The Spoiler-Free Guide to the 'Game of Thrones' Red Wedding Reaction
So your cubicle mates, the ones who normally huddle around the coffee machine first thing on Monday morning to talk Game of Thrones — yeah, they may be acting differently this morning if they, like so many others, are broken up over last night's "red wedding." The Internet's version of the water cooler, if it's any indication, has been bursting with over-the-top reactions.
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In case you don't keep up with the HBO epic, and without spoiling anything, here's what happened on last night's episode, titled "The Rains of Castamere." A lot of very important people died in a particularly shocking and gruesome fashion. There were fountains of blood that reminded many of the cartoonish bloodletting in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies. People who read the books had been hyping up "The Red Wedding," as the key scene is known, while waiting for the reactions from those who've only tuned in for HBO's version of things. If you weren't familiar with the story line heading into last night's episode, you probably reacted something like this:
Game of Bleeping Thrones.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) June 3, 2013
You know what helped me watch tonight's #GameOfThrones? Wine. Oh so much wine.
— Luis Paez-Pumar (@paezpumarL) June 3, 2013
GAME OF THRONES WAS VERY UPSETTING, VERY UPSETTING INDEED!
— Michael Carl (@carlscrush) June 3, 2013
well I didn't like that Game of Thrones one bit
— Alec Jacobs (@alecjacobs) June 3, 2013
That is a pretty modest spectrum of reaction, from reasonable to not so much. But most people are not reasonable! And those people are wonderful because they lead to the creation of Twitter accounts like @RedWeddingTears, which is doing a public service by documenting some of the best reactions to the bloody shocker. Some samples:
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Mediaite's Joe Concha may have one of the most unintentionally hilarious reactions to the whole thing. He's swearing to never watch Thrones again and, by association, to cancel his HBO account. His post is full of spoilers, so let's just highlight this paragraph, which may be perfect:
Having said that, the following declaration comes without ambiguity: I am done with Thrones. Never again will I watch another episode. And with Entourage long gone and Curb Your Enthusiasm stuck in some kind of abyss, there’s really no need to continue my subscription, particularly after the offensive and appalling display the show just put on.
Those are brilliant HBO rankings. Of all the shows they've ever done, including duds like The Sopranos and The Wire, it was always Curb, Entourage, and then Thrones in some order that kept Concha subscribing. (We'd like to think Entourage was at the top of his list.) So much for that!
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If you haven't already, we encourage you to carve out an hour out to watch this thing. It's a masterclass in slow-building tension, leading to a true oh-my-gosh-they-just-did-that television moment. I watched it completely free of context because I don't follow the show — and it still got me. Perhaps this GIF sums it up best:
