.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Radhika Menon is a freelance entertainment writer, with a focus on TV and film. Her writing can be found on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more.