House of the Dragon finale leaked: Fan outrage and spoilers flood online

"I've really had enough," reads a comment on TikTok. A few days before the finale of "House of the Dragon" was aired, there was a leak. Large portions of the episode appeared online.

The second season of "House of the Dragon" has been filled with several controversial and robust moments. Recently, many viewers were upset by a kissing scene between two female characters. Previously, many were stirred by the intimacy scenes, which the show certainly did not lack. Actress Olivia Cooke even admitted in an interview that a scene was cut as it would have been too much. All this translates to massive interest in the production. The first episode of this series attracted 7.8 million viewers. Recent data presented by "Variety," among others, indicated that "House of the Dragon" now has an audience of around 25 million viewers. Will the leak change everything?

It happened. The last— that is, the eighth—episode of "House of the Dragon" appeared online several days before its premiere. From Tuesday to Wednesday, a few long clips surfaced which shouldn’t have seen the light of day until Sunday evening when the episode was to be premiered to Americans on HBO. It is unknown how the episode ended up on social media. Videos, likely recorded on phones, appeared online starting with TikTok.

As reported by ComicBook.com, the account where the videos from the premiere episode appeared has 100,000 followers. The materials were deleted, but nothing ever truly disappears online, and it only takes a superficial search on TikTok to come across spoilers for the finale. "I've really had enough. Why is this happening?" asks one internet user on TikTok, pointing out that some viewers cannot withstand the tension of waiting for the next episode, being used to many productions being published in full.

Let's recall that this is not the first time an HBO production has prematurely made its way illegally online. In 2022, before the first season finale, the same thing happened. Then, HBO stated in a declaration that it was "aggressively monitoring and pulling these copies from the internet." Even earlier, in 2017, an episode from the seventh season of "Game of Thrones" was leaked, impacting the series' viewership.