Fans hoping for new footage from the final season of Game of Thrones were in for a disappointment on Super Bowl Sunday, when the closest the HBO show got to a new trailer was when Daenerys’s favorite child Drogon crashed a Bud Light commercial. Yes, the Thrones team worked on this ad—so those dragon shots certainly looked up to snuff. A short version aired during the game, but a longer clip debuted online, with a few more cute Thrones Easter Eggs for fans to dissect—including a more overt reference to the time the Mountain defeated Oberyn Martell in Season 4.
Thrones fans may have suspected something was up when the signature finned helmet of Ser Robert the Strong, a.k.a. The Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson), loomed into view over the prostrate body of an unseated, branded Bud Light knight. But even this shot of Cersei’s zombified right-hand man was out of date, given that he was wearing his gold and white armor of seasons past, rather than the signature black and silver the Queensguard sported in Season 7.
According to HBO’s press release, this ad “reunited more than 25 people from the ‘Game of Thrones’ crew under the direction of David Nutter, the man who orchestrated the infamous ‘The Red Wedding’ episode among others, and the collaboration of showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.” The Wall Street Journal reports that Thrones considered a number of other brand partnerships, including one very iconic mascot: “HBO considered several potential partners, including car makers and Coca-Cola Co. The beverage giant was never approached, but HBO had envisioned pitching a script that involved having Coke’s iconic polar bear turn into a ‘white walker,’ a zombie-like creature from the show.”
Still, this is a clever way for the HBO series to have a Big Game presence without, we suspect, paying Big Game prices. At least, not in full. That seems to be a growing trend among Super Bowl advertisers, with other major players like Marvel Studios opting for quick, 30-second teasers of upcoming films like Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel rather than lengthy, expensive full trailers. But Game of Thrones creators have promised that fans will get new footage before the show premieres on April 14.
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