House of the Dragon’s season 3 premiere, "Sea and Salt, Fire and Blood," aired June 21. It centers on the Battle of the Gullet, a massive naval conflict between Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen’s fleet and the Triarchy pirate fleet during the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, set in the year 130 AC [1, 2, 3].
The 25-minute battle sequence is the centerpiece and one of the most ambitious and expensive TV sequences ever produced. It involved over 1,000 artists and combined extensive practical ship sets with visual inspiration from the 2003 film Master and Commander and J.M.W. Turner’s painting The Battle of Trafalgar, as described by episode director Loni Peristere [4, 5, 3]. Peristere said Turner’s artwork “fearlessly depicted the dead, drowning, and burning bodies of helpless sailors,” which influenced the episode’s tone [4].
The episode features aerial combat with dragonriders including Queen Rhaenyra’s eldest son and heir, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon. Jacaerys rides the dragon Vermax and dies after being shot with arrows while floating in the water [6, 7, 5, 2, 3]. The show altered aspects of the book’s version of the battle, swapping characters such as Rhaena Targaryen for Nettles and changing who participates in the fight, which has led to some disagreement among sources [5, 1, 2].
Corlys Velaryon leads the royal fleet and fights the Triarchy admiral Sharako Lohar. The episode ends with Corlys missing after a personal clash with Lohar [6, 7]. Showrunner Ryan Condal said, “To try to tell this story without doing the Gullet would be trying to film ‘Lord of the Rings’ without doing the Battle of Helm’s Deep. If we were gonna do it, we had to do it right. And that meant dragons and ships and multiple theaters of conflict” [3].
The episode set an IMDb score record for the series with a 9.4/10 rating, tying the highest score so far [2]. It closely follows the source material from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, where the Battle of the Gullet is described as the bloodiest naval battle in Westerosi history [4, 5, 3]. The episode marks the start of House of the Dragon season 3 and sets the stage for future Targaryen civil war events.
