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Episode six of House of the Dragon has become the lowest-rated episode of the second series after the instalment was review-bombed online.
The sixth instalment in the Game of Thrones prequel’s second series – based on the novels by George RR Martin – features a same sex kiss between Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Lady Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), which the actors have revealed was unscripted.
While many fans have praised the episode, titled “Smallfolk”, for including queer romance, others have heavily criticised the improvised kiss, with 33 per cent of viewers giving the instalment a one star rating on IMDb.
One troll reviewing the episode claimed the kiss between Rhaenyra and Mysaria was an “unnecessary scene that will drag the storyline to its doom”.
Another fan fumed: “Adding this kind of pointless scene suggested by some actress who plays the character or unstudied ideas by a writer who doesn’t even understand this world and treats it’s his own will shift the story from deep conflict between a family and a deadly war to some cheap version that doesn’t relate to the main conflict.”
However, after the slew of one star reviews, the most common rating for the sixth episode of the Houses of the Dragon series was 10 stars, which made up 20.4 per cent of the overall rating, despite the significant backlash.
“If I say that Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s kiss is thousands of times hotter than any of the straight sex scenes on the show, then what?” questioned one fan.
Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s kiss is not included in Martin’s 2018 book, Fire & Blood, on which the series is based; however, the author has previously praised cast members for taking creative license with his characters.
Mizuno noted that while she and D’Arcy wanted the kiss to avoid feeling “queer-baity in any sense,” she added that the intimacy of their hug made their kiss feel “emotionally so right.”
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“I don’t think either of them have been hugged like that in a long time, if not ever,” Mizuno said. “I think it was the hug – the intimate vulnerability of that hug – which morphed into this very tender and passionate kiss, which was quite… amazing. I think it’s very thrilling in the moment for both of them.”
In another interview, D’Arcy told Variety that the moment was born out of a “desire to connect” between the two characters.
“I think what you see initially is intimacy, and an intimacy that Rhaenyra shares so rarely,” they said. “Even in some of her other romantic relationships, there’s a lot of presentation, there’s a lot of bravado, often from both sides. Certainly with Daemon, I think both parties struggle to reveal themselves in weakness, and that their eroticism is sort of predicated on power.
“Whereas with Mysaria, in this growing relationship – it’s remarkably honest. Initially, there’s huge feelings of empathy and gratitude toward this person. Rhaenyra is hugely affected by the life that Mysaria has lived so bravely. Then, they are two bodies completely overrun by touch. As soon as they embrace and their bodies are touching, I think it’s pure bodily desire.”
House of the Dragon continues on HBO in the US on Sundays and on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK on Mondays.
