Meet Alyn of Hull: “House of the Dragon” season 2 reveals the Velaryon sailor making a splash

Abubakar Salim teases what to expect when Alyn and his brother, Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), arrive on the scene.

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It’s nowhere near the head scratcher that is pronouncing Erryk and Arryk Cargyll, but House of the Dragon season 2 is giving us a new set of brothers with similar-sounding names.

Abubakar Salim and Clinton Liberty will arrive on the Game of Thrones prequel as Alyn and Addam of Hull, two names that are sure to perk the ears of those who’ve read George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood. And it's time to meet one of them: Entertainment Weekly can exclusively reveal the first look at Salim's Alyn, who arrives alongside Steve Toussaint's Lord Corlys Velaryon.

A lover of all things fantasy who even created his own African myth-inspired video game, Salim is well read in the complex history that comes with this character in Martin's book. But before Alyn's storyline unfolds, he's first presented on House of the Dragon as a sailor in the Velaryon fleet who served Corlys' army during the Stepstones campaign of season 1.

"Season 2 is more of an introduction to a lot of us, including me," Salim tells EW of some of the new characters coming into play. "I've also read Fire & Blood and I know this trajectory that my character goes through. So it's really exciting to know the end goal and you have fun with the journey of how you get to where you want to get to."

Toussaint also plays coy with what he can say about Alyn. “Yes, that is certainly a new dynamic,” he says. “One of the things that Corlys is having to deal with is past indiscretions coming back to haunt him."

House of the Dragon season 2 premieres June 16 on HBO and Max, picking up directly after the events of the season 1 finale. The Hightowers not only stole the Iron Throne from Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) in favor of her half-brother Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), but a dragon chase that got out of hand resulted in the death of Rhaenyra's son, Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault). Now civil war can begin.

Showrunner Ryan Condal was eager to broaden the scope of the story for this new game of thrones. "The first season was so much about the royal family, that 1 percent of the upper 1 percent that rules this world. All the people in the show that had POVs essentially had silver hair," he previously told EW. "What I think was missing from season 1 — not by omission, it was simply because it was not relevant to the story — is more common folk, the small folk of this world, that bring a certain color and texture. A lot of the fun and the conflict and the humor that came out of the original Game of Thrones was thrusting high nobility into a room with Bronn [Jerome Flynn] or the Hound [Rory McCann]."

Salim's Alyn of Hull certainly falls into that category. "We're so used to dealing with the upper echelons of society in this story, and they are always trying to climb to be part of that society, whereas Alyn doesn't care," Salim says. "He just does his job. He knows what he's good at and he knows what he wants. He cares not for those people who are sitting in their little thrones because that was crushed the day he was born."

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