Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Turns out, San Diego Comic-Con guests won’t have David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to kick around anymore. The Game of Thrones showrunners were supposed to appear at the show’s victory lap panel at the convention on Friday, along with cast and crew. As revealed by HBO in a recent tweet, however, they won’t be appearing after all.
For those of you who don’t speak Twitter handle, the panel will now include Maisie Williams, who played Arya Stark on the show, Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark), John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) and Conleth Hill (Varys).
That means that not only have Benioff and Weiss canceled their appearance, but cast members Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei) and Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont), as well as frequent director Miguel Sapochnik will also not appear at the panel, either.
Fingers crossed they all slowly drop out one by one until only Hempstead Wright appears, stands in front of the 6,000 fans in Comic-Con’s Hall H, and says, “I win again.”
A Game of Thrones panel is always a highlight of Comic-Con, but a lot of attention was on this particular edition not just because Thrones finished its historic run in May, but because Benioff and Weiss have declined to speak publicly on the finale at all, since it aired. Though the final season of Thrones recently garnered 32 Emmy nominations, it’s also been extremely controversial, with both fans and critics pointing out issues with how the series wrapped up.
Things got so bad, in fact, that some fans gamed the Google search algorithm so that when you search for “bad writers,” Benioff and Weiss’ names come up. Not cool, dudes. Not cool.
Regardless of the reason for Benioff and Weiss’ no show — the duo are busy working on an upcoming Star Wars trilogy, so it’s not like they’re idly sitting around idly checking Twitter or anything — it’s clear that their appearance would have geared the panel perhaps a little more negatively than anyone would have liked (Q&A sessions are notoriously not thoughtful, well-mannered affairs). As is, the rest of the cast will most likely still field some criticism for the final season, when they appear Friday at 8:30pm ET/5:30pm PT.
Unless, of course, they don’t show up, either.
