"House of the Dragon" finale leaks online, fans react angrily

"I've really had enough," reads a comment on TikTok. Just days before the premiere of the final episode of "House of the Dragon," a leak occurred. Large fragments of the episode appeared online.

The second season of "House of the Dragon" has several controversial and intense moments. Recently, many viewers were upset by a scene where two characters kissed. Previously, there was a lot of emotion in the sex scenes, which was not lacking in the show. We wrote about one from the third episode, involving series characters Alicent and Ser Criston Cole. Actress Olivia Cooke even admitted in an interview that a "wild sex scene" was cut because it would have been too much. All this has translated into massive interest in the production. The first episode of this series attracted 7.8 million viewers. According to the latest data presented by "Variety" among others, "House of the Dragon" now has a viewership level of 25 million viewers. Will the leak change everything?

It happened. The last, the eighth episode of "House of the Dragon," surfaced online several days before the premiere. From Tuesday to Wednesday, several long clips surfaced that should not have seen the light of day until Sunday evening when the episode premieres to Americans on HBO. It is unknown how the episode made its way to social media. On the web, particularly starting on TikTok, videos appeared likely recorded by phone.

As reported by ComicBook.com, the account where the videos from the premiere episode appeared is followed by 100,000 users. The materials were deleted, but nothing disappears from the web, and a superficial scroll through TikTok is enough to find spoilers of the final episode. "I've really had enough. Why is this happening?" wonders one of the TikTok users, pointing out that some viewers cannot withstand the tension of waiting for the next episode, being used to many productions being released in full.

Remember that this is not the first time an HBO production has hit the web prematurely and illegally. The same thing happened in 2022 before the finale of the first season. At that time, HBO stated that it "aggressively monitoring and pulling these copies from the internet." Even earlier, in 2017, one of the episodes of the 7th season of "Game of Thrones" was leaked, impacting the series' viewership.