Mystifying 'Game Of Thrones' Coffee Cup Quietly Removed From Last Weekend's Episode
As has become customary on Mondays for the past few weeks, everyone was talking about Game of Thrones yesterday. However, joining the usual debate, reactions and speculation about what's to come in the remaining episodes of the season was something much different. Following the most recent episode, titled "The Last of the Starks," fans were laughing online because it seemed that a Starbucks coffee cup was somehow left right in the middle of a table in front of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). HBO responded to the error, and they've already corrected it.
HBO admitted to the Game of Thrones coffee cup mistake, and they even joked about the gaffe in an official statement saying, "The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake. Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea."
But rather than let it be, The Verge noticed that the cable network has quietly removed the coffee cup from the episode in question if you're streaming it from HBO Go or other streaming platforms. Here's the shot with no evidence of a Seattle based coffee company setting up shop in Westeros:
But don't worry, this is something the internet will never forget, and they've already had a blast with this goof:
Starbucks girl 😂#GameofThrones pic.twitter.com/7DRQu440aY
— Kathy H. (@birinsan) May 6, 2019
Meanwhile at #starbucks 😆#GameofThrones #Starbucks pic.twitter.com/BQQezaNHTt
— Am (@bonitamrita) May 6, 2019
Perfectly reasonable explanation for what appears to be a Starbucks cup during the latest Game of Thrones episode. pic.twitter.com/MP6FAhKO4T
— Simon (@Tuffty88) May 6, 2019
That last bit featuring an explanation of other gaffes in fantasy shows by Xena: Warrior Princess is probably the best way to disregard the coffee cup. But now that it's gone, Starbucks isn't part of Game of Thrones canon anymore. That's a shame, because I was hoping that we were being put on the path for a last minute twist that would have revealed Westeros as a renaissance fair that has simply taken things too far.
Hauke Richter, an art director on the show, told Variety:
"Things can get forgotten on set. We are usually so diligent that this does not happen. The shoot was very hard and demanding and it is likely that after a very tiring [episode three] shoot, this was simply overlooked by an exhausted crew."
Richter also added that this incident has been "blown out of proportion" because this kind of mistake hadn't happened on the show yet. That's mostly true, but this isn't the first time a coffee cup was spotted on the set of Game of Thrones.
Back during the fourth season of Game of Thrones, a behind the scenes shot showed Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in rehearsal as Jaime Lannister with the rest of the show's cast. If you look in his hands, not only does he have both of them, but he's holding a coffee cup from craft services. That coffee cup never made it to the episode itself, but clearly there's a love for coffee on the HBO series.