Sunday’s episode of House of the Dragons is being review-bombed by the Helen Lovejoys of the world for featuring a soap opera-like same-sex kiss.
In the final moments of season 2, episode 6, “Smallfolk,” Rhaenyra (played by Emma D’Arcy) and Mysaria, a.k.a. The White Worm (Sonoya Mizuno), share a smooch after Mysaria reveals details about her past. Both House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones have featured far steamier scenes, but this unscripted kiss between two women (D’Arcy is non-binary, but Rhaenyra is identified as a woman) was apparently over the line for many conservative viewers. Why were they watching in the first place? Who knows, but they won’t be anymore.
“Smallfolk” is the show’s lowest-rated episode by IMDb user score with a 5.2 out of 10 (only two other episodes are even below an 8). According to Vanity Fair, the episode has over “35 percent one-star reviews on IMDB, which is equivalent to approximately 9,400 reviews. When filtered by the country, Saudi Arabia and Iraq emerge as the nations that have left the most one-star reviews, with 4,700 coming from Saudi Arabia and 545 coming from Iraq.”
The episode wasn’t a 10 out of 10, but it sure wasn’t a 1, either.
Review bombing the dragon show is definitely a great use of everyone’s time.
Now, to be fair, the one-star reviews could be unrelated to the kiss (the House of the Dragon subreddit is mad about other things), but that would be a mighty big coincidence. Maybe Aegon and Aemond will kiss in the next episode, and we can find out for sure.
(Via Vanity Fair)