As detail-oriented as Game of Thrones usually is, the fantasy drama has featured not one but two immersion-breaking mistakes during its final season on television. After spotting a stray coffee cup that was accidentally left in a shot on the fourth episode of Thrones season 8, viewers noticed yet another erroneous object in frame on the series finale. Weirdly enough, this embarrassing gaffe is also beverage-based, making it seem like the crew on the final season of the show may have had a bit of a drinking problem.
Spoilers ahead!
Following Daenerys Targaryen’s fire-and-fury siege of King’s Landing that killed thousands of innocent people, Tyrion Lannister resigned as her Hand and asked Jon Snow to find the strength to make a difficult decision that would ensure the safety of the Seven Kingdoms: kill Dany so she doesn’t harm anyone else under the guise of “liberation.”
Fast forward a few weeks, and Tyrion emerges for his trial – which turns into a meeting of the minds with members of the remaining Great Houses of Westeros, who decide that they will now and forevermore choose the king or queen.
Just as Tyrion is walking up to everyone, the camera flips perspective to show Samwell Tarly, Edmure Tully, and an unknown character watching the last Lannister sibling approaching. Keep your eyes on Sam during this moment, and you’ll see a plastic water bottle near his foot. It’s about half hidden behind his boot, but it’s definitely noticeable. Looks like actor John Bradley was getting parched during Tyrion’s big speech, which is understandable.
Later on in the scene, a second water bottle can be spotted behind Ser Davos Seaworth. Must have been a hot day in the Dragon Pit.
Plastic water bottles are obviously very out of place in Westeros, and the first of the two errors stuck out to tons of watchers at home. Just as viewers were split over Season 8 as a whole, they were also divided Water Bottle-gate. One fan wrote.
“Seven h****, they did it again. It’s a plastic water bottle.”
Another was frustrated to the point of all-caps-tweeting after spotting the plastic water bottle in frame, writing,
“PLEASEEEEEEEEEE. THERE WAS A PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE IN THIS EPISODE. NOT AGAIN.”
Voice actor Troy Hughes was equally as upset, finding it hard to believe that the Game of Thrones crew could allow oversights like these in the finale. He wrote,
“Seriously!!! It’s the finale of #GameOfThrones … EVERYBODY is watching … and you leave a water bottle on the set?!?!”
CBS Sports writer Will Brinson felt that the bottle blunder was a microcosm of the last two seasons of Thrones. He tweeted,
“Game of Thrones leaving a plastic water bottle sitting there in the finale is such perfect symbolism for a show that spent the last two seasons rushing to get done and ignoring the important little details that made it great in the first place.”
Conversely, plenty of others thought that the mistake was ultimately harmless. One viewer tweeted,
“First a Starbucks coffee cup and now a water bottle. I love it! [It’s] super silly!”
Another joked that HBO must have secured a couple of sponsorships for the final season of Game of Thrones:
“Let’s all clap for the sponsors of this season. The plastic water bottle and the Starbucks cup.”
Someone else even defended the Game of Thrones team, noting that “framing isn’t easy” and the crew might have been paying closer attention to the actors’ performances, the lighting, and the costumes than whether there were any water bottles visible in the shot.
For some fans, everything that was supposed to be included in the Game of Thrones finale is more than enough to make them forget about the out-of-place beverage. For others, the water bottle mishap serves as another nail in the coffin of a season they weren’t all that satisfied with.
Like Tyrion said during his rousing finale monologue, there’s nothing more powerful in the world than a good story – but there’s nothing that can tarnish a tale like Game of Thrones as easily as an absent-minded slip-up.
#GoT #GameOfThrones #WaterBottleGate