Queens' gambit: “House of the Dragon” stars preview season 2's 'march to war'

Our Westeros royals — Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke — are back to get the next battle off and running.

When queens war, dragons weep.

The glint from a single tear sparkles against the overhead lights that bathe the battlefield in London's Blue Sky Studios — a life-sized black-and-green chess board where two monarchs seek to topple each other. Emma D'Arcy, known in Game of Thrones circles as Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen of HBO's House of the Dragon, stands on one side, facing down Olivia Cooke, representing Alicent Hightower, Rhaenyra's former childhood friend and the dowager queen mother of her usurper. Before they can each make their power plays on this chilled Sunday afternoon in March, a crew member calls out.

"The dragon's crying!"

She's referring to the black knight, a 3D-printed chess piece custom-made in the likeness of Rhaenyra's dragon, Syrax. There's a build-up of varnish leaking down the camera-facing eye, freshly coated so it pops in the frame. It's as if Syrax herself knows what will happen when her rider makes a move: the commencement of the Dance of the Dragons, perhaps the most tragic civil war to ever break out in the fantasy world of Westeros. 

As written by A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin in his companion book Fire and Blood, not only does this conflict topple the once-imperious Targaryen Empire, but it leads to the near extinction of dragonkind by the time a certain silver-haired Khaleesi begins her ascent hundreds of years later in the timeline of Game of Thrones. And after the tumultuous events of a Golden Globe-winning freshman season that set the stage, House of the Dragon season 2 (premiering June 16) places the more proverbial chess pieces on the board so the battle can truly begin. People will die, dragons will perish, and Westeros will never be the same.

"Season 2 is the march to war," showrunner and co-creator Ryan Condal ominously intones weeks later in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “It's really a cold war because each side is trying to undeniably win the throne for themselves without going to all-out dragon war. We do that through plotting and backstabbing and assassination and spy games and all the things that you would see in a classic James Bond Cold War thriller."

You know who’s not crying, though? Cooke. Back at the EW cover shoot, the 30-year-old Sound of Metal and Slow Horses star falls into giggle fits take after take, which kills the warfare vibe they're trying to channel. In her defense, she shares a silent joke with D'Arcy. They are on a life-size chess board so only one thing is on their minds: that Harry Potter-inspired TikTok trend. The two stars can't help but whisper to each other, "Once I make my move, the Queen will take me…"

"Honest to God, when we walked on and I saw the chess board, I was like, 'Well, this is over.' It's in my head the whole time," Cooke says later. "I was like, 'This is torture. We physically cannot do this.'" Which is funny considering she doesn't TikTok herself: "I refuse to do it. It's just sad how you work for eight months and it f---ing gets reduced to a f---ing TikTok, and that makes me sad."

Cooke seems to be referring to a specific experience she and D'Arcy had in 2022. Shortly after appearing at San Diego Comic-Con that July for the cast's first public gathering at a splashy Hall H panel, the pair shot promos for HBO. "We were put into this room and we were just so jet-lagged," Cooke remembers. They had to ask each other questions written on slips of paper that they picked out of a bowl in the shape of a cracked-open dragon egg. It was then Cooke asked D'Arcy a question that spawned a thousand TikTok stitches: "What's your drink of choice?"

D'Arcy's reply — a playfully measured, casually cool "Negroni Spagliato with prosecco in it," followed by a "Stunnin'!" from Cooke in a full-on Greater Manchester accent — took off online, sparking thirsty comments from LGBTQ viewers, as well as fan art and a custom Google Search animatic. "I don't have anything illuminating to say on it because it's very hard to know how to react when you become a meme," D'Arcy says. Cooke was more conflicted about it. "We were just trying to make each other laugh. There's no rhyme or reason to it," she says. "I did hate it for a very long time. I was in the pub. A woman opened the door for me and she said with a thick Spanish accent, 'Stunnin'!' I was just like, 'Oh my God. Over a decade's worth of work reduced to a single word in my lexicon."

Nowadays, the actors appreciate all that response to a seemingly innocuous moment. People were clearly reacting to the natural chemistry D'Arcy and Cooke have with each other off screen as well as on. It's that instantaneous connection that still gives House of the Dragon its fire. And even as season 2 begins to adapt sections of Martin's book that mention Rhaenyra and Alicent less and less, series writer Sara Hess affirms D'Arcy and Cooke are still very much the focus of the show. "There's so many ways that women are written out or just ignored in the historical record," she says. "Obviously, Fire and Blood is a fictional thing, but if you bring that same thought process to it… that was very interesting to me."

The Blacks

A completely different meme comes to mind when D'Arcy discusses season 2: "Support women's rights and women's wrongs." Sitting in their London living room, in between rehearsals for the Royal Court Theatre's new adaptation of Maggie Nelson's Bluets, D'Arcy explains "political Targaryenism," which exists between two poles. "One of chosen moderation and one of fire and volatility," they say. "I certainly think that Rhaenyra is somewhat unleashed this season and is able to have more fluidity between those poles. In season 1, for reasons of her position, she was constantly moderating her desire. This season really investigates rage and maybe in particular a woman's rage."

After the death of King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) in season 1, Rhaenyra's adversaries at court moved quickly to usurp the Iron Throne behind her back and crown her half brother, Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), in her place. The two sides couldn't be more divided. Those supporting Rhaenyra's claim take the nickname "the Blacks" and those supporting Aegon are known as "the Greens." The conflict passes the point of no return one rain-swept night, as seen in the season 1 finale: Aegon's brother Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) decides to take out old childhood grievances on his nephew, Rhaenyra's son Lucerys "Luke" Velaryon (Elliot Grihault), while the two act as emissaries trying to sway House Baratheon to their side. Aemond chases the more gentle Luke through the sky on dragonback over the stronghold of Storm's End, but the one-eyed prince (he lost the other one in his youth during a skirmish with a younger Luke) can't fully control his mount, the colossal Vhagar, who so easily tears him to shreds. 

D'Arcy says season 2 "absolutely hits the ground running" after that finale, which can be seen in some respects as a teaser for the next eight-episode chapter in this tragedy. (Hess declines to comment on the reduced season 2 order from 10 episodes to eight, but notes, "It wasn't really our choice.") The very last tracking shot, which ended in a close-up of Rhaenyra as she learns of Luke's death, offers a visual representation of what D'Arcy is talking about. "Rhaenyra is a person devastated. She's rigid with grief," they say. "Grief can be a really dislocating force. It can separate us from our family, from our friends, from our allies, almost as if the bereft person remains with the dead. And, of course, she's going to have to find some way of traveling back to the world of the living in order to fight for her inheritance."

Maintaining her throne becomes a sentimental matter. "To wear his crown is to keep him alive in some way," D'Arcy continues. "So the political desire becomes a personal one. For me, that's when the show really starts to live."

Other key season 2 elements were conveniently name-dropped in last year's season finale: While standing around the Painted Table — Rhaenyra's war map from her fortress at Dragonstone — the queen mentions the current lord of Winterfell, Cregan Stark, while her husband/uncle Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) suggests Harrenhal could serve as a base of operations for their forces in the Riverlands. Tom Taylor (The Dark Tower) is now set to debut as Cregan when Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett), another of Rhaenyra's sons, arrives in the North to drum up support for his mother; and Daemon is heading to the storied (and supposedly cursed) castle of House Strong.

The dueling narratives of Martin's Fire and Blood — which chronicles these events through multiple, often conflicting sources — play with what may or may not have transpired in both of these locations without definitively stating much. One account suggests Jace fell in love with a bastard by the name of Sara Snow at Winterfell, despite his betrothal to his stepsister, Lady Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antonia). Hess seeks to temper what fans may be forecasting for that storyline in the HBO adaptation. "Expect very little," she says of Sara Snow. "Our POV is the Targaryens, and our POV is split between King's Landing, Dragonstone, and then when Daemon goes to Harrenhal. We just don't have the eyes to really be everywhere at the same time."

Harrenhal is a much more prominent fixture. The fortress itself is said to be haunted, a fact used to blame all sorts of strange occurrences over the years — including the fire Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) started that killed his family in season 1. Whether the curse is real isn't something House of the Dragon will necessarily answer, but Condal and Hess certainly enjoyed playing with that element to further explore Daemon.

"There's a haunted goat!" Hess eagerly reveals. So, kind of like Black Phillip from Robert Eggers' 2015 horror hit The Witch? "I mean, a little bit," she says. "We definitely were thinking of it as [The Shining's] Overlook Hotel. It's super fun in that it's atmospheric." Hess also mentions Alys Rivers, a new character this season played by Gayle Rankin (GLOW). Alys served as a wet nurse to many of the babes born at Harrenhal over the years, but like Melisandre from Game of Thrones, she courts the supernatural and no one knows her true age.

"Nobody's giving birth to a smoke baby, let's put it that way," Hess clarifies of Alys. All this is meant to bear down on Daemon in the Macbeth-ian sense when he arrives at Harrenhal. "He can't sleep. There's weird shit going on. He's not sure if it's real or if it's in his own head," Hess continues. "We just wanted to have unexplained things and then use that as a conduit to lay him open a little more than he would be in normal life."

"Season 2 is more of an introduction to a lot of us," says Abubakar Salim (Raised by Wolves), who's joined as Alyn of Hull. Those who have read Fire and Blood will know of Alyn and his brother Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), but in the context of the series, his origins are strategically saved for a surprise later on this season.

What we do know is Alyn will be introduced as a sailor in the Velaryon fleet who served in the Stepstones campaign. Beyond that, Salim remains vague about the character — even though, as a fan of Martin's lexicon, he too knows where Alyn ends up: "As much as he exudes confidence, he doesn't know who he is. The actions that he does throughout Fire and Blood, that are recorded anyway, are of a man who's conflicted."

Steve Toussaint — returning as Lord Corlys of House Velaryon, whom Rhaenyra eventually names her Hand of the Queen — plays it equally coy. "Yes, that is certainly a new dynamic," he says of the incoming Alyn and Addam. "One of the things that Corlys is having to deal with is past indiscretions coming back to haunt him."

When Martin's Fire and Blood, written as a fictionalized encyclopedia on the Targaryen empire, gets to this point in the historical ledger, it begins to veer away from Rhaenyra and Alicent's point of view to focus on all of the above. As Condal puts it, "The thing about medieval times is that wars happen very slowly. A throne is usurped, but then you don't suddenly have Black Hawk helicopters bombing out of the horizon and fast-roping Marines onto the ground in enemy territory. You have to raise armies." But D'Arcy speaks of their so-dubbed Black Queen as being active in her own right behind the scenes.

"In season 1, a lot of Rhaenyra's power came from her ability to manipulate her male peers," they explain. "Here, she begins to distance herself from the men of her council and, to some extent, she kind of goes AWOL. When she returns to court, she's looking to new power structures, to consolidate female power, to different methodologies, as opposed to trying to fit into a male praxis."

The Greens

"It's a benefit and a hardship, in that there's not as much roadmap there," Hess says of filling in the gaps the book leaves in Rhaenyra and Alicent's story. "We had to flesh out all of those things, but I think it is a benefit in that we're not going against anything that's in the book. It's not that it's saying Alicent did this and we're having her do something else, it's that she disappears from the narrative. It's really interesting to think about because women do disappear from historical narratives."

If Rhaenyra begins season 2 in a position of great weakness following the death of her son and the loss of her throne, Alicent begins in a position of great power. She's the mother of the current king and, more importantly, has his ear. And yet, Hess notes, "The story of this season is that they change places."

"Who can she trust? There's no one around her," Cooke elaborates. "Everyone, it seems, has been spying on her. It's this sense of peak paranoia within her own home. That had to really permeate throughout my performance. All of a sudden she's of no use to anyone. She's done what she was supposed to do — put her son on the throne — and now she's discarded. Who is she if she can't be the person to implement wisdom?" That loss, however, becomes freeing: "Oh, I could do whatever the f--- I want and no one cares. All of a sudden I'm not important. I'm not a player," Cooke says of Alicent. "In a very giddy way, that's really novel and exciting."

It also allows for other, more supporting players to come into focus. After appearing in only two and three episodes of season 1, respectively, Glynn-Carney and Mitchell take more prominent roles as Aegon and Aemond moving forward. That was one of Condal’s goals in season 2 —  giving more focus to the children of Rhaenyra and Alicent.

"It's a gift to play a character like Aegon. He's absolute chaos," Glynn-Carney says. "He's unpredictable. He's a living, walking nightmare. So it's great fun." Fans have been tempted to compare Aegon to another demented prince of Westeros, but after meeting Jack Gleeson at 2022's first official Game of Thrones convention in Los Angeles, Glynn-Carney pushes back on the Joffrey comparisons. "We saw him not wanting to be made king and rejecting the responsibility, but we see Aegon recognize the way he's seen externally from his peers, his family, everyone from King's Landing. And we see him try to combat that," he says.

As for the other brother, "You're going to see Aemond in full throttle," Mitchell teases. "You're either with him or you're against him." But first, he has to break some news to his family that he killed his nephew. "Yeah…" Mitchell begins. "Aemond is faced with a choice. He can either return home to King's Landing and admit it was a moment of weakness and be at the hands of Rhaenyra's mercy, or he can become the most wanted man in the realm, so to speak."

D'Arcy jests how they now only see Mitchell from across the parking lot at Leavesden Studios, because the characters across the Blacks and Greens are separated for most of the season. (Condal mentions how production shoots "two feature film-sized units every day" simultaneously — one dubbed the "Fire" unit, the other the "Blood" unit — to meet their deadlines.) I passed Ewan in the car park. We sort of nodded to each other. It's almost like we have agreed to silence or something, which I kind of enjoy honestly," D'Arcy explains.

Of her House of the Dragon children, Cooke further praises Phia Saban, who plays her onscreen daughter and Aegon's wife, Helaena Targaryen. But the Hightower family continues to grow as they recruit more allies against the Blacks. Freddie Fox joins the fray as Gwayne Hightower, Alicent's brother who's been stationed at Oldtown, the ancestral seat of their house. Cooke never shared the screen with Fox on their Apple TV+ thriller Slow Horses, but she now confirms he's "an absolute dream to work with," calling The Great and The Gentlemen actor a "wonderful, soulful, silly man."

"Alicent and Gwayne have been pretty much estranged their whole lives," she says. "So trying to find this familial sibling bond between strangers was really interesting."

HBO may play up whose side the viewer should be on, the Blacks or the Greens, with trailers and marketing, but it's inevitably going to be difficult picking Aegon after what the Hightowers did to Rhaenyra. At least when it comes to Alicent, Cooke never saw the character as a villain, but a product of her circumstances. As a girl, she was groomed by her father, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), to be an immaculate chess player within the game of thrones. "There's no way that she could have grown up to have a gooey center," Cooke comments. "Something's been cauterized along the way for this stalwart sense of duty."

Viewers may be tempted to change their minds (maybe) after some particularly hard-to-watch events are adapted from Fire and Blood. Two words: "Blood" and "Cheese." To mention those words to the cast is to cross their NDAs. "God!" Cooke exclaims. "I'd just say, it is Game of Thrones, expect the worst. Expect the very worst possible, and then double it. I dunno what else to say without heavily spoiling it, but it is heinous."

"A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones have really conditioned people to expect the unexpected and expect the horrible," Condal says. "But, yeah, that one's pretty horrific. We'll see what people make of what's to come."

Endgame

D'Arcy and Cooke stand resolute in their roles, even if they won't admit it themselves. If season 1 was their baptism by fire, i.e. learning how to navigate the daunting experience of leading the next Game of Thrones, they now carry themselves with more confidence. "There's a lot to be said for knowing the show you're in," D'Arcy muses. The freshman run involved multiple recastings to depict the passage of time over years, so the two leads only appeared in four episodes as their characters in adulthood. That's not the case in season 2, which nixes big time jumps. They're both in it for the long haul.

"Four episodes? Lovely. Do a bit of work, a few weeks off, it's perfect," D'Arcy says. And now? "It was so exhausting, but also nice." Cooke is a bit more frank: "Oh my God, by the end of season 2, I was a f---ing shell of myself. I was a husk. I could not form a sentence. I was so tired. I need to implement some way of getting through season 3, if there's a season 3, to really harness as much energy as possible. It is a behemoth."

Season 2 proved to be a colossal endeavor for its creator as well. In addition to expanding the backlot at Leavesden Studios in the U.K. to accommodate even more stages, the crew also had to plot a production schedule with a looming writers' strike. The Writers Guild of America officially hit the picket lines for fair wages and workplace protections in May 2023, followed shortly by a strike from the Screen Actors Guild. While many of the writers and actors on House of the Dragon were part of those guilds, the show itself was contracted through Equity, the U.K.-based actors' union, which allowed them to continue shooting season 2 amid industry-wide anxieties.

Hess remembers being on the picket lines in the U.S. and then traveling to London to work on season 2. "It was rough. It felt real s--ty, I'm not going to lie," she says of that time. "We talked to the WGA and, ultimately, they understood that if we left the set, they were going to make it without us. I don't think the WGA loved it, but they were okay with us being there in a producing capacity."

"We were prepared for it," Condal says. "The writing really was done. The writing is always done on the show because it has to be. You cannot prep a show that is this complex [otherwise]."

Hess also praises Condal for leading the show through this tumultuous time. Season 2 marks the first chapter of House of the Dragon since Miguel Sapochnik, who shaped the first season with Condal, took a major step back from leadership duties, a development that was announced simultaneously with the addition of Game of Thrones alum Alan Taylor as a director. Hess clarifies for the curious minds that Condal is very much the sole showrunner and that Taylor's responsibilities are on par with the other episodic directors. "He picked up the tone of the show and he really delivered for us," she says.

Now, after dealing with a pandemic in season 1 and two strikes in season 2, Condal has one hope for a potential season 3: "That there's not another once-in-a-generation event looming over the show, and that we can just happily make a season without external influences slowing us down."

When Hess speaks with EW in March, she's just getting off a call with Condal about planning for the third season of House of the Dragon. What were they discussing exactly? "Nice try, but no," she demures. Condal confirms they are deep into writing a third season in the event that HBO decides they want it. They have to plan that far in advance, he explains, otherwise, it would be impossible to maintain a schedule of one new House of the Dragon season every other year. Now that he's deep into the adaptation, the show's endgame comes more and more into focus.

"You certainly don't want to rush to get to an end, but you also don't want to overstay your welcome," he declares. "You want to find this very satisfying place to go out that ties up enough loose ends and leaves others intentionally open because, as we know, this history marches on for another 150 years to Daenerys."

The world of Game of Thrones marches on, as well. A third Westeros-set live-action series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, starts production this year ahead of a planned 2025 bow. With Martin's collection of novellas as inspiration, Peter Claffey will star as Ser Duncan the Tall — a.k.a. "Dunk," a penniless squire who finds his way into a tournament and becomes a knight — alongside Dexter Sol Ansell as "Egg," the nickname of Dunk's diminutive comrade. As an executive producer, Condal serves as the Obi-Wan Kenobi (his own reference) to Ira Parker, the former House of the Dragon season 1 scribe who’s now co-writing The Hedge Knight with Martin. "I appear to Ira as a ghost every once in a while and counsel him," he says.

When asked if HBO is also picking Condal's brain about the Aegon's Conquest spinoff idea, which has Mattson Tomlin of The Batman Part II and Netflix's Terminator anime series attached, he replies, "People are picking my brain all the time. It's very early days, but we shall see."

In the meantime, he still has a war to plan. Back at London's Blue Sky Studios, Cooke stares down D'Arcy in their literal game of chess. The moves might be set, but the end result remains unknown — and as far as the characters are concerned, neither is interested in losing. The actors, however, are more focused on something else as they once again start to whisper, "Not me. Not Hermione. You!"

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Directed by Kristen Harding & Alison Wild

Photography by Rachell Smith

Motion - DP: Simon Plunket; Steadicam Op: Henry Landgrebe; 1st AC: Matt Farrant; 2nd AC: James Tilyard; Gaffer: Paul Burns; Sparks: Daniel Burns, Leyt Said, Rob Gifford

Set - Production Designer: Trish Stephenson/Patricia McMahon; Set Assistants: Hannah Knowles, Anya Thomas, Daniel Underwood

Photo - Assistants: Emma Pottinger, Ethan Humphries, Klaudija Avotina; Digital Tech: Shivy K/Digital 4 Creative

Post-Production - Color Correction: Carlos Flores/Forager; VFX: Carlos Morales/Forager; Design: Chuck Kerr; Composer: Ramin Djawadi

Video Interview - DP: Phil Bradshaw; Cam Op: Joe Ferrari; Sound: Jack Sandham; Video Producer: Louis Leuci; Editor: Edwin Clavijo

EW Creative - Photo Director: Alison Wild; Head of Video: Kristen Harding; Creative Director: Chuck Kerr

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.