Was Sunday night’s Game of Thrones Super Bowl ad a stealthy spoiler for the way the whole series will end? Nah, surely not — but by the time the curtain drops on the GOT finale, we may all be wishing for a beer knight in shining armor to pony up with a drink or two (or three) — if, that is, he can survive the trip.
Not that anyone who saw HBO’s ad knew what they were in for when it first came up on the screen: in a fun plot twist worthy of a George R.R. Martin novel, Super Bowl viewers thought they were getting another one of those “dilly dilly” Bud Light commercials set in medieval times (and, in a way, they were.) But then Gregor Clegane, aka The Mountain That Rides, aka The Mountain, jousted onto the scene to deliver the Bud Knight his shocking fate — while a dragon finished off the rest of the village.
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If GOT’s dragons were to indeed turn Colonel Sanders and the Energizer Bunny into smoldering buckets of extra crispy, it’d kind of be a shame. Between the two of them, the mascots have more than 80 years of TV advertising experience (the real Sanders began appearing on TV in the late 1960s, while the Energizer Bunny has been going and going since 1988.) But when you’re talking about Game of Thrones, it’s always a possibility — as the Bud Light villagers proved — that everybody just might end up dying in the end.
At least the GOT tease got everyone buzzing about the imminent return of the show’s eighth and final season in a fun way, and it did it without having to show a single second of actual footage from the tightly-guarded, and reportedly lavishly-produced, final six episodes. As we stay spoiler free, the wait’s getting shorter: Game of Thrones’ last season scorches onto HBO beginning April 14.