House of the Dragon Had to Drastically Change After Game of Thrones’ Worst Explicit Scene
The creators had no clue they were torturing the character for absolutely no reason.
Summary:
- Game of Thrones has always been known mostly for its numerous explicit scenes, but one of those got such a backlash that it completely changed things for the show’s sequel House of the Dragon.
- In one of the episodes of the final season the original series had a shocking and disturbing scene that involved a character that never deserved to be treated like this.
- The scene was never mentioned in George R.R. Martin’s books and eventually didn’t manage to give anything to the character but one more experience to suffer from.
An epic fantasy show Game of Thrones that was keeping its fans close to the screen throughout its whole television run owes a significant portion of its fame not only to the competing plot based (partially) on George R. R. Martin’s book series, but also to the status of one of the most unhinged series ever made.
Though shockingly explicit scenes may have indeed drawn much more attention back then, the show’s no less epic sequel House of the Dragon is pretty much unlikely to go down the same road — and Game of Thrones’ disgusting moment is what we have to thank in this case.
Coming mostly from Martin’s books, the Game of Thrones’ plot nonetheless rarely shied away from its creators’ own ideas. Over the course of the years that the show was on air, all its main characters had their own ups and downs, but most of the fans will coincide in thinking that it was Sansa who got almost all the heat.
Sansa Stark’s Suffering Made House of the Dragon Do Better
Even in the books George R. R. Martin made her suffer more than anyone else: Sansa was still a child when she saw her father be beheaded and when later on she was forced into marrying Jeoffrey Baratheon and then Ramsay Bolton, the most despised characters that the whole show ever introduced.
Season 5 made it all even worse for Sansa when in episode 6 she was brutally raped by her second husband Ramsay, the plot twist that initially never appeared in the original books. On top of that, the creators’ own decision to give Sansa even more trauma after everything that she experienced before didn’t result in some kind of development for the character, but rather just left her with more torturing memories haunting her all the time.
The repugnant scene was later on heavily criticized by fans and even both actors, Sophie Turner and Iwan Rheon who portrayed Sansa and Ramsay respectively, revealed that this was one of the worst moments they ever had to bring to the screen.
Always keeping in mind the previous installment’s failed experience, HBO completely changed the game rules for House of the Dragon. Though it was still obvious that intimate scenes wouldn’t go anywhere, the intimacy coordinator on set made sure that such moments wouldn’t look that disturbing after everyone witnessed Sansa’s horrendous assault.