'House of the Dragon' director says she 'couldn't sleep' thinking about how to film Daemon's game-changing finale vision

"House of the Dragon" aired its season two finale, and it featured a big "Game of Thrones" reference in Daemon's vision.

• "House of the Dragon" wrapped its second season with a relationship-driven finale episode.
• The episode featured a confrontation between Rhaenyra and Alicent — and a major nod to "Game of Thrones."
• Director Geeta Vasant Patel broke down the finale's biggest moments with Business Insider.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the season two finale of "House of the Dragon."

The "House of the Dragon" season two finale doesn't include any death by dragon fire — but its focus on relationships delivers some of the biggest emotional payoffs of the season.

By the season finale, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) knows that she has no allies left in King's Landing. With one son bedridden, the other on an anger-fueled tirade, and the entire realm on the brink of chaos, she wants out. After Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) came to her in season two, episode three to plead for a way out of war, Alicent travels instead to Rhaenyra to secure safety for herself and her family in exchange for helping Rhaenyra take King's Landing. But it's unclear if Alicent will actually bring herself to make the necessary sacrifices to get what she wants.

It's not an exchange that happens in "Fire and Blood," but there's no reason it would be. "Fire and Blood" is a limited and subjective history of the Targaryen family by intention — it's not a definitive account but rather a flawed historical record. So it makes sense that this diversion from the book also serves as the episode's climax by giving emotional dimension to this moment in Targaryen history.

Director Geeta Vasant Patel has handled Rhaenyra and Alicent's last three on-screen meetings, in season one's "The Lord of the Tides" and season two's "The Burning Mill." She got her start in documentaries with films like "Project Kashmir" and "Meet the Patels," and told Business Insider that her experience working in war zones informed the "eye for an eye" philosophy of "House of the Dragon."

"Every time I'm in a scene like Rhaenyra and Alicent, I'm thinking about the war zone," she said. "I'm thinking about how hard it is for someone to just say, 'It's okay. It's all good.' Tell people to forgive each other, but try forgiving someone who just slaughtered your mother, or your son, or your daughter."

Patel broke down the finale's biggest moments with BI, from Rhaenyra and Alicent's confrontation to Daemon Targaryen's vision of his descendant Daenerys — and more importantly, of his estranged wife Rhaenyra on the Iron Throne.

You've directed some of the biggest moments in Rhaenyra and Alicent's relationship in the past two seasons. For this climactic finale conversation, what were the big beats you knew you needed to hit with Emma and Olivia?

I think for me, when I read the script, I knew that within this episode we needed to feel the two of them and their emotion, not just when we get to that scene at the end of the episode, but within the episode making sure that we felt the energy going into that scene. So one of the things that was really important was just simply feeling them in every scene, looking at every scene before the final scene where Rhaenyra and Alicent come together, and somehow feeling as if their ghost is in the room.

When we got to the scene between Rhaenyra and Alicent, the most important thing that [showrunner] Ryan [Condal] and [writer] Sara [Hess] imparted to me was that this was the two of them becoming children again. That no matter how many times they got together as adults, it reverted to their fight as children, and their emotions as children.

Olivia did such a wonderful job in that moment where she started biting her nails. I thought that was such a great move on her part. I thought Emma's facial expressions became juvenile at moments, because they weren't presidential in this room. They were two girls. So that kind of thing is fun in that it's not on the page, it's in between the lines. And yet it was fully intended by Ryan and Sara.

In season one it was the same thing. I had episode eight, season one, and there were dinner scenes, scenes about everything, but the one thing we didn't have a scene about was a scene between Rhaenyra and Alicent where they actually talked about how they were upset with each other, how they couldn't make amends. There was something at the very end, but there was no, "I'm thinking of you. I hate you." So we had to create that throughout that episode. Cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt and I really sat down and thought, "Okay, how can we put each of them in the room of the other?" So really, it's just a fun thing to do in filmmaking, because I think one of the things about the show that's super interesting is that there's very little, if any, exposition. It has to come out in the air. And the writing is so charged that you know there's a history behind what they're saying.

When the two of them come to that room, the other thing that was really important is that the scene we had worked together on in episode three was the very last scene they'd had together. And that scene in episode eight, in my mind, needed to be immediately after that scene from episode three in their emotional minds. So Rhaenyra feels as if Alicent just walked out of the room and said, "No, I'm not going to talk to you. Talk to the hand."

And when Alicent walks in and is like, "I need to talk," you see Rhaenyra toughen up, and you see her almost wanting to spit on Alicent like, "How dare you treat me the way you treated me last scene."

Daemon has been having a delightful time in Harrenhal with his horrible visions all season. The one that he has in this episode has to do a lot of work in order to bring Daemon willingly back into Rhaenyra's fold. How did you want to stage that, and how did you work with Matt Smith on the scene?

I couldn't sleep over that stuff, because I read the script, and at the time the vision is written as you've got all these images that are striking and interesting. And that vision — very much through the visuals of it and the way it's cut together and the way it emotes, because it's wordless — that vision has to shift Daemon off of this track he's been on for a long time, and get him to bend the knee to Rhaenyra.

And so I felt quite a bit of healthy pressure making sure that we delivered what Ryan wanted for that, and what Sarah wanted for that. I spoke with them at length, and understood that Daemon needed to be convinced through the vision that Rhaenyra was meant to be on the throne. It didn't have to be crystal clear by the end of the vision, but it needed to be clear, and make sense, and earned by the time he got on his knees.

I think one of the most important things about this show, and a lot of shows I've worked on, is point of view. There's people talking about people experiencing things, but there's always a choice of whose point of view you're in. And with Daemon, knowing that he had to bend the knee later, we had to really walk with him in this episode. We had to be in his point of view, because when he bent that knee, we had to feel what he was feeling in order to believe it.

When we had the bending of the knee, Matt and I spent many conversations thinking about how Daemon is a powerful character, powerful person, and he shouldn't feel weak in that scene. And so one of the things that I thought he did so beautifully was taking charge as her mentor in the hero's journey. Not mentor as in, "I'm a man, you're a woman," but mentor in the classic sense that, "I am a wise soul. I have seen something. I know what's coming, and I believe in you, Rhaenyra. So stand up straight, put your shoulders back. You don't have to pretend. You are who you need to be."

And that's what we talked about, because the big fear I think we both had in that scene is just something that can happen in a scene like that: that Daemon just seems like, "Okay, you're in charge of me. I'm not the Daemon you knew, I'm not the Daemon the fans knew." I think the writing really is brave.

I have to dig into some of the meat of the vision, too. Were you involved in discussions about Daenerys appearing and how this played into teasing the Prince That Was Promised?

As far as the sequence itself, I knew Daenerys was in it, and it was actually just the process for me of where does she fit in it so it actually is part of the storytelling of the sequence, so it doesn't feel like we're just seeing her. And so I just kept building the sequence in a way that it felt, "Okay, you're going back. This vision is telling you there were eggs and there was a woman, and from those eggs came the dragons. And that's how our dynasty came back. And that was the most important thing, that we were gone. It was all dead." And that's when Daemon is walking across all this death, and then he falls in.

All of that was metaphorical, and I just crossed my fingers that people would feel it. They wouldn't think it. And something that Ryan really wanted was he didn't want it to feel connected, like literal. He wanted it to feel emotional. And yet at the same time, we had to achieve something literal. So it was fantastic just going through the versions of it. The placement of Daenerys was quite intentional.

This isn't a big, loud finale in the sense of staging a huge battle, or depicting a tragic death. We have these big character payoffs and emotional beats rather than the spectacle some might expect. How do you approach an episode like this, while also balancing having to deliver an element of finality for a season conclusion?

It's funny, somebody was interviewing me when I did episode three, and they said, "Can't wait for the war in episode eight!" And I told my husband, "Oh, no, everybody's expecting a war episode."

It's just funny, right? I think it's really interesting that we think a finale is a certain thing. We think it's a certain tone, that it's going to be this big war, this big thing exploding. When I got the script, I thought about it more as a film that's about two people, and thought, "Okay, this is the final moment of their relationship."

What I love about the way Sara particularly wrote the season finale is that she grounded it in relationships. We have all seen films or shows that are about people, like "Succession," and it's not about things exploding. And I think it was a really good call for them to have this episode be about the relationships, because that's what it should be about. And if there happens to be action along the way, great. But if there isn't, then fine. It shouldn't have to be like that.

I just very much felt that we needed to deliver the dramaturgy of what was on the page for this, and also rising action, which I think all of us were quite aware of as we were filming this.

I've done quite a few finales at this point. And I think the fun challenge of a finale is it's almost you're expecting something as big, bigger than the first episode. There's so much time taken for the first episode of every show that I've been on, because that's the pilot. That's when you need to get people to watch. And for the finale, you are rushing, rushing at the end. We're at the end of our budgets, and you're still trying to deliver something bigger than the pilot. So It's very interesting from just a tactical standpoint as a team of director, DP, and AD racing to give everyone the time to deliver these huge performances, and I think everyone came through.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.