House of the Dragon season finale leaked, HBO issues statement

Two days before its scheduled release, the House of the Dragon season finale from HBO has leaked online. With this release, the popular Game of Thrones prequel is becoming even more popular. Although the leak's origin is unknown, the Hebrew subtitles may hold some clues. 

A spokesperson for HBO told Variety, “We are aware that the tenth episode of ‘House of the Dragon’ has been posted on illegal torrent sites. It appears to have originated from a distribution partner in the EMEA region,” the full statement reads. “HBO is aggressively monitoring and pulling these copies from the internet. We’re disappointed that this unlawful action has disrupted the viewing experience for loyal fans of the show, who will get to see a pristine version of the episode when it premieres Sunday on HBO and HBO Max, where it will stream exclusively in 4K.” 

Although this appears to be the first leak for House of the Dragon, the series has had this problem before. Piracy was a major problem for Game of Thrones, especially in the latter seasons, when there were so many leaks that HBO decided to stop giving the press advance screenings. The issue was still not resolved despite this. For instance, episodes of Season 8 were released in advance of their scheduled airings on both legal and prohibited websites, including DirecTV Now and the German version of Amazon Prime Video. 

READ: House of the Dragon episode 9 Twitter review: Netizens call The Green Council 'best episode' of the show

The HBO series features Emily Carey, Olivia Cooke, Milly Alcock, Emma D'Arcy, Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans, Steve Toussaint, Sonoya Mizuno, Fabien Frankel, and Graham McTavish playing the leading characters in the show based on the fantasy book Fire & Blood written by George R. R. Martin, who also serves as the creator along with Ryan Condal.