Emilia Clarke: YouTube reaction vids are coming

Bigger! Lavish! Bloodier! At this point the only thing the cast of Game of Thrones hasn’t said about this coming season is that it will be more “EXTREME!” Emilia Clarke is no exception, though her tack while talking to Access Hollywood was probably a little more telling. After all, “bloodier” doesn’t tell you much, except maybe that the prop depart worked overtime. “Lavish” doesn’t tell you much except that when the budget numbers are released for this season, they’ll probably be higher than usual. But this?

“You know how you can watch the YouTube reactions to the crazy stuff we do? There’s gonna be a bunch of those this season,” [Clarke] said. “Like, a couple.”

“Unsullied Watch Game of Thrones” videos are something of a cottage industry on YouTube. With perhaps the sole exception of Season 2, every year of the show has had at least one major shock!death, from Ned in “Baelor” to Oberyn last year.

We’re going to delve into some spoilery speculation below. Beware!

Last year, the assumption I had going in was that Joffrey’s death would be the “YouTube reaction video” moment. It was a testament to both Pedro Pascal and the writers than within eight short episodes, Oberyn became the big one of the season. Now we have Clarke is suggesting we’re going to have more than one.

We know from earlier interviews with Sophie Turner that a certain “very shocking” scene for Sansa that might have been moved out of A Dance of Dragons will be happening this season, so that’s a possible candidate. Though I know for me, Cersei’s big moment this season is probably going to be very hard to watch, I doubt it will have the same “OMG SHRIEK!” impact of a beheading or and head crushing, or an entire wedding party done in while the host sits and giggles. And though we’ve seen spoilers for the end of Dany’s story this season, and have been promised some big dragon action from the visual effects supervisor Jabbar Raisani, if it’s like reading it in the books was for me, it will be a rising off the couch and cheering moment, more than a clutching a cushion for dear life, begging your god and George R.R. Martin for answers.

Of course, there is one very plausible candidate from the end of A Dance with Dragons that would be on par with the death of Ned and Robb…

Am I missing something? What else is there that could be “YouTube vid worthy”?

• Published on 01/29/2015 at 10:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:06 PM CDT