Game of Thrones<\/a>, so too now has Helaena fallen. The season ends with Rhaenyra coming upon Helaena\u2019s vacant quarters, while Team Green\u2019s queen herself lies on the ground below, impaled on spikes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tIt\u2019s a haunting image, perhaps appropriately so, given Helaena as a character who knows a thing or two about nightmares and dreams. It\u2019s also a hinge upon which much of the rest of\u00a0House of the Dragon\u00a0will turn, according to the folks behind the scenes. In a press event held ahead of the season finale, D\u2019Arcy spoke about Helaena\u2019s death and what it means for the show\u2019s future: \u201cHelaena is sort of the moral heart of the show, I think. She\u2019s maybe the only character who has a proximity to power, but remains kind of uncontaminated. And so, I think her death sort of condemns Rhaenyra to the path she\u2019s chosen. I think there\u2019s sort of no way back after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIf there\u2019s a way back, it exists somewhere far beyond the fallen Helaena. Below, Phia Saban chats with\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter\u00a0about building out the dream-seeing queen\u2019s final chapter.<\/p>\n
\n\t***<\/p>\n
\n\tHow much did you know about Helaena\u2019s fate in advance?<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen I got the job, I spent a lot of time Googling and searching the Wikis, so I\u2019ve always known this was coming. Plus, there are so many fans out there in the world, and I know so many people who knew and would make a point to tell me about what was going to happen to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen it\u2019s a show this big with a character fate this crucial, is it pretty much impossible to avoid that kind of spoiler on your end?<\/p>\n
\n\tTotally. It was never an option not to know. I\u2019m just happy I made it three seasons!<\/p>\n
\n\tYou\u2019ve had a lot of time to think about her death, then. What are some of your first thoughts when you think about the character, now that her arc ends in this way?<\/p>\n
\n\tObjectively, it\u2019s very sad. The story is sad. I love Helaena. I feel for Helaena. I try to find hope, by thinking she felt as though she had been killed already in many ways, but\u2026 it\u2019s very sad. But for me? Kind of a bucket list thing: I got to die on TV! (Laughs.) I got to do the thing where you keep your eyes open\u2026 everyone wants to do that!<\/p>\n
\n\tHow was that experience?<\/p>\n
\n\tThe prosthetics were amazing. It made me want to do a thing where I\u2019m entirely in prosthetics. It was so genius, getting to work on that. You really work with the most talented people on\u00a0House of the Dragon. I could go through every department right now and tell you all about them, but the people I had never really worked with much before were the prosthetics people, and it was amazing. I sat there while they created my neck, which had this incredible spike, and they painted it on me in a way that was so lifelike. It was so fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat went into crafting the force-feeding scene?<\/p>\n
\n\tIt involved a few weeks of what we\u2019d call \u201cgruel meetings.\u201d I would try all these different slops, and they would say, \u201cChoose the one you want to get force-fed.\u201d The one we picked, it was a dal, low spice level. It was okay!\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore that goes down, literally, you have one final scene with Emma. What do you remember about it?<\/p>\n
\n\tI really loved it, because it came from a conversation I had with executive producers [Ryan Condal and Sara Hess] about it. I felt a lot of ownership over Helaena and have loved building that character. And I felt it was important to get across some of the things that I had always had as Helaena mantras in my mind in that moment. And I felt like that was the justice for Helaena. So we spoke a lot about Joan of Arc, and this idea that there\u2019s more to life than not being dead. I found it really delicious that Helaena could be like, \u201cThere are things in the world that you\u2019ll never know how beautiful they are, and they\u2019re not even beautiful.\u201d And that\u2019s truly what she wants to get back to: having a relationship with the world and not being kept and silenced and used.<\/p>\n
\n\tThat links up with the scene in the courtyard, when Helaena looks out at all the birds in cages being taken away.<\/p>\n
\n\tIs there a shot of her holding something in her hand? If there isn\u2019t, what might be some context is that when we shot that scene, I was holding a dead caterpillar. To me, that moment became more about her relationship with nature, mourning her freedom and how strongly she feels for her creatures \u2014\u00a0and exactly as you say, how it strikes her that to see something that won\u2019t live and fly again. I think to me, that\u2019s what that was about, but they might\u2019ve done some clever editing and just not got me holding it.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat was your last day on set like?<\/p>\n
\n\tI saw Fabien talk about this, and I wonder how much it\u2019s clever scheduling from the team, but the last thing I shot was my death shot. I was on a soundstage surrounded by spikes feeling pretty proud of myself in my prosthetics, trying to keep my eyes open with the whole team. And then Ryan came out and he said some nice things and lots of lovely people were there. And yeah, it was really amazing. It\u2019s very hard in the moment to take in the finality of it. This is something I\u2019ve been working on, and a character I\u2019ve been caring for, for five years now. But there is joy in this. There\u2019s pride and there\u2019s excitement. It will probably hit me once I see the full episode and it\u2019s out there, or perhaps when they all get back to work without me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t***<\/p>\n
\n\tHouse of the Dragon season three is now streaming on HBO Max; read THR\u2018s finale coverage.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the\u00a0House of the Dragon\u00a0season three finale.] \u201cDo not trust the queen. Aegon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[6132,58926,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-317809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-house-of-the-dragon","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}