House of the Dragon Stars Explain the Show in 30 Seconds: 'Frustration, Death, and Wigs'
Several core HotD stars contributed to the explanation, but some of them didn’t know their own timeline — and some called it just a series about “angry blonde people.”
Summary:
- House of the Dragon Season 1 had a massive success with the audience, and Season 2 is coming to HBO Max sometime in spring or summer 2024.
- Before the release of the first series, the core cast of HotD recorded a funny promotional video summarizing the show in 30 seconds for EW.
- Their descriptions of House of the Dragon varied from grim and dark to grotesque and bizarre, including phrases like “angry blonde people.”
After the overwhelmingly successful run of Game of Thrones and its far less successful finale, the new show based on George Martin ’s books took over the crown: House of the Dragon, a prequel series about House Targaryen and its internal power struggles. Though less popular than its predecessor, it’s certainly up there.
For now, there’s only one season of House of the Dragon out, and while we’re waiting for the second series, we thought it would be nice to recap what we’ve seen so far. And what better way to do that than with the HotD stars themselves? EW called upon the core cast of the Game of Thrones prequel and gave them a task.
As part of the promotional material for Season 1, the actors were to describe as much of House of the Dragon as possible in half a minute. Emma D’Arcy, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Rhys Ifans, Eve Best, and Steve Toussaint tried their best, revealing some…peculiar details in the process. What did they say?
House of the Dragon in 30 seconds
The video starts off with an immediate factual mistake when Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) claims that House of the Dragon “starts off 300 years before Game of Thrones.” The actress misses the mark: Aegon's Conquest happened 300 years before GoT, and the prequel series takes place 200 prior to the main show’s events.
Cooke proceeds to describe House of the Dragon as “sexy and dark,” and Rhys Ifans (Otto Hightower), who played her father, adds that it’s “grieving, plotting, and lying.” Matt Smith (Daemon Targaryen) spoils all the internal struggles of House Targaryen by promising “families imploding and people cheating on one another.”
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He also teases spectacular battle scenes: “Dragons flying in the air, burning boats, burning people, burning cities.” Steve Toussaint (Corlys Velaryon) addresses the political side of the show, too, by saying that House of the Dragon is about “the pursuit of power and legacy” and it features “an awful lot of violence and intrigue.”
The proper description of House of the Dragon
All the battles, political games, violence, and intrigue are great — but they are integral parts of Game of Thrones anyway. But we are here for the Targaryens and Targaryens only, and the essence of their story was summarized beautifully by Emma D’Arcy and Eve Best (Rhaenyra and Rhaenys Targaryen, respectively).
After Best quipped that House of the Dragon was all about “ambition and frustration and loss and sadness and death…and wigs,” D’Arcy couldn’t help but simplify the plot further — and simply stated that the show was actually just “really, really angry blonde people,” earning a sudden outburst of laughter from Matt Smith.
This video was recorded before the release of House of the Dragon Season 1. Now that you’ve watched it, do you agree with the stars’ descriptions?
Source: EW via YouTube