In just its four first episodes, HBO‘s House of the Dragon has both honored and improved upon what made Game of Thrones so great. Back from the original show are Ramin Djawadi’s iconic theme song, the gripping palace intrigue, and the brutal look at life in a fantasy world. But House of the Dragon has already given us bigger and better dragons, a more opulent look at King’s Landing, and — perhaps most importantly — a sex scene that is more about vulnerability than titillation.
The scene in which young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) seduces her loyal white knight Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) is unlike anything we’ve seen in the Game of Thrones universe before. While it certainly evokes the fraught tenderness of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and Daenerys’s (Emilia Clarke) first time and has the giddy romance of Jon’s tryst with Ygritte (Rose Leslie) in the cave, there’s something pure about this particular sex scene. Maybe it’s because it’s shot PG-13 style, with very little overt nudity, or perhaps it hews so close to Arthurian conventions, but Rhaenyra and Ser Criston’s House of the Dragon Episode 4 sex scene is revolutionary in that it’s…well, a “love scene.”
Comments