Game of Thrones and Bud Light win the award for Most WTF Super Bowl crossover event. I guess when you need to promote the final season of your smash hit show, but you don’t want to give anything away and sit on as much footage as possible, the only thing you can do is a call a beer company for the assist. In the spot, the Mountain kills the Bud Knight, thus putting an end to Dilly Dilly forever. Which is good, because I hate these f-cking Bud Light ads and “Dilly Dilly” is a dumb catchphrase, and also you can’t MAKE catchphrases happen and ads that try and dictate our pop lexicon can go f-ck themselves, we don’t need corporations to give us words and phrases.
The last time we talked about GOT, I mentioned possible story points for Sansa, particularly in her latent conflict with Jon Snow. They didn’t get on as kids—she was the one Stark kid Jon had no discernible relationship with—and now the fate of their house in their hands, the two who had nothing in common and no apparent connection as children. If it was any other combination of Stark siblings you’d feel pretty good about House Stark’s odds, right? But Jon and Sansa? I’m not even convinced they trust each other (in fact, Sansa blatantly doesn’t trust Jon, see also: The Battle of the Bastards). I got a whole bunch of email defending Sansa, and insisting she is 100% Team Jon. I just don’t think she is, and I bet their relationship is going to be a major story hinge in the final season (echoing the new rift between Jaime and Cersei).
Sansa is one of the show’s most interesting characters because she has come so far from the girl who had a princess fantasy in season one. She has grown into a capable politician, who, along with Tyrion and Cersei, is one of the last great players of the Game of Thrones. But the conflict in the final season rests on a fault line presented by Jon Snow to Cersei: The White Walkers are here, and either you put everything else aside to fight them, or we’ll all die. I’m not saying politics won’t play a role in the final season. OF COURSE it will. But it’s framed against a context in which there is a greater enemy, one that can’t be reasoned with and recognizes no diplomacy. We’ve already seen one sibling set break up—literally—over this conflict. Cersei wants to keep politicking and Jaime is like, F-ck no, those zombies got to go. The question now is how Jon and Sansa strategize. If they’re a united front, supported by Arya, Bran, Daenerys, and Tyrion, they’re probably unstoppable. Not everyone will survive, of course, but that group against an isolated Cersei? I like those odds. If they’re not united though? Well, that’s why I think there is a warning for Sansa in that teaser. Of course, the only warning in this Super Bowl teaser is for brand mascots. And that warning is, Become popular or else you will be murdered during the Super Bowl.
