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Game of Thrones: 'The Long Night' is now the most tweeted-about TV episode ever
WARNING! The following contains major plot spoilers for the latest episode of Game of Thrones, "The Long Night."
The night is dark and full of tweets...
Whether you could see it or not, last night's episode of HBO's Game of Thrones marked the end for several major characters we've come to love over the last seven-and-a-half seasons. Those terrible deaths, coupled with Arya (Maisie Williams) killing the Night King (Vladimir Furdik) before he could kill Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright), ensured that the "The Long Night" would become the most-tweeted-about episode of scripted television in the history of Twitter.
Today, the social media platform announced that the hour-plus episode brought in 7.8 million tweets, easily towering over the former record holder, Season 8's premiere from April 14, which garnered 5 million tweets when it first aired. In the last four months alone, the high-fantasy series has racked up 52 million tweets total. Just imagine how high that number will be by the end of the year.
According to Twitter, the Top 5 most tweeted-about characters during "The Long Night" were: Arya, the Night King, Bran, Jon Snow, and Cersei. The last character on that list (played by Lena Headey) is notable because she hasn't appeared since the season premiere two weeks ago. Some fans online joked that she was napping through the Battle of Winterfell, which means she'll be nice and rested when the remaining characters try and usurp the Iron Throne from her.
To celebrate the viral popularity surrounding the show, Twitter added a brand-new hashtag emoji of the Weirwood Tree when you tweet "#NotToday" or "#TheLongNight." "Not today," was a phrase instilled into Arya by her Braavosi sword-fighting teacher from Season 1, Syrio Forel (Miltos Yerolemou). Forel would often prompt her with the question, "What do we say to the god of death?" The proper response: "Not today."
That simple refrain — which was echoed by the Melisandre (Carice van Houten), who would see her story arc and her life finally come to a close — was all it took to convince Arya of her destiny of finishing the battle once and for all.
While the Night King and his army have been dispatched, the conflict is far from over, as the war now turns its gaze over to Cersei and all of King's Landing next Sunday night at 9 p.m. EST on HBO.
Before then, let's pour some out of our goblets for Edd (Ben Crompton), Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen), Lyanna Mormont (Bella Ramsey), Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer), and everyone else murdered, resurrected, and then murdered again by the White Walkers. RIP.
We're not crying, you're crying!
