Plenty of things happen on screen in House of the Dragon that make fans and critics furious, but it’s rare for something occurring behind the scenes to turn them—or, at the very least, me—into a fire-breathing dragon the wrath of whom even Vhagar would fear.
Days before the Season 2 finale of the series is set to air, parts of the episode leaked online. Illegally uploaded clips and screenshots flooded TikTok overnight. The accounts and videos were quickly chased and taken down, a somewhat fruitless effort, as they were re-shared—along with detailed descriptions of what happens in the scenes—with the speed of Aemond chasing down his brother in the Dance of the Dragons.
There’s been no blame assigned for the leak as of yet, though this isn’t the first time this has happened. The Season 1 finale of House of the Dragon was also illegally uploaded. That time, HBO said the leak originated from a distribution partner in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa. When a similar leak happened during Game of Thrones Season 7, HBO assigned responsibility to a third-party vendor.
The clips in question this go-round seem to be someone filming a screen on their phone.
So that’s what happened overnight. Here’s what happened this morning: I groaned. I’ve had enough of this!
Leaks are annoying. It is annoying when it happens with an episode of House of the Dragon. It is annoying when it happens with a Beyoncé album. It is annoying when it happens with a new Katy Perry song. (OK…maybe that one is a little funny.)
I kid! It is never funny. It is damaging to the artists and creative teams involved in making these projects, both financially and logistically. More importantly, it is damaging to me.
I have no information one way or another, but I suspect that the leak once again happened in an EMEA market because here in ol’ USA, no one is being given screeners of the finale to watch ahead of time.
It’s a boring, but necessary privilege: Critics and journalists are typically given advanced screeners of new episodes of TV series so that they can plan their coverage of it ahead of time. That’s become especially pertinent in the digital age when audiences are seeking out content immediately after episodes air; if you’re a publication that takes your sweet time posting reviews, recaps, hottakes, etc., the ship with prospective readers has long-since sped away.
In my [redacted] years doing this job, however, more and more networks or specific series have withheld advanced screeners, using the rise in leaks not just of an episode’s content, but of plot spoilers as the reason.
Readers’ demand for immediate content related to those episodes doesn’t suddenly disappear because critics weren’t given the episodes in advance, nor does the competition between publications for those readers go away. The result: Journalists, critics, reporters, and their editors end up staying up until into the middle of the night churning out whatever content they can as quickly as possible live after the episode airs.
Networks can deprive screeners all they want, because publications have no choice but to force their writers to cover the episodes in this way anyway—which, because there is no screener for the House of the Dragon finale here in the States, we’ll be doing on Sunday night.
Am I playing a tiny violin here? Yes. But I’ve been playing this damned diminutive instrument for so long that I’m now a virtuoso at it.
I don’t understand some fans’ craven desire to spoil the content of their favorite shows. I don’t understand the impulse to leak. And I’m wary of the near future if this keeps happening: Nothing will be provided in advance, ever.
Case in point: M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie Trap is not screening for critics in advance—at all. Do you want to read a review and know whether or not it’s good before buying a ticket? Too bad, because you won’t be able to.
