Warning: The article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon‘s season one finale.
Fans of House of the Dragon are singling out the brief but impactful performance of one of the first season’s breakout stars.
Owing to the show’s many time jumps throughout the inaugural season, Prince Lucerys Velaryon has been portrayed by multiple actors at this point, including the fine performance of the younger version of the character by Harvey Sadler. However, the oldest iteration of the character, as portrayed by Elliot Grihault, has been burned into fans’ minds due to his dramatic — and ultimately, tragic — confrontation with Ewan Mitchell’s Prince Aemond Targaryen in the season one finale.
One Reddit user on the r/HouseOfTheDragon subreddit called Grihault’s performance “absolutely phenomenal” and we can’t say we disagree.
Over on Twitter, one fan heaped praise on the actor for making the most out of his relatively short screen time. Truly, Grihault embodies the motto that there are no small parts, only small actors. And he isn’t one of them.
Another Twitter user proclaimed Grihault gave “everything we needed and more” in the episode.
Lucerys’ epic dragon duel with Aemond, which ultimately resulted in the former’s inadvertent death and possibly kicked off a civil war between two royal houses connected by blood, had many fans in tears.
Viewing the Instagram posts from Grihault and Harry Collet (Prince Jacaerys Velaryon) bidding each other farewell is even more heartbreaking, given all that we know now.
We can only imagine the audible sobbing the HOTD cameraman had to hold back while filming Grihault’s scenes.
A big thank you was in order from one fan, thanks to Grihault’s “perfect performance.”
You can currently watch the entire first season of House of the Dragon on HBO Max.
