6 Game Of Thrones Scenes That Have Aged Like Milk

Published Aug 16, 2026, 11:00 PM EDT

Angel Shaw is a Lead Writer and Critic on ScreenRant's TV team, covering new-release and classic TV shows across all major streaming platforms. She has been a writer with ScreenRant since 2022 and specializes in Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and fantasy. 

Angel holds a bachelor's degree in language interpreting and is passionate about all things culture and communication—especially in how it relates to popular media throughout history (from Shakespeare to Friends to Game of Thrones).

Content Warning: The article contains discussion of sexual assault.

The Game of Thrones franchise continues to dominate television, but that's not to say that every element of this series is perfect. HBO premiered the first season in 2011, and George R.R. Martin published his first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series a whole 15 years earlier. The context of Westeros' stories and the real world we absorb from them have both changed a lot over that time, which naturally means our perspectives on events from the Game of Thrones television show have shifted over the years.

We're not just talking about ways that Game of Thrones is less socially acceptable today than it was while it was on the air. Any TV show is bound to have some problematic features from the eyes of viewers in later decades. Instead, the observation that some of these moments have aged poorly stems from a sense of continuity and necessity.

Some events in Game of Thrones seemed fine or were intriguing when they happened, but were later revealed to be meaningless. Other things fit well within the established story, but were later retconned for the sake of spinoffs like House of the Dragon or A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and therefore no longer make sense. Regardless of the reason, some elements of this fantasy show just don't hit the same way today as they did when we first watched them.

Daenerys & Drogo’s Wedding Night

Daenerys didn't voluntarily marry Khal Drogo, and in the early days of their relationship, they barely knew two words in one another's languages. Given Drogo's dominant intensity, it makes some narrative sense that their wedding night would be violent. It also significantly complicates Daenerys' first marriage in Game of Thrones, since while she ultimately came to fall in love with him, she was, first, his victim.

On its own, this story is disturbing, but since that is the whole point, it's not what made it age poorly. Instead, the trouble arrived as waves of Game of Thrones viewers rushed to consume Martin's books and found that the story worked just as well in A Game of Thrones without Khal Drogo raping his new wife. If it didn't happen in the source, what was the need to add sexual violence to the show?

Every Needless Brothel Scene

On a similar note, fans who were introduced to the world of Ice and Fire through HBO's TV show may have been surprised to dive into the books and discover that there isn't nearly as much sex and nudity in Martin's version. Don't get us wrong, the books are still meant for mature audiences and are packed full of scenes that are violent, intimate, or both. However, these moments occurred far less often, and all served a narrative purpose.

Early seasons of Game of Thrones are infamous for using "sexposition" to draw viewers in to get to know new characters or to simply shock and disturb. Sure, it was important to see Petyr Baelish in his brothels, but the obsession with following him through his management and instruction of the women in his employ was entirely needless and original to the show. The needless sex scenes died out as Game of Thrones went on, but that only makes them more jarring (and cringey) when you go back to rewatch the beginning.

Daenerys & The Yunkai Slaves

Daenerys being worshiped by the slaves she freed in Yunkai was already quite uncomfortable when it happened in Game of Thrones. There were immediate complaints of HBO's show leaning into the very tired "white savior" trope, placing the white and silver-haired woman in a position of adoration for the hundreds of nameless, darker-skinned characters. Now that we know where Daenerys' character ends up, however, it becomes even worse.

Because Daenerys becomes a murdering tyrant (and also considering the divisiveness of her ending), it's harder to watch her earlier scenes in Game of Thrones without cringing. There's something to the idea that, even as an audience, we were all wholly won over by a character who, in truth, demonstrated signs of her future decline even early in her story. She was all too ready to be worshiped, and we were all too ready to ignore it.

Daenerys Being Permanently Fireproof

One of the coolest things about Daenerys in Game of Thrones has since become a whole entire problem. Among her more triumphant moments in the series was when she walked into the flames with her dragon eggs and emerged, unhurt, with her newly hatched children. What the show implies is that, as a true Targaryen ruler, Daenerys is fireproof. It's confirmation that she was a true "dragon," unlike her brother.

In Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books, Daenerys was only unburnt during the blood-magic ritual to hatch the dragon eggs. From that point onward, she was as vulnerable to flames as anyone else.

Once again, the trouble came later when TV audiences understandably got the impression that Targaryens can't be burned. Daenerys remained impervious to flames for the rest of her life in Game of Thrones, yet Jon Snow never demonstrated the same skill (like people thought he eventually would). Then came House of the Dragon, which features several burning Targaryens and no instances of fireproof dragons in human form. The retcon now means that the whole change in Game of Thrones was really quite silly.

Jaime Assaulting Cersei By Joffrey’s Body

Another of Game of Thrones' most shocking moments came following the rather satisfying death of Joffrey Baratheon. In the show, Cersei was unwilling to show Jaime any affection upon his return with a missing hand. She aimed to punish him for being held captive for so long, and Joffrey's death didn't exactly improve her mood. So, right by his son's displayed corpse, Jaime raped his sister as he called her hurtful and cruel.

This is another example of needless violence. In the books, Jaime and Cersei have consensual sex by Joffrey's body, and that was plenty disturbing enough. The show had done even more work by that point to build some sympathy for Jaime, so it just didn't fit his arc for him to rape Cersei. Game of Thrones then tried to present these twin siblings as true, tragic lovers in the end, further contradicting that random moment of violence. Once again, it was shock without substance.

Arya Killing The Night King With The Catspaw Dagger

The fact that Arya Stark turned out to be the one to kill the Night King was quite a surprise. Though it can certainly be debated whether this outcome made any sense, the moment itself was pretty spectacular. The idea is that Arya had been on this series-long journey of becoming a deadly fighter for this exact purpose. Then there was Littlefinger's catspaw dagger, originally used to tear the Starks apart before Arya repurposed it to claim their victory.

Martin hasn't yet finished his A Song of Ice and Fire books, so we don't yet know whether Arya will use any such blade to defeat the Night King—and that, alone, isn't really the problem. The reason this already controversial moment has aged so poorly is that the Game of Thrones franchise took it too far. House of the Dragon retconned the origin of the dagger, claiming that it is an heirloom of Aegon the Conqueror passed through the generations before getting lost and, somehow, in Littlefinger's possession. It's just a stretch now when it never really needed to be.

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  Jon Snow

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  Isaac Hempstead Wright

  Brandon Bran Stark

Based on George R. R. Martin's ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire novel series, Game of Thrones is a fantasy drama set in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos. It follows noble families like the Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryen vying for control of the Iron Throne while a rising threat from the undead looms in the North.