Rhaenyra had to be a nervous wreck at the bloody end of this week's House Of The Dragon

"How do you confront your emotions when everyone is watching and waiting for you to do something that you never imagined having to do?" director Clare Kilner says.

By Saloni Gajjar  |  June 29, 2026 | 5:19pm
Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO
TV Features House of the Dragon
Rhaenyra had to be a nervous wreck at the bloody end of this week's House Of The Dragon

All hail Queen Rhaenyra. 

At the end of House Of The Dragon’s latest episode, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) emerges triumphant at last, having taken over King’s Landing. But her journey to the prickly Iron Throne—metaphorically over the years and literally within that great hall—is marred by blood. She may have bested her usurper half-brother, but King Aegon Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) is nowhere to be found. In his absence, fueled by grief and rage over her son’s death at the Battle Of The Gullet, Rhaenyra beheads Aegon’s imprisoned grandfather, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), a.k.a. her father’s former Hand. Still, this is a man she’s known all her life, so it’s no wonder that while making her first-ever kill (at such proximity and with a crowd’s eyes glued to her, no less), Rhaenyra is jittery and tearful. 

“Queen’s Landing” director Clare Kilner tells The A.V. Club she thought it was important for the camera to stay on Rhaenyra during this seminal moment, one that will likely go on to define her reign: “I wanted to try and express to the audience what it feels like to be handed a sword and to chop off someone’s head like that. Sometimes you read stuff like this in a script, and it’s so extreme and out of all our experiences that you don’t think that deeply about what it might actually be like [to experience it], so I wanted to extend that moment and be in Rhaenyra’s point of view.” 

Rhaenyra is clearly disturbed by doing her own dirty work—it’s the price she has to pay to be respected (and feared) as the new queen. Her husband/uncle, Daemon (Matt Smith), encourages her to swiftly hack Otto’s neck off so that she may earn her title. Kilner instead lingers on Rhaenyra as she slowly sobs through the gory endeavor. Does it make her appear weaker or unfit, considering a man like Daemon wouldn’t hesitate to do the deed? Kilner thinks it’s more effective that Rhaenyra’s response—and D’Arcy’s performance—brings her conflicting feelings to life.

“How do you confront your emotions when everyone is watching and waiting for you to do something that you never imagined having to do? She does live in a violent world, but more often than not, there are people out there to do that for her,” Kilner points out. “Now as soon as she’s about to step on the throne, she is forced to go out of her comfort zone.” 

Kilner, who also helms episodes three and four, will have directed the most House Of The Dragon outings by the time season three ends. And yet, she tells The A.V. Club that she found the ending of “Queen’s Landing” to be particularly challenging because of its logistical demands. “That was an incredibly complex scene because there were so many different angles to get to. As soon as I read it in the script, I had this image that I wanted to illustrate the violence by showing how Rhaenyra steps on Otto’s blood to go to the throne, and the reflection of her going toward it in the blood,” she adds. 

“There was so much to think about, even things I thought would be relatively easy to pull off, like the bloody footsteps showing her going up to the Iron Throne. We had to soak sponges on the bottom of Emma’s shoes, then they had to step through the blood that we had to then enhance with CGI, and all while we had to work out the angle of the blood and where the reflections fall,” Kilner says about her prep for filming the scene. “Luckily, on the day, we had brilliant extras who understood what was going on to give us their reactions. We also had Rhys Ifans back for one or two days, so it was a very short period of time in which we could capture everything. I felt this huge responsibility to the fans to deliver something momentous and cinematic here. I just wanted to get it right.” 

Kilner notes that the ending brings “Queen’s Landing” full circle; the episode opens with Rhaenyra shattered by the sight of Jace’s (Harry Collett) corpse. As the director, Kilner wanted the episode’s bookends to convey how Rhaenyra is being vulnerable in two different ways. “We started filming with the close-ups in that opening scene, and then got wider and wider so that Emma was able to capture all that emotion.” She adds that for her and the entire crew, “It was quite shocking to be there and watch that opening scene” because of the depths of grief that D’Arcy was tapping into. “Everybody felt absolutely exhausted from watching it. I can’t take credit for that, though, because Emma just brings it all the time.” 

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club‘s TV critic. 

 
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