The ‘GoT’ Creators Finally Explained How That Coffee Cup Got There

The final season of Game of Thrones was a brain-bleedingly disappointing conclusion, save for a few moments of brilliance—namely, that glorious hang-out episode, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms"—but nothing summed up the season's brutally rushed feeling like that coffee cup. Yes, a to-go cup of coffee sitting in front of Daenerys somehow made it to air without anyone noticing, and, although HBO quickly erased it from the scene, the damage was already done:

The show's creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, have kept a pretty low profile in the wake of the last season, except for the occasional massive Netflix deal, apparently sticking to their previous plan to be "very drunk and very far from the internet" when the finale aired. But now, according to Watchers on the Wall, the duo has surfaced for a new interview with Japan's Star Channel to discuss season eight—and, yes, explain how exactly that coffee cup made it into the shot.

Apparently, they were both pretty mortified by the error, but are able to, uh, see the humor in it now. Per Watchers on the Wall:

Benioff jokingly likened the error to intentional flaws in Persian rugs—“it’s tradition that you make a little mistake when making the rug, because only God can do anything perfect”—before explaining why the slip-up likely happened. “We were concentrating so much on Daenerys and Jon Snow that we just didn’t see this coffee cup right in the middle,” he admitted. “So at first I couldn’t believe it, and then it was embarrassment; ‘how did we not see this coffee cup in the middle of the shot?’ And then, eventually, it was just funny. This one is just a mistake, and it’s kind of funny to us now.”

Well, there you have it. Benioff and Weiss were just, uh, paying too much attention to the show's characters to notice that one of them had a craft services latte or whatever in front of them. Sure, yeah! Hilarious! Still no word on how they missed those two water bottles in the finale, though.