In the fourth episode of season 8, titled “The Last of the Starks,” as characters gathered for a feast at Winterfell following their costly battle, cameras caught (at the 17:40 mark) what appeared to many to be a Starbucks cup just an arm’s length away from Daenerys Targaryen.
The show’s art director, Hauke Richter, told TMZ on Monday that the cup wasn’t from Starbucks, but from a local coffee shop in Northern Ireland, where many of the scenes are shot. Richter added he was “certain” that it was an accident: “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 ep 3 shoot, this was simply overlooked by an exhausted crew.”
Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains, and Drinker of Pumpkin Spice pic.twitter.com/BOPdolRhXz
— Ira Madison III (@ira) May 6, 2019
HBO offered a tongue-in-cheek statement about the snafu, saying: “The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake. Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea.”
News from Winterfell.
The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake. #Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea. pic.twitter.com/ypowxGgQRl
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) May 6, 2019
Twitter users still blitzed the show’s producers about the mistake, considering the current season cost millions to produce and took two years to make it to our screens.
“You’re telling me they had TWO YEARS to put together a decent show and they couldn’t even spot the goddamn Starbucks cup in Winterfell??!?!” one user wrote.
“Imagine HBO spending millions on every single episode and being done over by a single coffee cup. Guess Dany didn’t get the memo about reusable chalices #GameofThrones,” another tweeted.
I thought this might be a joke to make us all rewatch that scene, but nope, it’s real. I took a picture too. It’s at 17:49 and it’s a pretty unmistakable coffee cup. https://t.co/uc8I0zoXiL
— Hollie Baggins-Kenobi (@holliebutler) May 6, 2019
