‘Spartacus: House of Ashur’ Embarks On New Frontier of Sex, Violence, and Queer Visibility

“Spartacus: House of Ashur,” the newest installment in the “Spartacus” franchise on Starz, returns audiences to ancient Rome with a focus on Ashur, a former antagonist resurrected and reimagined at the center of his own saga. The series is the fifth entry in the franchise and the first new season since 2013, bringing back Nick E. Tarabay in the role of Ashur under the guidance of original showrunner Steven S. DeKnight. Shot in New Zealand, the show continues the franchise’s stylized approach to gladiatorial spectacle, political intrigue, and sexual excess.

Critics have highlighted the series’ narrative premise as deliberately pulpy and self-aware. “House of Ashur” opens with Ashur in the underworld, where Lucretia, played again by Lucy Lawless, sends him back to an alternate timeline in which he killed Spartacus rather than dying at his hands. In this new reality, Ashur awakens as the owner of a gladiator school in Capua, positioned as an ex-slave and Syrian outsider navigating local elites, rival trainers, and a changing entertainment landscape.

Early reactions from reviewers and industry press describe “Spartacus: House of Ashur” as pushing television’s boundaries of on-screen sex and violence even further than its predecessors. According to coverage of cast and creator comments, the creative team has framed the show as intentionally testing what premium cable will allow, with marketing emphasizing that Starz did not restrict explicit material in the new series.

Mainstream reviews report extensive full-frontal nudity of men and women, graphic sex scenes across different gender pairings, and frequent orgy sequences presented as part of the Roman social backdrop. “House of Ashur” also continues the franchise’s reputation for extreme violence, with decapitations, dismemberment, and large-scale bloodshed rendered in stylized, slow-motion sequences. One content-focused review describes faces smashed by war hammers, throats slit in close-up, and battle scenes in which bodies are nearly cut in half, noting that the camera rarely looks away.

Media commentators have compared the sheer volume and directness of the show’s explicit imagery to earlier genre landmarks, arguing that “House of Ashur” is engineered to outdo even “Game of Thrones” in graphic content. Coverage of advance episodes notes that the dialogue leans heavily on profanity, while choreography and production design commit considerable resources to staging elaborate fights and intimate scenes alike.

Within that heightened environment, the series introduces Achillia, a newly enslaved Nubian fighter whose talent in the arena challenges both gender norms and the internal politics of Ashur’s ludus. Discovered at the docks overpowering her guards, Achillia is positioned as a spiritual heir to Spartacus in her determination to resist bondage and claim space in the gladiatorial world.

Reporting on the show notes that male gladiators in Ashur’s school initially resist training alongside a woman and object to her rapid elevation to star attraction, framing her arc around power, respect, and survival in a system built on exploitation. In at least one widely cited scene, however, Achillia is nearly raped by two men before she violently fights them off, tearing off an attacker’s genitals in a sequence shown in graphic detail. Content reviewers have raised concerns about the intensity of this assault portrayal, noting that it may be difficult viewing for survivors of sexual violence despite its framing as resistance.

The original “Spartacus” series was known for prominently featuring same-sex relationships and sexually fluid characters against a swords-and-sandals backdrop, and early coverage indicates that “House of Ashur” continues this inclusive tradition. Reviewers documenting the show’s content report explicit sexual encounters between heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, and groupings that include threesomes, presenting a spectrum of desire within the Roman setting.

Although most mainstream press pieces focus on spectacle more than identity politics, they note that intimacy among men and women is treated as a normalized part of the world rather than an exceptional event or plot twist. Media commentary from New Zealand, where the series is filmed, has framed the show’s continuing embrace of queer characters and sexually diverse storylines as part of a broader trend in big-budget genre television, which increasingly insists that LGBTQ+ lives and relationships are integral to epic narratives rather than peripheral.

At the same time, some content analyses caution that the show’s emphasis on extreme nudity and relentless violence can blur the line between representation and exploitation, especially when scenes of queer intimacy are embedded in sequences stylized for shock value. Advocates who follow depictions of LGBTQ+ people in popular culture have long argued that visibility is most meaningful when it includes space for emotional complexity and agency, not only sexual explicitness.

“Spartacus: House of Ashur” thus enters the contemporary television landscape as both a continuation of a cult franchise and a new flashpoint in debates over what prestige drama can show, how it shows it, and what that means for the communities it depicts.