Steve Toussaint interview: House of the Dragon opens season 3 with brutal Battle of the Gullet

WARNING: Spoilers for season three, episode one of House of the Dragon

Steve Toussaint said House of the Dragon Season 3 opens with a scale of chaos even the cast didn’t fully believe they could pull off, kicking off with the long-teased Battle of the Gullet and immediately delivering the kind of devastation fans had been expecting since Season 2.

He described the new season as “epic, bloody, frightening, enraging and mammoth.”

Speaking to The Nightly, Toussaint reflected on finally watching the finished premiere, saying he and his on-screen son, Abubakar Salim, chose to wait for the big screen debut rather than watch it on a laptop.

When he finally saw it, the reaction was instant.

“When I saw it, finally I have to say, I sought out Abu,” he said. “We were at a party, and our reaction was exactly the same. We looked at each other and went, ‘Wow, I mean, wow… I didn’t know that they could pull it off like that.’”

Even having read the scripts and filmed the material, he admitted he had doubts about how the opening episode’s massive sea battle would translate on screen.

“When even I read the scene… my first thoughts were, ‘It’s good, but I don’t know (if) they’re gonna pull this off’,” he said. “Because this is incredible, the sea, and the dragons… never. And then I watched it, and I’ve seen it twice now, and each time I’m still awestruck.”

The Battle of the Gullet, a large-scale naval confrontation that has been building in the story for seasons, opens the new episodes with immediate impact.

The sequence represents the moment the Dance of the Dragons finally spills fully into open warfare at sea, with fleets clashing in brutal conditions as control of strategic waterways hangs in the balance.

It also delivers a significant emotional blow with the death of Jacaerys Velaryon. The loss lands early in the season and reshapes the trajectory of Team Black, intensifying the cost of a war that has been edging closer since the first season.

For Toussaint, the scale of the production was almost as striking as the story itself.

“We were just in like a wet tank with loads of green sheets all the way around us.”

The actor, who plays Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, said the physical demands of filming such sequences are often more grounded than audiences might expect, even when the final result is anything but. He wears long white dreadlocks for his character.

“The wig is not nearly as cumbersome as it seems. It’s actually quite light,” he explained. “There are occasions when you’re doing scenes in rooms where there’s lots of candles, it’s hot… but generally it’s fine.”

By contrast, armour-heavy scenes were far more taxing.

“The hard part is trying to deal with the armour and all that stuff on,” he said. “It’s really hard to look really manly and sexy with all that going on,” he joked.

Season three also finds Corlys in a radically different emotional state. With his wife, Rhaenys Targaryen, gone, their two children, Laena Velaryon and Laenor Velaryon, dead, and his home destroyed, Toussaint described him as a man pushed to a breaking point, not because he is seeking power, but because he feels everything has already been taken from him.

“He feels that his house has given more than any,” he said. “His wife’s lost, his son, his daughter, and then in episode one, his home, the one thing that he built… that’s all gone.”

Rhaena Targaryen and the wild dragon

Season three expands the story of Rhaena Targaryen, who has long been positioned as a quieter presence in the series but now steps into a far more active role involving a wild dragon.

For Toussaint, her arc is rooted in years of being overlooked within her own family structure and broader Targaryen legacy.

“She is feeling in the shadow of her sister,” he said. “She’s so desperate to be a part of it… she feels that she’s always been underestimated.”

That sense of invisibility becomes the emotional engine behind her pursuit of a dragon, and her need to finally be seen as a true Targaryen in her own right. She enters the Battle of the Gullet on the wild dragon, who attacks not only the enemy’s ships but her own.

Who dies in episode one?

A major character is lost in the first episode.

“When we lose Jace (Harry Collett), we’re all mourning,” he said. “Harry is such a lovely person to hang out with.”

Jacaerys Velaryon’s death unfolds during the Battle of the Gullet, after he makes a decisive choice to prevent his mother, Rhaenyra, from joining the fight.

With the war escalating, Jace effectively locks Rhaenyra away in her room to stop her from taking to the skies on dragonback, fearing losing her in open battle. He then leads the counterattack himself aboard Vermax.

Once in the air, Jace and Vermax are immediately pulled into the brutal naval clash, where enemy ships deploy scorpion launchers against the dragons. Vermax is struck and dragged down into the chaos of the sea battle, leaving Jace fighting to regain control.

Baela Targaryen briefly intervenes mid-battle, helping break the rigging that has captured Vermax and giving them a chance to rise again, but it’s only a momentary reprieve.

As the fighting intensifies, Rhaena Targaryen’s parallel storyline also escalates and she makes a bold move to pursue a wild dragon, a desperate attempt to finally claim the identity she has long been denied. Her dragon sabotages the battle and she is seen with no control as Sheepstealer attacks Baela’s dragon, Moondancer, and Jacaerys’s dragon, Vermax.

Vermax is hit again and forced into the sea. Jace survives the fall, but only briefly. Thrown into the water in the middle of the naval slaughter, he is quickly shot with arrows, bringing the death to Rhaenyra’s heir.

Rhaenyra wants Sheepstealer and its rider, who is unknown to her, dead.

Creepy behind-the-scenes surprise

While season three is defined by spectacle, Toussaint says some of the most striking details happen behind the scenes in ways viewers would never expect.

“If you see corpses… a lot of them aren’t real people, they’re mannequins,” he revealed. “Some of them are the faces of our crew. It’s really weird, right?”

He laughed about the surreal experience of walking through sets populated by eerily familiar faces.

“You walk onto set and then you’re like, ‘Jeff, what are you doing down there?’ and it’s actually a mannequin and they’ve just done a face of him.”