Game of Thrones is finally big enough to engulf us. As the HBO blockbuster reaches its final season, it has definitively crossed over from the novelty mugs and Funko Pop! figurines of middle-class nerdery and into the full mainstream. And with that comes a cultural cachet that threatens to ruin the spider’s web-thin magic of it: tie-in promotional products, mid-song name drops, that font they use becoming a weird medieval-style joke. Here are some of the best and worst examples of our world crossing over with Westeros.
Medium: That Ed Sheeran cameo
Despite all the hype, Sheeran’s season seven cameo wasn’t actually that bad. He had one line and a bit of song in a rare soldiers-can-be-tender-too scene towards the end of the first episode, as Arya met members of the Lannister army on the road. While it was a little bit distracting having one of our world’s biggest pop stars in a scene for literally no reason at all, the main worry is that this will encourage more redheaded music icons to apply for a cameoship. When all the flames have burned down to nothing and all the Walkers have been conquered, if it turns out Geri Horner sits on the Iron Throne then I’m blaming Sheeran. And I will riot.
Bad: Jade from Little Mix singing the word ‘Daenerys’ in a song
In 2016’s horny banger Down & Dirty, Little Mix’s Jade sings: “I don’t ask the mirror, I know I’m the fairest / I’m bringin’ the fire, so call me Daenerys.” This is bad, unquestionably, but in a very curious way it’s good. It’s hard to catalogue culture when we’re so fundamentally inside it, and it won’t be until 12, 15 years in the future – when Little Mix reunite for a comeback single performed on Loose Women, tired choreography with heavy baby bumps – that we’ll have the hindsight to actually see this era of history for what it was. It was 1,000 Marvel movies at once, that weird two-week period when we all had hoverboards, not really downloading apps any more, and Game of Thrones references in album-only pop songs.
Good: Daenerys interview on Fallon
Much as I am loth to encourage any behaviour that makes Jimmy Fallon bend double and snicker into his desk, Kristen Wiig’s 2015 interview to promote Welcome to Me is a vital part of the GoT-in-culture canon. Replete in a flowing Daenerys wig and stuffed shoulder dragon, Wiig ad-libbed her way through a seven-minute Tonight Show interview in a rough sort of character (it is exceptionally clear she had never seen the show) before singing the impromptu song Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful. Worth digging through the millions of Fallon YouTube clips of him playing a xylophone to find it.
Medium: Game of Thrones Adidas Ultra Boosts
The final marker that a fantasy epic has got enough cultural sway (read: fans willing to buy literally any merch with a link to it) is the hallowed Adidas crossover sneaker: it happened with Star Wars, it happened with Dragonball Z, and now it’s time for Game of Thrones to take the mantle. The six trainers themselves are pretty uninspiring – the Targaryen one has an Ultra Boost silhouette with a “GAME OF THRONES” inner and a little tag on the back saying “Hear Me Roar”, basically – but will that matter once they’re being trampled down to shit in the queue for the Comic-Con urinals? No, it will not.
Bad: Game of Thrones official Havaianas
Flip-flops are footwear of necessity: it’s hot, it’s by the pool, you don’t want to wear shoes at all but if you do you want them to be a thin layer of foam and a rubber thong to keep your feet from getting dusty, they are: just fine. Until you print a map of Westeros on the inner sole of them, and then you’re trying too hard. Where are you meant to wear these things? To a Warhammer convention inexplicably held on a beach?
Unsure: Trump tweeting ‘Sanctions are coming’ in the Game of Thrones font
It is not hard to see President Trump as broadly a bad thing for everyone but the United States’s richest elite, but you have to concede that the man is woven with a mad, intrinsic banter. In November last year he tweeted an airbrushed photo of him with the threat “SANCTIONS ARE COMING” in the lines-thru-the-Os Game of Thrones font, and that’s … well, no other world leader in history would choose to do that, would they? No other world leader on the planet would look at the optics of aligning themselves with a fantasy show where kings, queens, soldiers and upstarts knife each other in the back for constant control of a golden realm and think: “Yeah. This is a good look. Tweet it out.”
Bad: Those D&G adverts with Jon Snow in them
I like looking at Kit Harington as much as anybody – he has the folded eyebrows of an unadopted puppy – and the same goes for Emilia Clarke, but those Dolce & Gabbana adverts where they waltz and, incredibly, sing their way through old Italy are a little too “Game of Thrones ends in a dream sequence where both Jon and Daenerys die but imagine an easyJet holiday to Rome as they hold hands and get annihilated” for my tastes. At least cut their hair so they look different.
Inexplicable: Game of Thrones Oreos
I’m never eating a biscuit that aligns itself with a show where kings so routinely get poisoned to death, sorry.