House of the Dragon’s Steve Toussaint warns fans to prepare for the most brutal season yet

Game of Thrones is undeniably one of the most successful TV shows in recent history, with several spinoff series now streaming and even more in the works. But perhaps the most anticipated is House of the Dragon, which, on Sunday night, premiered its highly anticipated third season after a two-year wait.

It comes after many fans expressed some disappointment with the second seasons pacing and lack of action. Star Steve Toussaint tells nine.com.au that while he doesn’t personally agree with the sentiment, the issues at hand will be will and truly fixed with the release of season three.

Reviews of the third season have poured in from those lucky enough to gain early access, and they were absolutely glowing. It debuted with 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, at the time of publishing, having fallen only a measly two per cent to 98.

When asked what sets season three apart, Toussaint’s answer was simply that it’s the amalgamation of everything the past two seasons had laid the groundwork for.

“Season one, we’re introducing people, and we had that big shift. So, just as you got used to Milly [Alcock] and Emily [Carey], suddenly you then have Olivia [Cooke] and Emma [D’Arcy],” he explains.

Fans’ main gripe with the second season was the fact that there was too much build up, and not enough action. But that’s exactly what Toussaint found intriguing, explaining that the whole season was about the realm looking for any way to avoid a war.

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“For all of it, people are going, ‘No, we don’t want to go to war because once you go to war, you can’t come back. So you should try and do everything you can not to fight’,” he says.

“Which is why I like it – I think it’s a very responsible way that people would behave.”

It’s that word, “responsible,” that describes exactly what fans took issue with in the second season.

After more than a decade of having come to know Westeros as a world of war, political unrest, and conniving leaders, all of a sudden, viewers were met with two feuding sides, both seeking a way to avoid all of those things.

But what fans will come to understand is that it was all necessary backstory to lay the foundation for what is set to be the bloodiest and most brutal season of the show yet.

“Now season three, is like, ‘Well, we tried everything, now we have to fight’,” says Toussaint.

“In those two seasons, you’ve got to know a lot of these characters. You get to have an emotional connection to them so that when certain people are gone, it hits that much more.

“And I think that all builds to what makes season three so impactful.”

Toussaint has starred in all three seasons of the show as Lord Corlys Velaryon, otherwise known as The Sea Snake and undoubtedly the greatest seafarer in Westorosi history.

While fans had initially been concerned about the show’s third season, those worries were immediately put to rest upon the release of the first trailers showcasing glimpses of The Battle of the Gullet.

And just as fans had been hoping, the season premiere jumps straight into the action with the most devastating naval battle in the Game of Thrones universe.

Showrunner Ryan Condal told Entertainment Weekly that from an execution standpoint, The Battle of the Gullet is “arguably the craziest episode of television ever made”, and critics have hailed it as a rich battle sequence that rivals the likes of Game of Thrones’ Battle of the Bastards.

It’s a moment that the show has spent two seasons building toward, and for fans of the novels, it’s been almost an eight-year wait to see it on screen.

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So, it’s safe to say expectations were high. But when it comes to handling the pressure, Toussaint says he didn’t, instead choosing to ignore it.

“There are too many things about this job and about this show that are beyond my control. So all you can do is try and do the best you can with the material that you have,” he says.

“So I knew, after having discussions with Loni [Peristere], our director, and with Ryan [Condal], our showrunner, [and] going through all of the pre-visuals that they showed us, looking at all the models and seeing the sets that they built, that half the work is already done because these guys are so good at what they do.

“And then you just have to try and play every moment for the truth of it.”

The sequence, which took 27 days to shoot, required three million litres of water, 200 tons of steel, 3000 litres of fake blood, 25 tons of propane, 3500 props, and 23 stunt doubles to be safely set on fire in a single take – breaking a world record which Toussaint says he wasn’t even aware existed.

During a panel at SXSW London, Condal joked that the amount of construction the team did for one single episode was “kind of crazy and frankly irresponsible”.

Although Toussaint admits he had no control over the “epic size” of the set, he explains that the moment he saw it, his worries of living up to expectations washed away.

“There was a moment when I first walked onto the set and Loni [Peristere] said, ‘This is your world, man’,” he recalls.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, it is’.”