One of the coolest moments in this past week’s House of the Dragon Season 3 premiere lasted only a single split second. About halfway through HBO‘s House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1 “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood,” the new dragon riders on Team Black came face-to-face with one of the most enigmatic beings in all of Westeros: a Green Man.
We learn in the House of the Dragon Season 3 premiere that Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) has dispatched the dragonseeds, aka Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), Ulf the White (Tom Bennett), and Hugh the Hammer (Kieran Bew), to Harrenhal to lay in wait for Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) to arrive on Vhagar. The idea is that the combined fire power of Seasmoke, Silverwing, and Vermithor, respectively, will be able to kill the mammoth-sized Vhagar and her rider.
Harrenhal famously sits along side a lake known as the Gods Eye, so named for the one mystical island, called the Isle of Faces, that lies in its center. The Isle of Faces is deeply important to the history of Westeros. It’s where the First Men and the Children of the Forest came to a detente known as the Pact and it’s where the Green Men — strange horned beings with green, mottled skin and magical energy — live among weirwood trees.
While the dragonseeds bide their time along the banks of the Gods Eye, one Green Man (and a goat) startles Ulf while he’s attempting to go to the bathroom in the woods. Addam and Hugh also get a split-second view of the mysterious creature. While their characters didn’t care for this brief encounter of the magical kind, House of the Dragon stars Tom Bennett, Clinton Liberty, and Kieran Bew had fun with the situation.
“He’s like my best friend,” Clinton Liberty gushed to DECIDER. “Oh, my god. I was chatting to him the whole time about his life, and I can’t remember the wonderful actor that plays him, but he was a dream to work with.”
“What was it like for you boys?” Liberty asked his co-stars.
“Pretty spooky,” Kieran Bew said.
“I didn’t see him,” Tom Bennett quipped. “I was busy having a poo up the hill and I saw a goat that roared at me and I said, ‘You know what? Bun this. I’ve had enough.’”
“‘Bun this. I’m gone,’” Liberty joked.
“I’m out.” Bennett continued. “So I didn’t see — if I’d have seen the Green Man, as well, [I’d be] double quick out of there. A goat roared at me!”
“That’s so true, because they’re literally all over the books as well. So when I saw them and saw him for the first time, I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever,’” Liberty said, explaining his excitement.
“Yeah, it’s quite unsettling,” Bew said. “And what was weird is that they crafted the set really, really carefully on the side of this lake in Wales. But the trees around where they brought him out with these antlers, all looked like antlers. So it looked like actually, on reflection, when you looked back, it looked like it’s something that you did make up or there are lots more of them. It was really spooky.”
Bennett then asked, “Am I wrong in thinking he had blue legs?”
“Yeah, so it was funny because at a certain point the top half of his body was completely done and with aesthetics, and prosthetics, and stuff, and then the bottom half was completely blue,” Liberty said. “So, it was so it was funny at times, but it was class. It was really fun.”
This isn’t the first time HBO’s House of the Dragon has given George R.R. Martin fans a taste of some of the author’s deepest lore — a Green Man also popped up in the Season 2 finale — but it does represent a fun doubling down on Hot D’s commitment to bringing the most metal parts of Fire & Blood and A Song of Ice and Fire to life.
House of the Dragon: Who Are the Green Men?
The Green Men (or green men, depending upon your persuasion) are a sacred sect of men (beings?) dedicated to protecting the weirwoods that live on the mythic Isle of Faces. The old nursery stories of Westeros allege that they have green skin and antlers on their head. Old Nan famously told Bran Stark that they ride elks instead of horses. In their cynicism, the maesters of Oldtown believe the green men are just normal men who wear green garments and antler crowns as part of their traditions.
In George R.R. Martin’s A Sword of Swords, Jojen Reed tells Bran the story of “the Knight of the Laughing Tree” — aka the tale of how Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark fell in love during the Tourney at Harrenhal — and he talks about a crannogman (aka his father Howland Reed) who was in Harrenhal to meet with the Green Men.
Martin also refers to the Green Men in Fire & Blood, noting that Addam of Hull visits them for advice during the bloody events of House of the Dragon. Given Clinton Liberty’s enthusiasm for working with the Green Man in Episode 1, does that suggest we might see this go down later in House of the Dragon Season 3? (Is that why they’re best friends?)
New episodes of House of the Dragon come out on Sundays at 9 PM ET on HBO and HBO Max.