Season One”House of the Dragon“raced the timeline, covers several years in just the first few episodes. Halfway through the season, though, we’ll see major cast change: active persons Millie Alcock and Emily Carey, who played Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, respectively, will be leaving the series. Fast forward, as their characters grow older and move away from the teenagers we met them as, they are replaced by new actors. Here’s everything you need to know about the major changes.
Why were Millie Alcock and Emily Carey cast in Dragon House?
The time gap between the actual “cast change episodes” (the fifth and sixth episodes of the season) is about a decade, enough time for it to be reasonable to do a recast at this point. ​​​​While the shift itself isn’t necessarily a huge time jump, the series will likely follow its characters well into their 40s if it happens chronicle of the book “Fire and Blood”. As a result, Alcock and Carrey would have been too young to play their characters in characters of later years.
Which actors replaced Millie Alcock and Emily Carey in Dragon House?
In the first episodes of the show, Renir and Alicent are in their teens and (at least in Alicent’s case) early 20s, which matches the actors’ ages: Alcock is 22 and Carrey is 19.
After a ten-year time jump, Renira and Alicent will be played by Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, respectively. At this point in the story, Rainieri is in her late 20s to early 30s, and Alicent is well into her 30s. This, again, matches the actual ages of the older actors: D’Arcy is 30 and Cooke is 28. It’s easier to “age up” these actors as needed than it would be to tone them down so much to be believable teenagers, so dual casting makes sense.
The approach is similar to how other television shows have handled cast changes when necessary. For example, the second season “Crown” ends in 1964, and the third season begins just a few months later. At this time, however, the cast changes to noticeably older actors to play characters for the next several decades. For shows that span a long span of time, it’s usually inevitable that that at some point the cast will have to change, and it’s just a matter of finding the smoothest point in the narrative to do so.
Will Millie Alcock and Emily Carey return to Dragon House?
Although the main cast has now changed, this may not be the last version of Rhaenyra and Alicent we see from Alcock and Carrey. In an interview with “Complex” Alcock did not rule out the possibility of returning to the role of Renira.
“I have no idea what the future holds. I don’t even know what I’m going to do next week, so I don’t know,” she said when asked if she might return to the show. “[The show] completely life changing in every aspect. I feel like I’ve changed as an actor and as a person. I changed physically. I have moved around the world and now I live in London. It opened up a potential career for me. It was completely overwhelming, incredibly challenging and endlessly rewarding in every aspect. But it was a battle.”
