How the nudity on House of the Dragon goes further than even Game of Thrones

In the newest episode of House of the Dragon, King Aegon Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) blows off some steam by going to a brothel with his friends, intending to get a new squire laid. It's an opportunity for the show to engage in one of HBO's oldest traditions: on-camera nudity. And the episode isn't modest about it. However jaded modern viewers are when it comes to sex and violence onscreen, the shot of a woman engaging in fellatio on an erect penis is still something you don't see often on TV.

Possibly even more surprising is a full-body nude shot of Aegon's brother Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), who is at the brothel laying with the same sex worker (played by Michelle Bonnard) that we saw him with in Episode 202, "Rhaenyra the Cruel." Aemond was naked in that scene as well, but he was curled up in a ball on the sex worker's lap, any potentially objectionable body parts artfully hidden. In Episode 203, he stands up and delivers dialogue, baring all in front of Aegon and Aegon's friends and the audience.

This is unusual even for the Game of Thrones universe. The original show had its fair share of full-frontal male nudity, but the only main cast members to go there were Kristian Nairn (Hodor) and Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy). And in those cases, Nairn used a prosthetic and Allen's penis was mostly hidden in shadow. Beyond those instances, full-frontal male nudity was usually reserved for walk-on characters, like a random flasher during Cersei Lannister's Walk of Atonement scene in the season 5 finale. Aemond standing tall and naked, proclaiming not to care about the brothel madam he's visited nightly before marching out of the room, feels more pointed. Even when nude, Aemond tries to arm himself in pride and bravado.

The original Game of Thrones show was criticized for trotting out female nudity in an exploitative way, particularly in the early seasons. In one particularly skeevy story, director Neil Marshall remembered how a producer all but ordered him to feature nudity in the season 2 episode "Blackwater," even though there was none before. "'Look, I represent the pervert side of the audience, okay?'" Marshall remembers the producer saying. "'Everybody else is the serious drama side, [but] I represent the perv side of the audience, and I’m saying I want full frontal nudity in this scene.' So you go ahead and do it."

There was less nudity in the back half of the series, and when there was, it more often made sense within the story; characters might be naked during a sex scene, for instance. It was also more equitable between men and women. That's more or less where House of the Dragon has picked up. There's been nudity — Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) appeared naked in the series premiere, for example — but it's made sense in context, there's been relatively little of it, and it's been equitable, as we see with Aemond in this new episode.

The shots of random sex acts that Aegon and his friends see as they make their way through the brothel represent a more frivolous use of nudity, although you could argue that this is the kind of thing you'd see if you visit a King's Landing brothel anyway, so why not show it? Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with onscreen nudity as long as it's used with purpose, but it's rare enough (particularly male nudity) that it's still a bit bracing when it shows up.

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