Over three years have passed since Game of Thrones aired a Season 8 episode, “The Last of the Starks,” which launched fan chaos after a Starbucks cup was spotted sitting next to Dany amid celebrations of a dead Night King. This turned into a raging mess of embarrassed confirmations and finger pointing, which was all pretty inconsequential if you think about what the world has gone through since that simple, innocent mistake.
Yet the pressure is on for House of the Dragon to not repeat the same sort of distraction. Showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik got jokey about it with The Hollywood Reporter, but it’s clear that they were taking the subject semi-seriously, too. No one wants to give the Internet even more fodder for ridicule, and by no one, I’m kind-of referring to George R.R. Martin, who’s completely over the “f*cking toxic internet” and its response to Season 8. And no one can blame Condal and Sapochnik for wanting to get things rolling in the right direction.
Condal told THR that the set was “a very heavily policed set — there was lots of Starbucks-hunting going on.” Whereas Sapochnik declared that he took to dropping off cups “everywhere we could so that later on we could paint them out digitally.” And he offered up a “prize” to anyone who can find Starbucks evidence in the spinoff.
#HouseoftheDragon showrunner Miguel Sapochnik joked that if #GameofThrones fans can find the hidden Starbucks cups in the new series, “there is a prize” pic.twitter.com/aDriDtlwsJ
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) August 3, 2022
House of the Dragon premieres on August 21. Happy hunting.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)