HOLLYWOOD – Which team are you on — The Rings of Power, or House of the Dragon? For fantasy fans, there’s only one correct answer: whichever has more relatives doing each other.
Dozens of outraged users took to Twitter this week to call out the creators of The Rings of Power for the show’s failure to live up to precedent-setting levels of incest in the rival Game of Thrones franchise. Without a pair of twins going at it sibling-style on a castle floor, diehard fans say the Rings of Power is “unwatchable”.
“When you watch a comedy, you expect to laugh. When you watch a horror flick, you expect to be scared. When you watch a fantasy TV series, you expect to be served a heaping plate of filthy, X-rated incest. It’s the genre!” complains fan Jamie Gaogh.
According to fans, the appeal of incest in fantasy media is all about escapism from the monotony of everyday life. As Twitter user @LadyOfMyWood69 wrote: “Sometimes you just want to slip into a world where dragons rule the skies, wizards deliver prophecies of adventure, and an uncle can get a little hanky panky from his barely legal niece.”
While the showrunners have assured fans that the lack of incestuous relationships in the Rings of Power is out of respect to Tolkien’s established world, audiences aren’t having it. According to Gaogh, it’s nothing but an excuse to keep juicy GOT-style aunty-nephew frenching out of the show.
“When has sticking to the source material ever mattered to Tolkien fans, anyway?” Gaogh scoffs, dusting a crumb from his ‘Finrod dying at the hands of Sauron after the defeat of Morgoth, instead of on his quest to bring back a Silmaril in the Tale of Beren and Luthien? Not my canon!’ t-shirt.
Ron Dormer, avid fan of both franchises and advocate for kissing his mom on the lips, says he believes the Rings of Power’s lack of oedipal flair is a result of woke nonsense. “This is what happens when you inject all this diversity,” he says. “Durin and Disa are clearly not related by blood! With an all-white cast, at least I could pretend the couples share a grandpa.”
Other fans have remained hopeful that the show will still deliver. A growing number of users on the Rings of Power subreddit have speculated that The Stranger, a mysterious character whose identity is unknown, could be teasing an incest storyline to come. The Stranger could be related to anyone — opening up a world of possibility for family on family lovin’.
At press time, a spokesperson from Amazon Prime had responded to the backlash by announcing the 2024 release of an incest-focused LOTR spinoff, Gandalf the Ethically Gray.
