Olivia Cooke, who plays Queen Alicent on HBO’s House of the Dragon, told British GQ that Season 3 helped drive her off social media, and she turned her criticism on the show’s fans. Cooke was responding to fan readings that cast her as an unwilling victim of the show’s directors. “There’s a lot of ugliness to that fandom as well. It’s steeped in misogyny. There’s a lot of racism. I try to let it take up minimal mental real estate.”
The complaints about Season 3 run through the writing. The June 21 premiere had Aemond kiss his mother Alicent on the mouth, a scene that does not exist in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood. Cooke described Alicent’s reaction in a Decider interview that night as “just pure shock and horror, really. Unexpected.” The season also built Alicent a deal to help Rhaenyra take King’s Landing, and it rewrote Helaena’s death. Prince Maelor, whose murder drives that scene in the book, was removed in Season 2 and never appears.
Martin flagged that last change in a September 2024 blog post, “Beware the Butterflies,” which he later took down. In January 2026, he told The Hollywood Reporter that his relationship with showrunner Ryan Condal is “worse than rocky. It’s abysmal.” He added: “Then we got into season two, and he basically stopped listening to me.”
The audience numbers sit apart from the critics’ numbers. Season 3 holds a 91 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, the best of the series. Its audience score is 65 percent, the lowest. Season 1’s audience score is 82 percent and Season 2’s is 71. The Season 3 premiere drew 21.5 million global viewers over three days, down 8 percent from Season 2’s 23.4 million. The finale drew 21 million. HBO has renewed the show for a fourth season.
Cooke’s comments land on the fans. The record of objections to Season 3 starts with an author who says his notes stopped producing changes and with an audience score that fell for the second straight season.
The show’s lowest-rated season with viewers is also its highest-rated with critics, and the author of the source book says he stopped being heard after Season 2. When the audience and the author object to the same decisions, who should the show answer to?
Blaming fans for the poor reception of the show. Cowards. Can’t take any responsibility for their own dogshit creative decisions. Typical hollywood losers. No wonder the industry is dying. Throwing out all the same cliche insults. Boring.
Online fandoms consistently prove themselves to be a rabid mob of bigots and malcontents.
They blame actors for decision making by studios and writers.
They poor hate on things long before they have even released because they object to creative decisions.
They review-bomb work regardless of its quality.
They attack actors in vile ways because of their own displeasure.
The list of examples gets added to year on year. I don't blame her for ignoring them all.