House of the Dragon’s season 2 trailer has made a stupid mistake

But, frustratingly, the conflict between the Greens and the Blacks hasn’t ever been contained to the world of the show. And boy are HBO are all too aware of that, as the release of two new trailers has displayed.

If you’re unfamiliar with what happened on social media during season one, just imagine opening a door to a room that contains people yelling very loudly, and very angrily, about something you want to simply relax and enjoy.

Now imagine yourself closing that door to block out the noise but realising you can still hear all of the yelling despite it being shut.

That’s what it’s always been like to be a neutral viewer of House of the Dragon – desperately trying to ignore arguments over who’s best between Alicent and Rhaenyra, choosing to instead focus on the larger anti-war and anti-patriarchal story being told, but finding yourself unable to escape.

And thanks to a decision made by the people responsible for promoting season two, that yelling is only going to get louder.

On Wednesday, HBO dropped a dozen or so character posters for season two, all emblazoned with the caption ‘All must choose’. And 24 hours later, they followed it up by releasing not one, but two trailers for the upcoming season.

A Green trailer and a Black trailer.

Take a glance at any relevant House of the Dragon content on social media and you’ll see squabbling between Green and Black supporters over which trailer has the most views, which of the actors are more attractive or less attractive, which trailer represents their ‘side’ better or worse.

The official House of the Dragon account has captioned each trailer with an invitation to ‘pledge your loyalty’. It’s an invitation which has already been all-too-eagerly accepted by the fandom’s most rabid members – even the account for Domino’s Pizza UK has thrown its support behind the Blacks.

I can hear the yelling getting louder already.

But pledging loyalty to characters in this universe stopped being fun a long, long time ago. What starts as fun and games quickly mutates into online harassment and abuse, and even attacks on cast members.

Emily Carey, who played a young Alicent Hightower in season one, was still a teenager when the first season of House of the Dragon was broadcast. The poor girl shut down her Twitter account numerous times because the hateful comments about her character and performance (from Team Black fans) were waiting for her every time she opened the app.

The social media accounts belonging to Sara Hess and Clare Kilner – two women who wrote and directed episodes in season one – were targeted with misogynistic bile (sent by Team Green fans) for choosing to portray certain Green characters in a negative light.

Years before that, Game of Thrones cast member Sophie Turner was forced to leave social media after receiving abuse for her portrayal of Sansa Stark.

And outside of the Game of Thrones fandom, just look into the stories of Star Wars actors Kelly Marie Tran, Ahmed Best, and Jake Lloyd, who played characters that particular fandom decided it was unhappy with.

HBO’s decision to lean into this kind of toxic culture feeds the ugliness and pettiness that’s so rife in fandom culture at present. It panders to people who view House of the Dragon not as a TV show but as a spectator sport, not as art slaved over by creative people but as slop to be chewed up and spat out.

And not only does this current marketing campaign miss the point of a series that explicitly displays the incomprehensible negative cost of war and conflict, but it spoils the experience for everybody watching – from fans, to casual viewers, right through to the cast and the creative team – and it’s disappointing to see HBO so willingly playing up to it.

A fan account for Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, WeThrones, described the pair of split trailers as ‘proof that [fandom] wars are profitable and even encouraged by studios.’ It’s hard to disagree.

In Game of Thrones itself, Shireen Baratheon (Kerry Ingram), one of the few innocent characters in the entire story, reads a history book that outlines the events currently being depicted in House of the Dragon.

She is asked by her father Stannis (Stephen Dillane) whether she would have chosen to support the Greens or the Blacks if she’d been alive to witness the war.

‘I wouldn’t have chosen either side,’ Shireen says. ‘It was all the choosing sides that made everything so horrible.’

We should all absorb the meaning of Shireen’s words before it’s too late.

Watch episodes of House of the Dragon on NowTV.

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