If you’re just joining us, HBO is in the middle of a viral marketing stunt, and it is working, at least on me. It started when the official Game of Thrones twitter account tweeted out a simple flame emoji:
🔥
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) April 26, 2021
Okay, it’s Game of Thrones Anniversary Month. Fire is important to the series. Sure, cute, cool. But then they followed it up with another…
🔥🔥
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) April 26, 2021
…and another…
🔥🔥🔥
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) April 26, 2021
and so on:
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) April 26, 2021
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) April 26, 2021
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) April 26, 2021
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) April 26, 2021
Soon enough, other HBO-affiliated accounts got in on it:
Not sure what all this fire is about, but I’m going in. pic.twitter.com/l15veJQcM6
— HBO (@HBO) April 26, 2021
Adding fuel to the fire. pic.twitter.com/TqNBPqjYJZ
— Max (@StreamOnMax) April 26, 2021
@GameOfThrones
— HBO Max Brasil (@HBOMaxBR) April 26, 2021
It’s about to get hot 🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/UgbL3Ve6lA
is it getting hot in here or is it just me? 🔥 @GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/legWIo9ByP
— maxpop (@onmaxpop) April 26, 2021
The official Game of Thrones account has added flame emojis to its name and changed its profile picture. What does it mean? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? I don’t know, but I’ve been having a public mental breakdown trying to figure it out on Twitter:
Hey, why'd you go right from three flame emojis to five flame emojis? Are you doing the Fibonacci Sequence but with flame emojis?
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) April 26, 2021
Okay, new theory: the different numbers of flame emojis in the tweets correspond to the letters of the alphabet. So we've had 1-2-3-5-12, which spells...
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) April 26, 2021
abcel
Okay, so much for that theory.
WHY DO YOU TAUNT US LIKE THIS
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) April 26, 2021
Okay, the 14 Flames are a series of volcanos around Valyria. 14 x 3 is 42, minus 6 is 36, the number of flame emojis in this tweet. Which means dragon volcano numbers numbers throne happy
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) April 26, 2021
Oh crap, they broke my brain
How my brain feels right now trying to figure this out pic.twitter.com/v95R6nqYM6
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) April 26, 2021
Brain broke. Brain hurting.
This marks the official start of filming for House of the Dragon
After I scrambled to make sense of this, HBO finally did announce what they were all about. This was all a lead-up to the official announcement that House of the Dragon, HBO’s follow-up series to Game of Thrones, had begun production, complete with a still of the cast doing a table read, all of them appropriately socially distanced:
Fire will reign 🔥#HouseoftheDragon is officially in production. Follow @HouseofDragon for all updates. pic.twitter.com/lc3dhIcm5u
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) April 26, 2021
We’d been looking at sets for House of the Dragon for a couple of days now, so we expected something like this. I’d love to see more, perhaps some photos from the set or of the cast in full costume. Here’s hoping.
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