If you happened to stumble upon HBO while flicking through TV channels on Sunday (30 June), there’s a very real possibility you might have found yourself face-to-face with an erect penis.

That’s not because the channel has taken a turn into the adult industry; instead it’s thanks to season two, episode three of HBO’s House of the Dragon, which featured shots of Prince Aemond completely naked.

One shot revealed an erect penis as it showed the character having sex, while another showed actor Ewan Mitchell in his natural state as he walked out of the room as Aemond.

The reaction to the scene tells you everything about how it was received, with one viewer writing on X: “i did not expect that aemond brothel scene.”

“Holy Moses I just saw Prince Aemond Targaryen’s danger zone!,” added another.

Fans were left shocked by the sudden appearance of the penis. (HBO)

In an interview with Variety, director Geeta Vasant Patel praised Mitchell’s approach to the scene and his decision to bare all when he portrayed Aemond walking out of the brothel.

“Ewan is such a great actor,” she said. “He understands what he needs to do in order to portray Aemond. When I spoke with him originally about the nudity, I said to him, ‘Let’s just go through the story. If you don’t feel comfortable being nude, then you’re not going to be nude’.”

Patel assured she and Mitchell were ‘both on the same page’ when it came to nudity in the scene, adding: “In this case, Ewan knew his character so well that I was listening to him and walking with him as we went through every episode before this.”

Patel noted that the scene in which Aemond leaves the room is ‘one of the few times you see the young child in him and you see the pain in him’.

“Slowly he starts putting on his armor and when he stands up, the fact that he doesn’t care that you see his penis is such a strong visceral shift,” she said.

“And so, of course, Ewan was like, ‘I want to be fully nude in that moment. It’s important to me because that’s who my character is. That’s what he would do.’ And that’s what we did.”

The decision to show so much skin clearly caused a lot of chatter online, but Mitchell admitted to Vulture that he doesn’t usually see what people are saying.

“Well, I’m not on social media, so I can’t really see those fan pages,” he said. With so much of the chat focusing on his penis, it’s probably for the best that Mitchell is keeping his distance.

You can catch up on House of the Dragon on HBO.