Theo Whitman/HBO
- “House of the Dragon” wrapped its second season with a relationship-driven finale episode.
- The episode featured a confrontation between Rhaenyra and Alicent — and a major nod to “Game of Thrones.”
- Director Geeta Vasant Patel broke down the finale’s biggest moments with Business Insider.
Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the season two finale of “House of the Dragon.”
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As far as the sequence itself, I knew Daenerys was in it, and it was actually just the process for me of where does she fit in it so it actually is part of the storytelling of the sequence, so it doesn’t feel like we’re just seeing her. And so I just kept building the sequence in a way that it felt, “Okay, you’re going back. This vision is telling you there were eggs and there was a woman, and from those eggs came the dragons. And that’s how our dynasty came back. And that was the most important thing, that we were gone. It was all dead.” And that’s when Daemon is walking across all this death, and then he falls in.
All of that was metaphorical, and I just crossed my fingers that people would feel it. They wouldn’t think it. And something that Ryan really wanted was he didn’t want it to feel connected, like literal. He wanted it to feel emotional. And yet at the same time, we had to achieve something literal. So it was fantastic just going through the versions of it. The placement of Daenerys was quite intentional.
This isn’t a big, loud finale in the sense of staging a huge battle, or depicting a tragic death. We have these big character payoffs and emotional beats rather than the spectacle some might expect. How do you approach an episode like this, while also balancing having to deliver an element of finality for a season conclusion?
It’s funny, somebody was interviewing me when I did episode three, and they said, “Can’t wait for the war in episode eight!” And I told my husband, “Oh, no, everybody’s expecting a war episode.”
It’s just funny, right? I think it’s really interesting that we think a finale is a certain thing. We think it’s a certain tone, that it’s going to be this big war, this big thing exploding. When I got the script, I thought about it more as a film that’s about two people, and thought, “Okay, this is the final moment of their relationship.”
What I love about the way Sara particularly wrote the season finale is that she grounded it in relationships. We have all seen films or shows that are about people, like “Succession,” and it’s not about things exploding. And I think it was a really good call for them to have this episode be about the relationships, because that’s what it should be about. And if there happens to be action along the way, great. But if there isn’t, then fine. It shouldn’t have to be like that.
I just very much felt that we needed to deliver the dramaturgy of what was on the page for this, and also rising action, which I think all of us were quite aware of as we were filming this.
I’ve done quite a few finales at this point. And I think the fun challenge of a finale is it’s almost you’re expecting something as big, bigger than the first episode. There’s so much time taken for the first episode of every show that I’ve been on, because that’s the pilot. That’s when you need to get people to watch. And for the finale, you are rushing, rushing at the end. We’re at the end of our budgets, and you’re still trying to deliver something bigger than the pilot. So It’s very interesting from just a tactical standpoint as a team of director, DP, and AD racing to give everyone the time to deliver these huge performances, and I think everyone came through.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.