House of the Dragon Handles Sex Way Better Than Game of Thrones
Daenerys' assault on her wedding night in the very first GoT episode. Ramsay Bolton raping Sansa Stark. Almost every sex scene in Game of Thrones was imbued with violence and gore. Nudity and sex have become a hallmark of GoT series. House of the Dragon has backed on this.
All of the HoTD sex scenes we have seen so far on screen are tender and delicate. Take one between Daemon and Rhaenyra. The screen is pretty dark, we see the first kiss; they undress with tenderness, staring into each other's eyes. Then we see some bare flesh and a lot of passion. And it all looks fine apart from the fact that this is sex between uncle and niece.
Of course, one has the right to question normalizing incest but as Matt Smith ( Daemon Targaryen) put it – "I guess you have to ask yourself: 'What are you doing? Are you representing the books, or are you diluting the books to represent the time [we're living in]?'" (via Rolling Stone)
Both him and Emily Carey praised the show's intimacy coordinator (yes they had one on the team) for helping them feel comfortable during bed scenes.
"Still being 17, the first scene that I read from the show was my sex scene and my intimacy scenes," Carey told Newsweek. "To be able to talk everything through and not be shunned, or not feel awkward, or not feel like 'Oh, this isn't your job. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable but can I ask you...' it was never any of that, it was just that open dialogue."
A lot of fans accused GoT of irrelevant violence and sex. Some wonder why the showrunners have introduced unnecessary sex scenes, which were absent from the source material.
"That the female protags become stronger by surviving rape. Sansa, Cercei, Daenerys. NONE of the them is raped in the books… You got 10.000 pages of intriguing and amazing source material, but sure, let's insert a story breaking rape scene because for the shock and drama and nothing else!" u/Trenchcoaturtle
Some redditors believe that David B. Weiss and David Benioff, the showrunners of GoT, spiced up the franchise with gratuitous sex and violence because they "wanted the show to appeal to jocks and people in bars watching the episodes, so they purposely downplayed the fantasy elements."
Ryan Condal has been saying right from the start that sex and violence will be part of the story, but they wanted there to always be a "compelling story reason" for it. Unlike GoT sex and violence were used to develop the plot of the series. And we can't agree more – Season 1 was quite chaste if compared to the Game of Thrones.
With the HoTD showrunner promising more action in Season 2 we'll probably see more sex. Will they be able to stick to their principles?
The production of S2 has started but filming isn't expected to end until summer 2023. So, Season 2 may be released sometime in 2024.