Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn) is hellbent on revenge against the Sea Snake, Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), inHouse of the Dragon. Revenge is in her grasp in the Battle of the Gullet in the Season 3 premiere. The sea battle is the most action this Game of Thrones spinoff has ever seen, and Thorn meets the moment with her fight sequences. She tells TV Insider that an iconic action hero is the inspiration for Sharako’s movement in the battle, and she shares what else she got to decide for her character when it came to Sharako’s book changes. Warning:House of the Dragonspoilers ahead!
Sharako Lohar is the admiral of the Triarchy inHouse of the Dragon. Her ending in the Season 3 premiere is a massive change from George R.R. Martin’sFire & Blood, the source material for this spinoff. While Sharako does hate Corlys and aims to kill him in the Battle of the Gullet in the book, she doesn’t die in the book battle as she does in the show.
Thorn tells TV Insider that Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine was the primary inspiration for Sharako’s movements in these action sequences.
“I trained in the gym for about six months between seasons,” Thorn says. “I put on a lot of muscle, and then I trained with the stunt team, boxing and sword fighting. The stunt team are wonderful.”
“For the physicality, I took a lot of inspiration from Hugh Jackman as Wolverine,” she explains, “because there’s a lot of female action stars who fight like gymnasts, the high kicks, sort of Sailor Moon hi-yah! The panty-shot high kick. And that’s fine, I’m not knocking it. But I wanted Sharako’s physicality to be she hits like a hammer, and so she gets in low, she has a lot of muscle behind her. There’s that moment when I stab a guy through the chest and the face. It’s real Wolverine stuff. She’s really getting in close and hitting hard.”
Here’s a breakdown of the Sharako-Corlys rivalry fromHouse of the Dragon and how it differs fromFire & Blood.
What is the Triarchy inHouse of the Dragon?
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The Triarchy is a military and political alliance between the Essosi Free Cities of Myr, Lys (Sharako’s home), and Tyrosh. The Triarchy is also known as the Kingdom of the Three Daughters.
The alliance controls the shipping lanes called the Stepstones, for which Corlys and Daemon (Matt Smith) battle for control in House of the DragonSeason 1. The years-long conflict between Corlys’ naval fleet and the Triarchy creates a deep-seated vendetta against the Sea Snake in Sharako.
When the Green Council sends Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) to Essos to recruit the Triarchy forces in their campaign against Rhaenyra (Emma D’arcy), Sharako takes the chance to battle her enemy once more.
She reveals her true intentions for joining the Targaryen alliance in the Season 3 premiere, when she prioritizes killing Corlys over anything else in the Battle of the Gullet. It isn’t about making an alliance with Westeros for her. This is all about ending her enemy once and for all.
Does Sharako Lohar die inFire & Blood?
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Sharako dies in the Battle of the Gullet inHouse of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1, but in the book, she survives. In the show, Sharako starts her fight with Corlys by destroying his castle, High Tide, to weaken his spirit and distract him. They come to blows in an epic fight after Sharako crashes her ship into Corlys’ to get close to him.
“I loved day three of fighting Steve,” Thorn tells us. “The ship really moves. It’s on 20 gimbals. And then the water canons are real, the fire is real. And so we were filming this fight with Steve, and it was on, like, day three of this, and I was like, ‘I can’t believe this is my job.’ Here I am on a pirate ship sword-fighting a beloved British actor. Steve met the king two weeks before we filmed that, and I was like, ‘I’m here to fight this guy?!’ It was so good.”
Sharako wins her fight against Corlys when he is thrown into the sea, and his fate is still unknown. But Corlys’ bastard son, Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim), watches his father fall, and it makes him leap into action against Sharako. Their epic fight in the water of a sinking ship ends in Sharako’s death.
“In that final fight with Alyn, she’s like, ‘I’m not going to let this guy take my victory from me.’ This all for her is like, ‘I’m gonna go, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna kill Corlys, and then I’m going home, and I’m done with his,’” Thorn tells us. “I had in my head who is she going home to, what are the stakes for her, what does she want? And so in that final fight with Alyn, it’s like, ‘You’re not going to take this away from me.’ She’s so determined that she’s not going to let this moment go.”
Thorn breaks down Sharako’s final moments.
“It was tough, because in the end, she’s an unarmed, scared woman being strangled to death by a much larger man, and so it was a real delight as an actor to get to plan the emotional journey of that,” she explains. “The script just says they fight, and she dies, and I got to decide the moments in the fight where she thinks she’s winning, how she feels about that, the moments when she realized she might lose, how she feels about that, and the moment when she realized she is going to die, and how she feels about that in the end. And I got to put all of that in her eyes, which is just such a treat as an actor. It really is.”
The search for Corlys will continue inHouse of the DragonSeason 3 Episode 2.
House of the Dragon, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO, Streaming on HBO Max