[Warning: This story contains spoilers for the season seven premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones, “Dragonstone.”]
Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) has enemies in every direction, but right now, it’s the one in the East she should fear the most.
The season seven premiere of Game of Thrones featured one of the most anticipated moments in the show’s history: Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) making landfall in Westeros. Her arrival comes at the end of the episode, in the form of an extended dialogue-free sequence in which the Mother of Dragons surveys her new home — and, really, her old home — of Dragonstone.
Quick history lesson: Dragonstone was originally settled by the Valyrians, and eventually became the home of the last Valyrians: the Targaryens, lucky enough to evade the mysterious doom that destroyed the Valyrian Freehold. The legendary Aegon the Conqueror used Dragonstone, located just east of King’s Landing, as a base of operations during his takeover of what would soon become known as the Seven Kingdoms. For centuries after the conquest, Dragonstone remained a prized possession for House Targaryen, up until its surrender to House Baratheon during Robert’s Rebellion. In the final days of the Targaryen regime, Dragonstone served as the birthplace for a certain Khaleesi, born in a raging storm — hence one of her many monikers, Daenerys Stormborn. As of season seven, the storm has returned to its rightful home, and not a moment too soon.
Much in the same way that Dragonstone is both a new and old quantity for Daenerys, it’s also a new and old quantity for Game of Thrones as a show. Dragonstone was previously featured in seasons two and three of the HBO juggernaut, albeit in bits and pieces: a war room here, a dining hall there, some sacrificially burned bodies on a dark beach for good measure. For its return in season seven, both the castle and island of Dragonstone experienced a significant makeover in order to lend more gravity to Daenerys’ homecoming.
“What I’m really fascinated by is the psychology of space,” production designer Deborah Riley tells The Hollywood Reporter about the work that went into bringing Dragonstone to life. “As the art department, I like us to try to imagine what it would be like to be that character walking into that space and scene, and have the set somehow reflect those emotions. For Daenerys, who has been wandering for so long, to walk into that very powerful space, hopefully it’s something where as an audience you can imagine what it might be like for her to go home.”
In order to understand what it would feel like for Daenerys to return home, Riley wanted to make sure they found a location that matched the magnitude of what the Dragon Queen would be setting her eyes on. They found just the thing in Zumaia, a small town in the Basque Country region of northern Spain. It’s best known for its awe-inspiring beach and the unusual rock strata unique to the region.
“Geologists from all over the world will come and study it,” says Riley. “There’s so much power…
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