*Warning: Contains spoilers for Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, and features a video containing strong language.*
In case you’ve been living on another planet for the last three years, you’ll know that many, many Game of Thrones fans had complaints about the final season.
But the creator of the series, author George RR Martin, has always maintained that his biggest complaint about Game of Thrones had nothing at all to do with its later episodes – it was actually a scene in the very first season.
Talking about the moment back in 2020, Martin, 73, said: ‘Where we really fell down in terms of budget was my least favourite scene in the show, in all eight seasons: King Robert goes hunting.’
King Robert Baratheon goes on the hunt with his younger brother Renly, his squire Lancel, and his head bodyguard Ser Barristan Selmy. The scene is short and shows the four men walking through the woods alone.
Speaking in James Hibberd’s book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, Martin continued: ‘Four guys walking on foot through the woods carrying spears, and Robert is giving Renly s**t.
‘I never did [a hunting scene], but I knew what a royal hunting party was like. There would be hundreds of guys.’
In the latest episode of House of the Dragon, all such complaints are rectified.
According to Martin, a king’s hunt should have ‘pavilions, dogs, [and] horns blowing – that’s how a king goes hunting’, and that’s exactly what the new episode Second of His Name delivers.
In search of a White Hart stag which has been spotted in the Kingswood near to King’s Landing, Viserys (Paddy Considine) sets off in the royal carriage.
He soon arrives to a sea of marquees, food, soldiers and knights, and all the royal splendour that Martin envisioned when he put pen to paper and set about writing the series’ first novel, A Game of Thrones, in the early 1990s.
A complaint that fans had during the final season was a scene where the lack of budget wasn’t the problem – it was an errant coffee cup that found its way into a shot.
As Tormund Giantsbane and Jon Snow celebrate their victory over the Army of the Dead, a coffee cup from a nearby café is stationed on the table in front of Daenerys Targaryen.
House of the Dragon is streaming on Sky Atlantic and NOW.
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