Rather a lot occurred within the season finale of Home of the Dragon: Dragon fights! Courtroom intrigue! Impending conflict!
However one factor caught out greater than the remainder for me, and it’s that sick glowing map desk at Dragonstone. Westeros has by no means regarded higher.
Referred to as the Painted Desk in Thrones lore, it was initially commissioned by Aegon I whereas he deliberate his conquest of Westeros. The desk is formed like Westeros and glows, nearly like lava working by means of molten rock, due to candles positioned beneath. And the impact jumps off the display.
Picture: HBO
To start with: love an excellent fantasy map. That’s the stuff the style is fabricated from, and the extra tactile, the higher. (Right here, have an interactive map of Westeros, take pleasure in.)
And that’s the factor with this map. It’s not simply that it seems to be cool, though it undeniably does. The intricate design and totally different seen textures make you simply wish to run your arms over it. Or perhaps you simply wish to play an enormous sport of Threat (I do know I do, and clearly so do a few of Rhaenyra’s advisors).
The Painted Desk made just a few appearances within the Recreation of Thrones present; it’s the place Stannis Baratheon meets along with his advisors in Dragonstone, and it reveals up later once more throughout Daenerys’ personal conquest. But it surely by no means seems to be as cool because it does right here.
Picture: HBO
That is one thing an incredible prequel can (and right here, does) do properly, elevating the world of the present as we all know it and deepening even probably the most rote historic info as we all know them. Right here we see the world because it was, at its peak, when folks knew how one can use the cool-as-fuck wanting lava desk. It’s not too dissimilar from the present’s relationship to dragons; in Thrones, they’re a relic of a bygone period, however right here we see them in full pressure.
Home of the Dragon’s manufacturing design has been stellar all through its run, elevating it above a few of its rivals within the fantasy TV house with props like this. It’s sick, and ought to be the present’s new opening in season 2.