CULTURE

Sophie Turner’s Elephant Halloween Costume Was a Major Game of Thrones Spoiler, We Just Didn’t Know It

“I wanted those elephants.”

April 15, 2019

Sophie Turner‘s decision to tell her fiancé, Joe Jonas, the gist of the end of Game of Thrones has proven slightly controversial among more thin-skinned fans. It turns out, though, that the couple used their shared intel to pull off a couple’s Halloween costume all the way back in October 2018 that no one realized was actually a coordinated costume and something of a Game of Thrones spoiler. Or maybe spoiler isn’t the right word. A bit of a troll job directed at Queen Cersei? Or just a clever joke that no one would realize the punchline to for about six months.

The engaged pair’s first-choice joint Halloween costumes were Morticia and Gomez Addams, outfits that they showed off on their Instagram grids. Though, being the well connected VIPs that they are, the pair also attended a second Halloween party a few days before the actual date. Jonas dressed up as Turner’s GoT character, Sansa Stark, a fact he reminded everyone of shortly before the premiere of Season 8, which garnered some headlines this morning.

What everyone apparently forgot, however, was Turner’s half of the costume. At the time it may have seemed like Turner’s costume had absolutely nothing to do with Jonas’s, which is fine. Some couples prefer to coordinate costumes, while others prefer their own individual outfit without thinking about what their partner may be wearing. So when you have two parties to attend, why not go both routes, right? Though, six months later we can now definitively tell that Turner’s costume actually was in sync with Jonas’s.

She dressed as an elephant.

As we learned in Sunday night’s episode, while most of the main characters have assembled in the Stark home of Winterfell, Lena Headey’s Queen Cersei has deceptively stayed back in King’s Landing, hoping that all of her enemies, living or dead, destroy themselves in the great war to come. Though, just in case anyone (or anything) survives, not only does she still have the Lannister army at her beck and call, but she’s also called in a mercenary army from Essos known as the Golden Company. Not only is the Golden Company famed for their human warriors, but also their war elephants, a fact teased in the previous season.

Unfortunately, when the Golden Company arrives, not only are they short a few thousand men, but they have also shown up without the damn war elephants. It’s explained that elephants aren’t particularly suited to being able to cross the ocean on a ship, but whether this was a triumph of logic of the Game of Thrones writers’ room, or a triumph of budget tightening among HBO execs remains to be seen. Whatever the case, no one, and absolutely no one, is more disappointed by the lack of elephants than Cersei herself.

Even after a couple of scenes pass, and she makes the surprising decision to let Euron Greyjoy into her bedchamber, all she can think about is those damn elephants. “I wanted those elephants,” she sighs to herself, immediately post-coitus. In an episode that perhaps tried to force in a few more comedic moments than usual for the show, this might have been one of the most genuinely hilarious moments.

The Internet certainly seemed to like it.

Except now it seems Turner beat us all to the elephant meme jump months ago. Sansa slipped out of Cersei’s grasp, and she never got those elephants, and, yet, there they are partying together.

Of course, it begs the question: Was Cersei’s elephant obsession a one-episode gag, or will it prove to be something far more meatier as the final season progresses? Will Sansa actually, somehow, wind up with elephants instead? It’s worth pointing out that elephants’ northerm cousins, mammoths, have been seen on the show north of the wall in seasons past. Will they appear again? With this show, you never really know.