The Most Pivotal ‘Game of Thrones’ Moment of 2019 Was That Stupid “Starbucks Cup”

Game of Thrones began 2019 as the most universally beloved and hotly anticipated show of the year. From the early days of the new year, HBO’s juggernaut hit was sowing the seeds for its epic final season, and fans were devouring each and every morsel of news they could get. Now, as the year draws to a close, Game of Thrones isn’t quite remembered as the titanic hit it used to be. Though its final season broke all sorts of records — and took home oodles of Emmys — the show is conspicuously absent from many Best of 2019 lists (including Decider’s own).

So what happened? You could argue that there were too many narrative missteps in the show’s truncated final season. Fans bristled at Daenerys’s poorly timed heel turn and rolled their eyes at Tyrion’s pronouncement that “Bran the Broken” had the most interesting story in Westeros. There was a sense of disappointment amongst some that the Night King was offed by Arya in Episode 3 and Jaime Lannister flip-flopped between his long-time love (and twin sister) Cersei and his slow burn flirtation with Ser Brienne of Tarth.

However, I think you can pinpoint the exact moment a large section of the crowd turned on Game of Thrones and it had nothing to do with the writing, and everything to do with a stray craft services coffee cup kept in frame in Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 4, “The Last of the Starks.”

Fans immediately took to Twitter to mock the mistake, and it became something of a national controversy. There were arguments over whether or not it was a “Starbucks cup” or not. (It was not. It came from the production’s own craft services vendor.) There were late night show debates over whose coffee cup it was. Sophie Turner told Jimmy Fallon she thought it was Emilia Clarke’s, and while promoting her film Last Christmas, Clarke told Fallon it was Varys actor Conleth Hill’s. The mistake became so glaring to viewers that HBO digitally erased it from subsequent broadcasts and the official version of the episode on streaming.

In the grand scheme of things a gaffe like this isn’t a big deal, but it was enormously embarrassing for Game of Thrones. This was a show that built its reputation on its attention to detail, right down to the emblems on the foot soldiers’ tunics. Fans spent almost a decade crafting theories based on stray lines of dialogue and narrative echoes that repeated themselves throughout the show’s eight seasons. For the coffee cup to make it onscreen, the actors, set dressers, cameramen, editors, and the episode’s director all had to overlook it. Most damning, though, is the fact that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss filmed a cameo in this very scene, where they were both standing where the cup should have been in their exact eye line.

For many fans, the coffee cup seemed to symbolize a fatal weakness for Game of Thrones. It made the production look lazy, if not overconfident, and it seemed to undo the years and years of meticulous work the show’s creatives had put into the series. Who cared the show made dragons come to life or built literal castles in the sky? They couldn’t get it together enough to catch a mistake like that stupid coffee cup.

From then on, fans and critics seemed more emboldened to lambast the final season. Fans could rage at the bold swings being taken and justify their anger by pointing to that sloppy “Starbucks cup” as proof that the people in charge — Benioff and Weiss — simply had no clue what they were doing. Things only got worse when water bottles would up in the series finale. The same scene that alienated so many fans by crowning Bran King of Westeros had plastic water bottles in frame, thereby undercutting any illusion that what was happening onscreen possessed any gravitas.

When we look back at Game of Thrones in 2019, we can think about the horrific glory of the Battle of King’s Landing, the tragedy of Daenerys Targaryen being killed by her lover Jon Snow, or the triumph of Arya Stark slaying the Night King. But we can also pinpoint the moment fans turned on the show. The “Starbucks cup” represented a visible chink in Game of Thrones‘s proverbial armor. It was proof positive that the show, and the people making it, weren’t perfect. And although it’s really nothing more than a paper cup, it was enough to bring down the unimpeachable reputation of Game of Thrones.

The “Starbucks cup” is arguably one of the biggest moments in Game of Thrones‘s historic run, and a pop culture milestone for 2019.

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