HBO have released a statement in response to the apparent blunder which saw a coffee cup appear on Game of Thrones.
Although a double espresso might be just what the troops need as they gear up to take on Cersei for the Iron Throne, Starbucks is very far removed from Westeros, so when the telltale cup appeared in the most recent episode social media went wild.
The out-of-place item was spotted on the table during the scene when Jon was being showered in attention, and Daenerys sat at the wooden table, looking far from happy about the situation:
You're telling me they had TWO YEARS to put together a decent show and they couldn't even spot the goddamn Starbucks cup in Winterfell??!?! #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/8opg7nyydv
— Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) May 6, 2019
The cup stuck out like a sore thumb on the table, making it almost impossible to believe that not one member of the cast, on-set crew, or post-production team noticed the iconic green mermaid blatantly staring back at them.
But in the excited aftermath of the Battle of Winterfell, it had obviously passed them by.
Although the Game of Thrones creators are brilliant storytellers, there’s no way they could come up with a reasonable explanation as to why the modern-day cup would fit in among the goblets and horns that are usually used to hold liquid, so HBO decided to release a statement simply owning their mistake.
According to Comicbook, it read:
The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake. Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea.
How dare someone cross the Queen so ignorantly? She should set a dragon on them.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there’s a name on the cup, so assuming there’d just been a coffee run it could have been anyone’s fault. But a behind-the-scenes photo soon identified a key suspect.
As we’ve seen for a while now, Sansa Stark has developed into a fully-fledged, highly intelligent schemer of Westeros. She seems to have had it in for Daenerys ever since Jon brought her back to Winterfell, and her plot seems to have extended to embarrassing the Mother of Dragons whenever possible.
Because, as you can see in the following photo, Sansa was spotted with a coffee cup on set:
Sansa always scheming pic.twitter.com/WuX1gQsMQZ
— 🐔A🐷L🐸E🕷X🐊 (@a_big_skeleton) May 6, 2019
Okay, obviously Sophie Turner – aka Sansa Stark – probably wasn’t the only one drinking coffee on set that day, but she’s all we have to go off at the moment.
Unless someone spills the beans and owns up to the mistake, we might never know for sure who the culprit was.
Either way, the blunder made for some light comic relief away from the tensions of Winterfell. We’ll have to keep an eye out to see if anyone leaves their car keys or sunglasses lying around in the next couple of episodes!
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.