The first episode of Game of Thrones’ spinoff House of the Dragon was released on Disney+ Hotstar in India (and HBO Max globally) on Sunday, August 21. Loyal GoT fans swarmed the streaming platforms to watch the pilot episode. Just like its predecessor, House of the Dragon has a lot of violence, gore, and uncensored sex. In fact, some critics have said that the show goes a bit overboard there, surpassing what even GoT did. And fans had a lot of opinions on the matter. Also read: House of the Dragon episode 1 review: Game of Thrones prequel adopts its worst qualities
Spoilers for House of the Dragon episode 1 ahead!
If you haven’t watched the first episode of House of the Dragon, please stop reading. There are some spoilers for the show ahead, ranging from mild to ‘dear lord’ on the exclamation scale. The show does throw up some surprises, deaths, and graphic sequences, all in the first episode itself. And while the viewers have loved some of those, they are a bit unsure about the others.
House of the Dragon is set to close to 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and shows a Westeros ruled by the Targaryen dynasty at the height of its powers. The show focusses on the reign of King Viserys (Paddy Considine) and the power struggles between his brother Daemon (Matt Smith), and his daughter Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock).
A scene early on in the episode shows Matt Smith’s character engaged in pretty graphic sex with a sex worker at a brothel. The suddenness of the scene and the awkwardness left many viewers amused, and a few chuckling. “Matt Smith in an extremely awkward sex scene makes me realize why he felt the show didn’t neeed them. Lol,” wrote one fan. What makes the scene funnier is that Matt had said in an interview before the show’s release that he didn’t think the show needed so many sex scenes.
{{/usCountry}}A scene early on in the episode shows Matt Smith’s character engaged in pretty graphic sex with a sex worker at a brothel. The suddenness of the scene and the awkwardness left many viewers amused, and a few chuckling. “Matt Smith in an extremely awkward sex scene makes me realize why he felt the show didn’t neeed them. Lol,” wrote one fan. What makes the scene funnier is that Matt had said in an interview before the show’s release that he didn’t think the show needed so many sex scenes.
{{/usCountry}}But what really got the fans talking was an extremely violent and graphic birthing scene. The king’s wife Queen Aemma dies in childbirth and the whole sequence felt too long, too bloody, and too violent to many viewers. “Viserys ain’t waste no time telling them people to cut his wife open and leave her for dead to get that baby,” wrote on fan on Twitter. Another tweeted, “Did they really need that much blood in that scene? And did it really need to go on and on? Christ almighty!”
Several fans praised Matt Smith while others said they were team Rhaenyra (Milly), neatly dividing the fandom between the two royals. House of the Dragon is a ten-part series with each episode releasing every Monday. The show is based on George RR Martin’s Fire & Blood, and has been co-created by the author along with Ryan Condal.
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