Last night’s House of the Dragon Season 3 premiere finally brought George R.R. Martin‘s infamous Battle of the Gullet to life on the epic scale it so deserved. HBO spared no expense on the maritime battle, which wasn’t just a collision of Team Black’s and Team Green’s naval forces, but a bitter personal feud played out to its bloody, messy end.
**Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1, now streaming on HBO Max**
We learn in House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1 that the Triarchy didn’t agree to join the Hightowers’ cause against Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) because they care about Westerosi politics. No, in fact, they don’t care who sits on the Iron Throne. Triarchy admiral Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn) made the decision to rally her fleet of ruthless pirates so she could enact revenge upon the Sea Snake, Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint).
As soon as the battle kicks off, Lohar ignores the sage strategic advice of Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) and goes out of her way to hunt down Corlys. She dispatches ships to leave the main battle to sack and burn the Sea Snake’s beloved castle, High Tide, and breaks away from her own fleet to chase her nemesis down in a thrilling sequence that shows off Corlys’s true prowess as a sailor navigating the treacherous “Dragon’s Teeth” from memory.
House of the Dragon star Steve Toussaint told DECIDER how much these scenes meant to his character.
“For that sequence, well, it’s great. I forget what the exact turn of phrase Loni [Peristere] used — our director. [He] would just say, ‘This is the Sea Snake. This is where we see who he is, man. This is the money,’” Toussaint said. “So it was lovely to have that opportunity, to be the guy who can lead you through the Dragon’s Teeth or whatever it is, just from pure memory.”
While Corlys takes the helm to lead his men to safety, Lohar follows. Her logic is that the Sea Snake will show them the secret to getting back this narrow pass of shallow water and jagged rock. Lohar is so intent on killing the Sea Snake, she throws her own men — including Tyland Lannister — overboard to lighten her load and hasten her speed. Eventually, the Triarchy admiral rams into Corlys’s ship and they board. A truly nasty, incredibly personal fight breaks out. While House of the Dragon only hints at the Sea Snake and Sharako Lohar’s backstory, actress Abigail Thorn revealed that she made up her own history in her head.
“I have an answer in my head that I can’t say because I don’t have the power to make it canon of what happened between them,” Thorn teased. “Because I needed something in my head everyday. Because Steve Toussaint, as I’m sure you know, was a lovely man. And so to get up at 4 AM, six days a week, for three weeks, and try to murder him, you’ve got to have a reason. You gotta have a pretty strong reason to do it.”
“So I had to, like, invent this thing that Corlys did and what she sees when she sees him and his ship and what she really means in that line, like, ‘the persecution and slaughter of my mates for more than 20 years,.’” she said. “So I had to create some pretty, pretty strong lore in my head. I write it all down in a notebook.”
As the battle intensifies, the Sea Snake and Lohar finally clash — and both fall overboard at the same time. House of the Dragon leaves Corlys Velaryon’s fate up in the air for now, but lets Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) avenge his father in dramatic fashion. When Alyn sees Corlys fall into the water, he cries out for his father for the first time and then immediately snaps into action, physically beating, choking, and stabbing Lohar to death.
“It’s a moment I feel that is very, very raw and very real in regards to moments of crisis,” Abubakar Salim told DECIDER. “What Alyn witnesses is the potential or the actual loss of something that could have been really beautiful, and I think that tears him asunder.”
“In that moment, I think there is that almost rage and anger, not necessarily towards Lohar, but more so towards what could have been, and I think like that’s where he pulls his power from and where it all kind of comes out,” he continued. “I think especially when it came to even fighting with Lohar — well, with Abigail [Thorn]. Abigail is incredible, by the way, just an absolute machine — there was, I think there was a real responsibility for me to kind of depict Alyn as kind of primal and raw as he is. I think that was where the goal is, also to show that he’s not one to be trifled with in moments of crisis.”
“There’s a reason why he is the son of the Sea Snake. You know, I think that was a moment to really kind of show that,” Salim said.
Thorn described shooting this final deadly fight scene as “mood whiplash” because Salim was “so nice and so charming” in between the twenty to thirty takes they shot per day.
“I mean, you know, even when it’s just pretend, when you are a woman being strangled to death by a much larger man and you’re underwater when this is happening… It was demanding,” Thorn said. “But I was grateful that Abu and everyone on set was so lovely and kind and professional. And yeah, I don’t have the words to say how nice it was working with all of them.”
It was nice to work on the Battle of Gullet, but maybe not so nice to die during it.
House of the Dragon returns next Sunday, June 28 at 9 PM ET on HBO and HBO Max.