When HBO named the Game Of Thrones spinoff show House Of The Dragon, it was effectively warning us that there would, in fact, be a ton of dragons in this proverbial house. It’s great! Dragons all have different personalities and now they will get their time to shine (or… breathe fire?) in the spotlight once again. But with many great dragons comes great responsibility, and that responsibility is to tell them apart.
You can’t just have a whole handful of characters without giving them defining characteristics, says co-showrunner and co-creator Ryan Condal. “Otherwise, you won’t be able to differentiate between them,” Condal explained to TVLine. “So not only are they bright and colorful the way George [R.R. Martin] described them in the book, he actually gives a lot of detail about what each dragon looks like, the color of their horns and crest, the color of their scales. And then they have different silhouettes.” This is important because there will be seventeen (!!!!) dragons to keep track of in the series.
The dragons will be a bit different than the scaley beasts in Game of Thrones, due to the fact that the series takes place a few hundred years before Daenerys and her lil’ magic dragon babies. “[Dany’s dragons] were born of magic, so they matured very quickly,” Condal explained. “These dragons grow like a real dragon would.” Ah yes, real dragons.
In order to tell the dragons apart, since there will be 17, some of the dragons will look like Drogon, the last dragon standing at the end of GoT, while others will get their own dragon personality. “Certain ones will look a little bit more like Drogon did, and others look completely different,” Condal explained. “And then there’s their different scale size. You have the biggest dragon alive in Vhagar, down to younglings and juveniles who have grown up over time.”
Condal stresses that even though there are many of them, they each have their own specific characteristics that will make them unique. “We really tried to imbue them with an individual personality that you can start to detect… through the animation of them and how they interact with their rider, and who their rider is,” Condal adds. “It’s my feeling that the dragons are some of the most memorable characters in our little universe here.” Hear that, Matt Smith? Nobody cares about your character and his sex scenes! We have dragons to focus on.
House of the Dragon premieres August 21, 2022 on HBO.