House of the Dragon: HBO show faces backlash as night scenes are too dark to be viewed

Last Updated on October 10, 2022

HBO’s House of the Dragon is well underway with providing viewers some content for their craving of Game of Thrones-related appetite. And history seems to be repeating in an interesting way with episode 7 of the Game of Thrones spin-off. In the final season of Thrones, viewers complained about the watching conditions for the battle scenes that took place in the dark for the episode, The Long Night. 

In episode 7 of House of the Dragon, Variety reports that the series faced backlash as viewers had also deemed this latest episode to be “unwatchable” during the night scenes. Joanna Robinson, a writer and podcaster for The Ringer, had given a warning prior to episode air, “Watch it with all the drapes closed,” as well as turn the brightness setting of your television up on high. When HBO received a complaint from a fan stating HBO needs “to issue a written apology for literally a whole episode of black screen,” the help account for HBO simply responded, “We appreciate you reaching out about a night scene in ‘House of the Dragon’ Episode 7 appearing dark on your screen.”

Official social media accounts for the show have defended the scenes as done intentionally as a creative decision. The episode’s director, Miguel Sapochnik, had also directed The Long Night episode of Game of Thrones and recently stated, “It made sense that this was the last hope humanity has, the last beacon of light, and from the perspective of where we needed the story to go — which was to reach a surreal, chaotic climax — we needed an environment that was friendly to that. So all the reasons for doing it were there, and nobody sat there and wondered if it was gonna be too dark.”

House of the Dragon can be viewed on HBO and streamed on HBO Max every Sunday night at 9 pm ET.