Halfway through its sophomore season , House of the Dragon finally gave us what we’ve been waiting for: an all-out dragon brawl. In one corner, Ewan Mitchell’s Prince Aemond, on the back of Vhagar, the baddest winged beast of them all. In the other, Rhaenys (a steely Eve Best) riding Meleys.
Then, out of nowhere...
bah gawd , is that King Aegon’s music ? And so erupted the most explosive, expensive scene of an otherwise slow-burning season, which saw Aemond consolidate his power over Westeros and Mitchell ascend to the heights of villainy as HOTD ’s dark, sparsely beating heart. “What I love about that sequence is that it’s this unlayering of surprises,” says Mitchell. “Aemond is just picking his moment, and above Rook’s Rest, he seizes it.
” Mitchell kows how to play a creep. The 27-year-old actor, who also played Michael Gavey – another skin-crawling weirdo – in 2023’s Saltburn , is a film buff, and sees Aemond as similar to the murderous villains in slashers like Halloween . “No matter how much Jamie Lee Curtis’ [character] tries to wind through the trees to escape Michael Myers, [he always] catches up with her,” he says.
“The idea that this guy is your maker, and you will meet him eventually.” What makes Aemond so compelling is his physicality: the pale, strikingly angular face; his missing eye, replaced by a scar; the thin lips that so often curl into a Grinch-like grin. Aemond drifts around the draughty halls and bedchambers of the Red.
