It’s no joke that review bombing has become a tactic for anyone who is against ‘woke’ material online, and it’s happened for woman-centric shows like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Ms. Marvel, and even Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Even the latest season of The Boys was getting anti-woke sentiments when it became pretty clear that the show was making fun of the right-wing audience.
Now the latest series to get the review bombing treatment is House of the Dragon, and it was all because of one little kiss.
House of the Dragon Gets Review Bombed
The latest episode of HOTD, Smallfolk was one of the slower episodes of the season, but it definitely saw the culmination of something the show was building toward—a romance between Rhaenyra and the ‘White Worm’ Mysaria.
Seeing that anything pro-LGBT in popular IP is considered a lightning rod for the anti-woke crowd nowadays, some fans have noticed that Smallfolk is now the lowest-rated episode of the season, and it’s thanks to review bombing that some fans have spotted on IMDb.
To be fair, the Fandom Menace equivalent of Game of Thrones has been finding all kinds of reasons to hate on House of the Dragon all season. It doesn’t take a lot of digging in the r/freefolk subreddit to find posts that are outright offensive and looking to target anyone working on an episode they didn’t like. They endlessly complained about David Benioff and D.B. Weiss at the end of Thrones, and now their new boogeyman is HOTD showrunner Ryan Condal.
Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s Relationship in the Books
What catches a lot of people off guard is that Mysaria and Rhaenyra never had a romance in the book. Though Mysaria did serve as Rhaenyra’s Mistress of Whispers, a romance wasn’t mentioned in Fire & Blood—that was something that was added specifically for the show.
Though toxic Thrones fans have been using the inaccuracies from the book to bash the show (e.g. Blood and Cheese)the kiss between the characters has now allowed them to throw “forcing the gay agenda” into their posts.
On the More Positive Side
On the more positive side of things though, a lot of people have been celebrating the kiss between Rhaenyra and Mysaria. A lot of fans have been shipping the two for weeks ever since Mysaria found herself on Dragonstone, and it does feel like the episodes have been building up to this moment.
Even the actors thought that a kiss was right for the scene—it wasn’t even originally in the script.
With two more episodes left, it’s unclear where the series plans to end when it comes to the story. Fans are expecting the clash between Deamon and Aemond to finally happen in the penultimate episode. After spending most of the second season just hallucinating in Harrenhal, it’s time for Daemon to actually go back to the dragon prince that he was when he was first introduced in the first season of HOTD.
Catch new episodes of House of the Dragon Sunday nights on Max.