‘House of the Dragon’ Star Bethany Antonia on Baela’s Role in the Targaryen Family

House of the Dragon season three is nearly upon us, and the younger characters we’ve seen grow up on screen—including Rhaenyra’s son, Jacaerys (or “Jace”), and Daemon’s daughter, Baela—are young adults as the Dance of the Dragons kicks into high gear. The tangled ways of the Targaryen family tree mean the cousins are engaged, despite the fact that their parents, who are uncle and niece, are also wed, having joined forces after losing their respective partners. (Don’t think about it too much.)

As season three begins, Jace (Harry Collett) and Baela (Bethany Antonia) are hunkered down on Dragonstone, Rhaenyra’s home base while Team Black plots her reclaiming of the Iron Throne. Baela’s sister, Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell), is still chasing after that wild dragon in the Vale; her grandfather, Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), is preparing for the Battle of the Gullet. Her mother, Laena, is long dead, and her father, Daemon (Matt Smith)—who has, let’s face it, been an extremely hands-off parent anyway—is overseeing the clash in the Riverlands.

Baela often acted as the voice of reason in season two, a remarkable quality amid the general state of chaos of House of the Dragonwhere people tend to be driven by passion and fury more than anything else.

“I like to think that Baela’s upbringing has been the one thing that separates her from the rest of the people at the table,” Antonia said at a recent House of the Dragon press roundtable attended by io9 and other outlets. “And she was raised by [her grandmother, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen]who was such a different type of leader and had such a clear way of thinking; her decisions were always built out of protection for everyone rather than protection for herself.”

Rhaenys, Lord Corlys’ wife, was killed in battle during House of the Dragon season two, but she’s still making an impact on Baela as the story moves forward without her. “I think everything that [Baela] tries to do is to try and honor her legacy and honor what she was raised to be and the values that are instilled in her,” Antonia said. “It’s been a really cool way of building her as a character.”

As we saw at the end of season two, Baela and Corlys also find comfort in each other. “Baela has spent a lot of seasons trying to figure out what family is to her. Losing [her mother] at such a young age and her father being so absent in most of her childhood had such an impact on her and made her feel so without role models,” Antonia explained. “As I said before, that’s why she channeled so much of Rhaenys, and then with her being gone, I think she just felt totally lost without family.”

Without spoiling what happens in Baela’s storyline early in the season, Antonia did hint that her character faces a game-changing shift as far as family goes that ends up giving her even more strength.

Hopefully, we’ll see Baela and Rhaena reunite; in season two, they became estranged both emotionally and physically when a resentful Rhaena, who’d been engaged to Rhaenyra’s middle son, Luke (the one who died in the dragon fight at the end of season one), was sent away from Dragonstone to watch over Rhaenyra’s youngest sons.

“[Campbell and I] made a really sort of insane connection right at the start of season one; we’ve maintained that friendship,” Antonia said. “We were actually quite sad that we [didn’t have] the chance to work together as much in season two.”

Season three, she teased, will see “the sisters both having to go through a lot of change at the same time.” It becomes important to “remind [themselves] of how they were as children and how close they were and sort of why they’re doing this […] they both had such a lot of loss at the same time […] and it was really important to me to go back and remember that they all started this together and to try and bring some of that into us as adults.”

House of the Dragon season three kicks off June 21 on  HBO.

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