House of the Dragon Fans Fume At HBO Deleting Daemon Scenes From the Show
More people are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the HBO priorities when it comes to House of the Dragon storytelling.
It's not always possible to include everything in a TV adaptation of a book. However, when it comes to House of the Dragon, many fans are starting to believe that HBO is failing when it comes to determining which scene is important for the story and which one can be omitted.
Episode 6, titled The Princess and the Queen, was traditionally sprinkled with a questionable and off-putting scene that showed Alicent's son Aegon pleasing himself while standing naked in a window of his chamber. The show decided to dedicate some solid 30 seconds to it, but it never included a scene where Daemon comforts his daughters as they try to wrap their minds around the death of Laena Velaryon, Daemon's wife.
The fact that House of the Dragon prefers to focus more on gory and explicit scenes instead of paying attention to something that could be more important character-wise seems to infuriate the fans.
Some people, however, still try to search for a possible hidden meaning, suggesting that the showrunners made the decision to cut some scenes as a "course-correction" for Daemon, making him belong more in the dark side. After all, Daemon is clearly meant to be a villain in House of the Dragon bigger story.
But Daemon fans argue that showing him comforting his daughters would not make him less of a villainous — or, if we may, "morally grey" — character. Instead, according to Twitter user romanaceaddict2, "it would have made him more so bc it would have shown vulnerability".
However, it would seem that the showrunners decided that the window scene was more precious for the storytelling than Daemon consorting his daughters after their mother's death. The fact that the shots from the scene were still used in the promotional material, however, has only irked fans more, with people feeling "robbed" of a truly heart-wrenching moment.
House of the Dragon's writing has already been criticized on several occasions throughout the first season, with fans pointing at plot holes (like the one when Daemon faced off an entire army on his own), and character development inconsistencies.
Still, there are four more episodes for showrunners to try and win the critics' hearts back. House of the Dragon is streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes arriving every Sunday.