Game of Thrones Showrunners Clear up Where the Infamous Coffee Cup Was From

Game of Thrones infamous final season over, but he controversy and discussion about it certainly is not. Season 8 of GoT arrives on home video next week, and along with it we’ll be getting an entire commentary track for the final episodes of the show. The commentary and insight from the showrunners and cast is more valuable than usual, as any Game of Thrones viewers were left feeling confused and/or upset about how events of the final set of episodes played out. One thing that the showrunners do manage to clear up? The true origin of that infamous coffee cup that made it onto the show.

As you probably know by now (if you’ve been anywhere near the Internet in the last few months), a coffee cup showed up onscreen in the Game of Thrones season 8 episode “The Last of the Starks”; while the sloppy detail to set design caused an uproar with fans, it also turned into a massive PR boost for Starbucks. Social media (bastion of truth and accuracy that it is) decided that coffee mega-chain was the origin place of the coffee cup left on the Game of Thrones set. However, in the season 8 commentary, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss manage to correct that piece of bad information.

It turns out that the infamous Game of Thrones coffee cup was from a local Belfast coffee shop, by the name of Established Coffee – Starbucks had nothing to do with it. Benioff and Weiss also use the commentary track to hold Emilia Clarke’s feet to the fire as the possible culprit of the coffee cup scandal; Clarke is also on the commentary track, and tells them, “This bus is really heavy you just throw me under.”

All jokes aside, the real tragedy in all of this is that it was Starbucks that got the immense publicity boost from this so-called scandal. Small and/or local businesses need all the help they can get, these days. While it’s good this Game of Thrones season 8 commentary track properly credits Established Coffee for its wares, that correction will be noted by far fewer fans than those for whom the “Game of Thrones Starbucks Cup” is now an indelible memory.

…The little guy just can’t catch a break.

Game of Thrones Season 8 and Game of Thrones: The Complete Collection (with not-yet-seen cast reunion special hosted by Conan O’Brien) will both be available on December 3rd.

Via EW