Westworld and Game Of Thrones take a trip to Sesame Street, learn how to be better friends
Sesame Street has always been great at weird parodies that are definitely targeted more at parents than kids, but despite being on HBO for years now, the show is finally getting around to some proper crossovers with a couple of the biggest shows on its new network. Alright, “proper crossovers” may be overselling it—this isn’t The CW—but Sesame Street’s Twitter account did just release a pair of videos where Cookie Monster pops up in Westworld and Elmo visits Game Of Thrones.
In the Elmo video, he interrupts a meeting between Cersei and Tyrion (this probably takes place a few years ago, if you care about the canon of this little video) to remind them that they could get a lot more done if they worked together to murder their political opponents. Tyrion is immediately on board, because he’s always been the more reasonable Lannister sibling, but Cersei does begrudgingly come around in the end.
The Game Of Thrones video is a bigger deal, because children love Elmo, but the Westworld one is much better. Directed by series co-creator Lisa Joy, it’s actually a more elaborate Westworld parody, with direct references to stuff from the show (“cease all motor functions” gets a callout) and an implication that “Sesame World” is actually one of the parks in Westworld’s universe. In this one. Cookie Monster teaches Dolores and Bernard about respecting each other and sharing their perspectives in a polite way—much like the way one would share a cookie. It also ends on a gross gag where Cookie Monster thinks the white…robot goo (?) is milk, which is a lot of fun.
This is all part of Sesame Street’s new “Respect Brings Us Together” campaign, as explained in this music video from Common (which features Muppet cameos from HBO characters):