House of the Dragon’s season finale was a huge success much like every other episode that aired before. However, it does not seem as if everyone liked the finale. While the episode received a lot of praise for its grandeur, it seems to also be receiving some backlash due to its lack of trigger warnings. So here is yours, this article contains mentions of sexual violence and birth trauma.
A viewer of the show stepped forward to share her story and how the series managed to hit her and trigger her, she told her viewers about the importance of trigger warnings in TV shows as well as content regarding that. She claimed that in a series about dragons, having unexpected traumatic events take place can be deemed ignorant towards the trauma that many women face.
House Of The Dragon Called Out For Not Having Trigger Warnings
A woman who was a regular viewer of House of the Dragon stepped up and shared her experience with the internet by calling out the show for its lack of trigger warnings and use of the shock element without regard for its effect on the audience. A scene in the finale of the series shows Rhaenyra Targaryen going into premature labor upon learning about the death of her father. This led the newly named heiress of the House of Targaryen to then have a miscarriage, which was shown to the audience rather graphically.
For women who had experienced something much similar, it was sudden for them to be reliving the trauma of such a scale without any warning. Its pilot episode had a scene where there had been a forced C-section, which can be a lot for women still recovering from going through something like that. Similarly, Rhaenyra losing her baby suddenly left a lot of women in shock. The woman who shared her experience had recently lost her baby, which had left her traumatized. Having to then go through all of that, watching how a woman’s emotions were played to such an extent was triggering to the dedicated viewer.
House Of The Dragon Gets Backlash For Its Reliance On Shock Value
While Game of Thrones, the parent show for House of the Dragon had a lot of sexual violence, its spinoff has only seemingly replaced it with birth trauma. On one hand, sexual violence would still be given trigger warnings, birth traumas might be overlooked for reasons that aren’t as justified.
“In a society that is so uncomfortable with grief in general, and even more so when that grief comes from losing a child, the callous way this show has handled infant and maternal death is appalling.”
While showrunners had promised to add story value to any scene of trauma that would be included in the show, such as scenes that would include violence and sexual assault. However, the finale having the scene of premature labor leading to a miscarriage was not as necessary or at all for that matter. HBO Max overlooking such things and having an insensitive angle to their story was highly negative for them.
Source: Huff Post
