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Big things are coming to House of the Dragon in season 3. The first spinoff of the groundbreaking Game of Thrones universe promises more dragons and more battle sequences than ever with its upcoming penultimate chapter, and as you might imagine, that means that the budget for this season is just as grand. In fact, a recent interview with one of HotD's most pivotal stars proves that, at some point in the third season's planning, the creators had to ease up on the spending just a bit.

The star in question is Steve Toussaint, AKA Lord Corlys Velaryon, AKA The Sea Snake, who spoke with Deadline at SXSW London. At one point in the discussion, Toussaint's interviewer asked the actor about the production value of one particularly exciting upcoming sequence - that is, the George R.R. Martin-written Battle of the Gullet. And just so you don't misunderstand us here, Toussaint promises that the sequence at hand will definitely be big.

"It's mad," said the actor, "For people who know the story, it's very exciting. They've been waiting for this particular sea battle which, luckily, for my character my son's character are central to that. Yes, it's huge. I don't know what the budget was; I mean, it was a lot. They built three ships. They built two tanks - a wet tank and a dry tank - and then they shot a bunch of water cannons at us.Tthey were cutting off people's heads; they poured blood on us. It was mayhem."

(You mean fake heads, right Steve? Right?)

"[But] when we were discussing discussing this sequence way back at the end of season 1," Toussaint continued, "Ryan [Condal] the showrunner said to me, 'When we come back, we're going to do the battle and we're doing it in South Africa. I was like, 'Oh my God, I've never been to South Africa! I know the seas are blue and there's sunshine. Then we started season 2, and they said, 'It won't be South Africa. It'll be Wales.' I was like, 'Okay. Wales is good.' Then finally, when we got up to do it, they were like, 'We're just going to do it on the back lot. We're going to do it ourselves."

Shoot. Well sorry, Steve. The snippets of the battle we've seen in the House of the Dragon season 3 trailer do look pretty great, but that probably doesn't lessen the sting of a trip you had hoped for. Maybe all the money HBO is saving doing their own Westerosi ocean could be put toward getting you a plane ticket.

House of the Dragon season 3 debuts on HBO Max June 21.