In 2017, Game Of Thrones leaks were such a big deal that HBO was actually willing to pay off the hackers who got into its internal network so they wouldn’t share more embarrassing emails and Game Of Thrones spoilers. In the end, two full episodes and spoiler-y plot descriptions were released out onto the internet, which doesn’t sound like a ton, but this is for a show that made HBO so paranoid about leaks that it stopped giving critics access to early episodes for reviews. Still, despite all of the drama, the show’s ratings didn’t seem to take much of a hit.
Now, with the show’s final season halfway done, Game Of Thrones has become leakier than a sunken ship. It’s like serving soup in a colander. It’s like the zombie dragon’s half-face in the last episode, where the ice-fire kept spurting out. It’s leaky like that. At the beginning of April, DirecTV dropped the season premiere hours early, an “accident” that nonetheless coincided with rival Dish’s inability to air Game Of Thrones at all over a dispute with HBO. A similar thing happened with the second episode after the German branch of Amazon Prime released it too soon.
Last week, before mankind’s fight against the army of the dead aired, images of characters getting killed in the battle were leaked online. The source that time was supposedly someone with an actual connection to HBO, not just a network that got its time zones wrong. And now, according to Entertainment Weekly, more clips and screenshots have been released early, with some reports saying that the full episode is available online. Some news outlets have been a little cavalier about a thing that happens in the leaks for tonight’s episode, so anyone concerned about being spoiled should probably just stay off the internet until the episode airs. Who knows, maybe you’ll recognize that life is better without the internet in general, and you’ll be so happy you won’t even care about Game Of Thrones.