A significant portion of the Season 2 finale of House of the Dragon has been leaked online.
While the finale isn’t set to air on HBO (and Crave in Canada) until August 4th at 9pm ET, several scenes from the episode were posted onto TikTok on Tuesday night. In total, around 30 minutes of footage from the finale was shared across 14 videos, which have since been deleted.
Of course, this being the internet means that people have captured that footage and uploaded it to X (Twitter) and Reddit. HBO will no doubt be attempting to crack down on all of it (and it had already attempted to avoid this by not sending finale screeners to media), but in any case, these sorts of things are inevitably circulated really quickly.
“We are aware that clips from the House of the Dragon season finale have surfaced across social media platforms. The clips were posted after an unintentional release from an international third-party distributor,” said an HBO spokesperson in a statement sent to MobileSyrup. “HBO is aggressively monitoring and removing clips from the internet, and fans can watch the episode in its entirety this Sunday night on HBO and Max [and Crave in Canada].”
In other words, you’ll want to be careful online if you’re eagerly awaiting the August 4th finale. If you’re on X (Twitter), you can mute specific keywords, such as “House of the Dragon,” to avoid seeing posts that mention them.
Interestingly, a similar leak happened with House of the Dragon‘s Season 1 finale, which hit the web two days early in October 2022. At the time, HBO simply said the leak came from a distribution partner in Europe, the Middle East or Africa. But it doesn’t stop there; the original Game of Thrones series suffered multiple leaks throughout its eight-season run.
As Variety notes, it’s practically impossible for HBO to prevent these leaks given its many international distribution partners.
It’s worth noting that HBO renewed House of the Dragon for a third season. Hopefully, that finale doesn’t leak as well, but at this point, it only seems inevitable.
Image credit: HBO
Update: 31/07/2024 at 4:05pm ET — Added statement from HBO.
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