On a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan and guests Matt Serra, John Rallo, and Din Thomas fell into a conversation about what Rogan sees as heavy-handed messaging in modern fantasy franchises, especially Star Wars.
The conversation started with Game of Thrones. Rogan made the case that the show was genuinely feminist but never announced itself as such, and that this restraint was the reason it worked.
“Game of Thrones was like a feminist series if you really think about it,” he said, “but without any fanfare. Like no bringing it up. No one paid attention to it. But the baddest people on that show were the women. Cersei Lannister was the baddest b**ch in the world. Arya Stark f**king k*lled everybody. Sansa kept it together through all that. Brienne of Tarth messed everybody up, including the Hound.”
He continued: “You have Daenerys, the queen of dragons, who’s the baddest motherf**ker on earth. You literally can’t burn her. And she’s got three dragons. It’s a feminist series.”
One of the guest then replies, “I didn’t even realize it.”
Rogan agrees, saying, “It is. It’s a completely feminist series, but without… it never even crosses your mind because it’s so good. You don’t care.”
Rogan then compared it with Star Wars. “Some of these Star Wars movies where it’s all women generals and you’re like, ‘Shut up. Shut up.’ And all the men are scared of them and they all like get out of the room. Like this is fiction, right? This is nonsense.”
For Rogan, the issue was not representation but craft. Game of Thrones built its characters through writing. Star Wars, he suggested, leaned on messaging as a substitute.
The conversation extended to Amazon’s The Rings of Power. “That Rings of Power is just a f**king mess,” guest Matt Serra said. The panel was bothered by the portrayal of orcs as sympathetic and emotionally complex figures.
An animated Tolkien project was also brought up, where a minor female character received a vastly expanded role. The group described her as someone who “knows everything” while the male characters around her were written out.
Rogan then widened the conversation to Marvel. “Everything Disney touched they messed up. Marvel, everything,” a guest said. He pointed to Thor: Love and Thunder as a specific case where strong source material, particularly the story of Gore the God Butcher, was wasted.
Guest John Rallo stated, “They f**king m*rdered that Thor. They k*lled him. Christian Bale played Gore in that movie. In the comics, that is the f**king best Thor story.”
Rogan’s position was not that diverse casts or female leads are unwelcome, but that they land when the writing earns them rather than simply announcing them.
