*** Major Spoiler Alert for Game of Thrones ***
Season six of Game of Thrones is winding down, and in classic GoT style, episode nine was massive. So, if you still haven’t gotten off your throne to watch it, I recommend you do, because here come the spoilers.
In Season 3, us non-book reading fans were caught completely unawares by the Red Wedding… until the minstrels started plucking out the chords to the Lannister song (cue the shivers) and it quickly became obvious that something big was about to go down in the Frey dining room.
But the Battle of the Bastards was seen coming a long way off.
In anticipation, we employed our Twitter monitoring tool in MediaMiser Enterprise to monitor #GoT and track minute-by-minute reactions to the episode.
It begins in Meereen with the masters calling for Daenerys to surrender. Twitter started buzzing with questions of the dragon’s whereabouts. Right on cue, Drogon came to her rescue and Grey Worm offs the heads of two of the three masters.
Not very smart to mess with the woman who has not one or two but THREE dragons buddy. #GoT
— Maggie Resh (@Maggie1633) June 20, 2016
After the battle scene in Meereen, Twitter simmered down while the Stark siblings discussed war tactics. Here we’re treated to a rare bit of dry Game of Thrones comedy as Jon Snow attempts to explain battle plans to Tormund, who eventually gets it once it’s laid out in language he can follow.
“Half this episode has been people confusing Tormund with big words.” #got #leaveTormundalone
— Margaux L. (@lifesboring) June 20, 2016
We then move to a lighthearted scene between Ser Davos and Tormund that had Twitter humming, with the gist being that we’ll say goodbye to one of them before the end of the episode.
Which one gonna die- Ser Davos or Tormund? Having a final conversation with differing opinions. #got #thronesyall
— erbanlady (@ErbanLady) June 20, 2016
In the run-up to the battle, however, Twitter could hardly contain itself. Tweet volume steadily increased until the moment the armies charged, when viewers then (rightly) put down their phones and paid attention.
The tragic thing is that, upon further inspection of the nature of tweets during this spike in activity, the majority were complaints aimed at HBO Now, the network’s streaming service, which went down exactly halfway into the episode.
But, unsurprisingly, the evening’s peak in Twitter chatter came during the final scene, when Sansa finally exacted her long-awaited and well-deserved revenge on her husband. Twitter was, in a word, ecstatic:
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS DESTROY HIM! FATALITY #got #GameofThrones
— R∂vn MEZ (@Ravnski) June 20, 2016
