Small Council: Reactions to the Game of Thrones Season 6 teaser poster

On Monday, HBO released the first teaser photo for Game of Thrones Season 6, and the internet promptly lost its mind. Here, we’ll talk about the teaser: what we liked, what we didn’t, and what it says about the new season. WARNING: This discussion will contain SPOILERS for Season 6.

DAN: If nothing else, this teaser was certainly a success for HBO. The name “Jon Snow” was trending on Twitter, it was reported on in every corner of the internet, and organizations as prominent as the New York Mets quickly stepped in with parodies. If the network was trying to drum up hype, it worked.

However, I can’t stop thinking about what the poster says about what’s been happening behind the scenes. To me, the message to fans is clear: you win. Having the poster spotlight Jon Snow, a character who was murdered at the end of Season 5, seems to be an admission that his story isn’t over, despite HBO’s push earlier this year to assure us that Jon was dead and gone. My guess is that the network executives finally threw up their hands and gave in. “Fine!” HBO President Michael Lombardo may have been heard to exclaim. “If they all think he’s coming back anyway, might as well give them what they want. Pah!”

On the other hand, it’s possible I’m too close to the situation. After all, we’ve been reporting on every stray Kit Harington sighting and set photo for months now, so it’s long been clear to us that Jon Snow would be coming back. Maybe HBO was just trying to remind us of the dire circumstances under which Season 5 ended so we’d be primed for new developments, but I  like the scenario where Michael Lombardo yells “Pah” better.

I haven’t even touched on the aesthetics of the photo, what (if anything) the bleeding eye may mean, and the release date. There’s a lot to unpack. In lieu of that, check out this awesome altered image from Rux Dariror.

ANI: When I finally stopped laughing at the poster (and let me tell you it took hours for me to pull myself together and to stop grabbing every person who walked by my desk who ever showed interest in the show and making them look at it so I could laugh all over again), I could only form one coherent thought.

WELP WELP WELPITY WELP WELP WELP.

I believe with all my heart that HBO wanted to keep Jon’s return 100% under wraps. And although the truth of the matter is that your average Game of Thrones fan checks out completely when the show isn’t on and has No Idea about the spoilers we’re heard in the last four months, it couldn’t be ignored that The Daily Mail got photos that proved Snow was still around, and that they were out there on the internet. Come March/April, when all those fans tune back in, I would not be the slightest bit surprised if they re-surge all over again. HBO couldn’t continue with the plan as conceived.

The network’s only choice: embrace it. Yes, there are a few book-readers out there who refuse to watch the show—for them, this basically spoils everything. (And let me tell you, I feel like I’ve heard from all 73 of them, and they are DISPLEASED.) But for the majority of Game of Thrones fans, this is the first inkling, after a mere 163 days of speculation, that their wishes are going to come true and that Jon Snow Lives. (Book-readers, on the other hand, have been waiting for four years.) Cutting the spoiler off at the pass was smart marketing. It changed the conversation back to Game of Thrones just in time for the holidays, so everyone has the perfect topic to bring up when that one relative starts talking about how they’re going to vote for Trump.

And for that last one, HBO, we all give thanks to you this holiday.

RAZOR: I had nearly the same reaction that Ani had, but sadly, my orange cat Ser Pounce (yes that is his name) couldn’t be bothered for a “WELP” photo, so I’ll just tell you how I reacted. The best way I can describe my thoughts at the time is it felt like HBO was trying to play a game of Keeping up with the Joneses. AMC had just revealed the fate of Glenn on The Walking Dead the night before, and then we all wake-up on Monday to a poster of poorly Photoshopped blood on Jon Snow’s face. Yep, nothing fishy here, move along…

We recently discussed who handled a character death better: HBO with Jon Snow or AMC with Glenn, and this just reeks of desperation on HBO’s part—it wants to stay relevant during a time when it only has one-and-a-half shows worth watching on Sunday nights (The Leftovers and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver). AMC, in the meantime, has The Walking Dead (headed into its midseason finale this Sunday) and Into the Badlands just starting, so maybe HBO was taking a shot across the bow of AMC’s rather popular ship. Perhaps it was feeling the pressure to wrap up a story that many fans felt they already knew the outcome of (again, much like with Glenn on The Walking Dead), because let’s face it…Jon died, but we all know he’s back.

So, my response can best be summed up with this delightful GIF:

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