When Daenerys Targaryen made her way back to Winterfell with Jon Snow, it was thought to be an alliance that would finally bring Westeros together. However, the Game of Thrones Season 8 episode, “The Last of the Starks” brought coffee to Winterfell instead and the forgotten takeaway cup became the only thing fans wanted to talk about for a while. After several months spent playing the blame game, Emilia Clarke finally revealed who was responsible for the coffee cup. Honestly, the answer was a surprise.
The scene in question was one of a celebratory feast that was thrown in honor of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and Daenerys (Emilia Clarke). Everyone was mingling and seemed like they were having a good time. But, someone had accidentally left their coffee cup on the table without the cast or crew being any the wiser.
Since the coffee cup was in front of Emilia Clarke’s character, many believed her to have been the culprit, including Game of Thrones co-star Sophie Turner. However, during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Clarke cleared the air once and for all, noting,
Here’s the truth. We had like a party before the Emmys recently, and Conleth [Hill], who plays Varys, who’s sitting next to me in that scene, he pulls me aside and he’s like, ‘Emilia, I’ve got to tell you something. I’ve got to tell you something, love. The coffee cup was mine!’ It was his! It was Conleth’s coffee cup. He said so.
So, there you have it. Conleth Hill is allegedly to blame for this now-infamous debacle. It’s been a few months since the episode aired and the internet broke out the hilarious memes of the incident, but at least the actor’s conscience should now be clear.
He’s like, ‘I think so, I’m sorry darling, I didn’t want to say anything because it seemed [like] the heat was very much on you.’ And I was like, ‘What?!’ …He might have been drunk, but he said it.
Even HBO had to respond to the coffee cup placement after it caught the eyes of Game of Thrones fans. The network did so in hilarious fashion, though, saying that Daenerys had actually “ordered an herbal tea” and not a latte.
Some fans even took to calling the cup “Starkbucks” after digging up an old picture of Sophie Turner holding a coffee cup while wearing Sansa Stark’s garb on set. Of course, many simply wondered how the coffee cup even made it into the scene to begin with, but the damage was done. Still, HBO digitally removed the cup from the scene not long after the episode aired.
However, that wasn’t the end of it. A water bottle was left behind in a scene in the Game of Thrones series finale and no one noticed it until fans once again spotted it in a key scene. Was Conleth Hill up to no good again? After all, Varys was in the scene, but I’ll chalk it up to it being someone else this time.
You can watch Emilia Clarke discuss Conleth Hill’s confession on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon below.
While the final Game of Thrones season was very divisive, at least fans will always have the coffee cup incident to laugh about. But, if there’s a chance you do want to relive Season 8 of Game of Thrones, it’s now available to watch on Digital and keep an eye out for all the news about the prequels currently in development at HBO.
