'House of the Dragon' fans complained that a child-murder scene wasn't gory like the books. A showrunner explained the difference.
Ollie Upton/HBO
- "House of the Dragon" season two adapted an infamous murder scene from the book.
- But some fans said the murder, by mercenaries Blood and Cheese, wasn't gory or shocking in the show.
- Showrunner Ryan Condal explained how the show takes a different approach to the source material.
Warning, spoilers ahead for the "House of the Dragon" season two premiere.
The "House of the Dragon" season two premiere brings the infamous Blood and Cheese murder to life, but fans are disappointed that it isn't as gory or disturbing as it is in the book, "Fire and Blood."
The premiere sees Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) order two mercenaries, Blood and Cheese, to kill Aemond Targaryen in revenge for a killing at the end of season one.
He orders them to kill "a son" if the pair can't find Aemond, which they can't.
The pair fail to find Aemond, but they do find his sister, Helaena Targaryen, the mother of two toddlers.
Cheese threatens to kill her if she doesn't choose one of her two toddlers to die.
In a shocking moment, the pair stab her boy, Jaehaerys, to death in his bed.
However, fans are disappointed that the brutal death wasn't shown on camera. The scene instead shows Helaena as she flees the room.
Fans reacted to the scene and called it underwhelming. Some compared it unfavorably to the gory "Red Wedding" episode in "Game of Thrones" season three, which saw the slaughter of several main characters, including the pregnant Talisa Stark.
The Blood-and-Cheese scene is even more extreme in the book — Blood kills a guard while Cheese sexually assaults the surviving sister. In that version the girl is older than a toddler, though still a child.
Helaena also tells the killers to take her other child, Maelor, but Blood leaves him to live, knowing that his mother would have let him die.
This is the type of violence that helped build such a buzz around "Game of Thrones" during its original run, and there's clearly some pressure on the prequel series to turn it into another pop-culture juggernaut.
Showrunner Ryan Condal explained the differences to The Hollywood Reporter. He said: "It was less about trying to top the book, it was just more about the practicality of where we were."
He noted that the show condenses the book's 30-year history down to 20 years, meaning that Maelor isn't in the series at all.
"So Maelor does not yet exist, and we only have the twins. So working from that place, we just wanted to try to make Blood and Cheese a visceral television sequence," Condal said.
"We decided to tell it from their point of view and make it like a heist gone wrong."