25 Unforgivable Twitter TV Spoilers That We're Still Upset About

We have all been the victims of Twitter television spoilers. Before the rise of the instant Internet reaction, you almost had to go out of your way to have a major TV event spoiled for you. You had to willfully walk to the water cooler or unfold that newspaper in order to have your day ruined. Now, all you have to do is turn on your computer or tap your smart phone to life to lose the surprises your favorite TV show was supposed to bring you. Often we run into spoilers without thinking about it, as our Internet habits have become muscle memory.

The massive Twitter reaction to the Game of Thrones Red Wedding has led to much spoiler-based soul searching. What are the responsibilities of those who have seen the episode as it aired to those of us who were stuck at work or with family? What constitutes a spoiler? What makes one spoiler worse than another?

This got us thinking about what spoilers have had the biggest impact on us as we carelessly scrolled through our Twitter feeds without watching the episode first. Why do certain spoilers make our blood boil, while me meet others with a shrug and a "I saw that one coming"? We've looked back over the last several years of Twitter ruining TV for next-day viewers and ranked the 25 Unforgivable Twitter TV Spoilers That You're Still Upset About.

And, oh yeah, SPOILER ALERT.

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Show: House of Cards (Netlifx)
Date: 2/1/2013

With Netlix's entrance into the original narrative programming game, we've been forced to reconsider our idea of how television works. If we're going to reconsider our ideas about TV, then we must also rethink our ideas about spoilers. When pouring over Twitter reactions to big TV moments, you usually see a flurry of activity the night of the original airing that slows into silence and dead hashtags. Unlike Arrested Development which was largely marathoned by its dedicated fan base, people seemed to take their time with House of Cards, digesting it at different paces over several months following the show's release. As a result, some observations tweeted out online a month after the series debuted were shouted down as spoilers.

The big twist at the end of the season involves local-boy-makes-good-makes-bad-tries-to-make-good-again politician Peter Russo (Corey Stoll) getting got. Stoll did a stellar job of elevating the skeleton-closeted politician stereotype into a full, well-crafted characterization. It's tough watching a man who was in way over his head finally drown in the raging waters of the political game.

On a public scale, the impact wasn't as large as your standard HBO second to last episode death because there was no commonality in the viewing experience, no communal reaction. It will be interesting to see what affect, if any, the lack of communal discourse has on House of Cards's legacy. We likely have more lessons to learn about television from Netflix and House of Cards, but one thing we've already learned is that there are few moments in modern life more lonely than experiencing a climactic television moment and having no one to tweet about it with.

Show: True Blood (HBO)
Date: 8/26/2012

One way to combat Twitter spoilers is to engineer a plot so convoluted that even viewers don't understand what's going on. True Blood has made a sport out of creating the most absurd, Rube Goldberg Machine-style plotting possible ever since the series left behind the Sookie-Bill love story that most viewers (who hadn't seen The Southern Vampire Mysteries, the novels on which the show is based) thought would drive the series. The fifth season was no exception. Bill (Stephen Moyer) completed his transformation from everyone's favorite character besides Lafayette (Nelsan Ellise) to everyone's least favorite character besides Tara (Rutina Wesley) as he embraced vampiric fundamentalism.

It looked like Vampire Bill's time might be up as he melted, Wicked Witch of the West style into a blood puddle. Longtime True Blood fans know better than to believe that the show would actually kill off a major character. As usual, a supernatural contrivance kept Bill alive to continue saying "Sookie" like no one else can. The resulting tweets were attempts at spoilers that weren't even spoilers at all. Some claimed that Bill "died," which isn't true, while others tried to describe the events of the story, but found that even 1,400 characters wouldn't have been enough to accurately describe what happened. For all the negative things you can say about True Blood these days, we'll go ahead and throw one positive in there: it's a tough show to spoil, no matter how hard you try.

Show: The Walking Dead (AMC)
Date: 11/4/2012

The circumstances of Lori's (Sarah Wayne Callies) death were as dramatic as any TV death in recent memory. She certainly got a better send-off than T-Dog (IronE Singleton), whose death generated more riveting cultural discourse than compelling television. The reason we rank Lori's death so low is that people didn't like her. The reaction on Twitter, both from the spoilers and the spoiled, was "good riddance." Lori's (completely understandable, btw) cheating and her paranoia regarding the fate of her child turned many fans against her. (This is just the case of an audience turning against a female character, a la the irrational hatred of Skyler White on Breaking Bad—look for an essay on this come August.)

Though the circumstances of Lori's death were surprising, what would have been rage from many fans over being spoiled was tempered by relief that a grating character had been put out of her misery, ending theirs.

Show: Smallville (The CW)
Date: 5/13/2011

If you weren't a die hard Smallville fan, you might be surprised to hear that the show lasted ten seasons. You might even be more surprised to learn that Clark Kent (Tom Welling) didn't get that giant "S" on his chest until the very last episode. The circumstances of a show that is meant to end when the main character becomes a superhero creates a strange atmosphere with regard to spoilers. Many fans were careful to dance around the reveal of the suit and Kent's first time flying, but if you were watching the show by this point, you had to know that these events would be the show's grace note. Anyone viewing by that point would only be there to see how the reveal happened. If the reveal of the suit and Kent's flight is a spoiler, then so are the names of the characters and the title of the show.

Whereas many finales trade on building up to a surprising conclusion, this finale built itself up as delivering exactly what you'd been waiting for.

Show: Dexter (Showtime)
Date: 12/16/2012

"Finally" was a word that kept popping up again and again as fans reacted to the season seven finale of Dexter. After showrunner swaps, up and down seasons, and some frustrating plot arcs, Dexter loyalists finally got a season finale they could get behind. Dexter has been almost as much Deb's (Jennifer Carpenter) story as it has been Dexter's (Michael C. Hall) and fans have long been awaiting the moment when Deb would have to choose between her morality and her brother.

If you don't remember Twitter erupting over the moment, don't worry, neither do we. There are only a few shows that can hold the public consciousness throughout a long series run; not every show can be Breaking Bad or Lost. Though critics and fans have described the seventh season as a "bounce back," many fair-weather fans have long ago bounced away to other shows. For a spoiler to wreak havoc, there have to be people to be spoiled, and we get the sense that most Dexter viewers were either glued to their television, had a pre-existing appointment with their DVR, or didn't much mind being spoiled on a show that for them had been spoiled long ago.

Show: New Girl (Fox)
Date: 1/29/2013

When we look at New Girl, we see the future of the network sitcom. Modern Family found success by marshaling what's left of the traditional network audiences together for one last tent-pole show. New Girl, by contrast, might just be what a hit show looks like in the era of network decline and niche programming. A simple survey of #newgirl yields GIFs, emojis, YouTube clips, and memes; the show's fandom speaks Internet.

For the show's audience, it seems that reacting to the show online is as much a part of the viewing experience as watching. Many shows try to do this with invented hashtags and additional content, but New Girl comes by fan engagement naturally. It's no surprise to us that while many sitcoms stage key romantic moments in the midst of "will they or won't they" plots, New Girl has been the only sitcom to stage a kiss heard 'round the Internet in 2013. Much of network programming is retrofitting the old models of multi-cam studio sitcoms and tense melodrama to fit in with the Internet age. We aren't sure exactly what it is about New Girl, whether it's the presence of indie darling Zoey Deschenel, the sharp writing, or it's hip, relevant tone, but Liz Meriwhether's show fits effortlessly into Internet culture.

Show: American Horror Story (FX)
Date: 12/21/2011

There's so much death in the first season finale of American Horror Story that it takes sincere effort to spoil the episode completely in 140 characters, and that doesn't even count the deaths in the episodes leading up to the finale. Spoiling horror is strange, due to the body count required of the genre. Don't we go into a horror thinking that almost no one is coming out alive?

The more egregious spoiler, then, is letting us know who survives. When presented with the difficulty of spoiling this finale completely, Twitter was up to the challenge. A brief look at #americanhorrorstory from that evening will provide you with details of exactly who died, who lived, the circumstances of the deaths, and even the ways that they nearly die prior to their deaths. Never underestimate the power of the Internet to ruin any delayed viewing experience, no matter how complex the story may be.

Show: Justified (FX)
Date: 5/4/2011

Justifed has never quite recaptured the taut dramatic tension and clean structure it found in season two. While season four's central mystery was solved by many fans before the final episode and season three's plot had a few too many moving parts, the saga of Mags Bennet (Margot Martindale) was one of the best told television stories of recent years.

As the season drew to a close, we found ourselves back in Mags's house in a scenario that perfectly mirrored the beginning of her story. As the Bennett clan collapses around her, the writing on the wall for Mags came into full view. Looking back on it, the events of the season felt like a perfectly arrayed set of dominoes, but Martindale's performance and the tragic circumstances of the character left us unwilling to accept her fate until the last moment. Spoiling fans had a rare reaction on Twitter that night that speaks to the power of Martindale's performance: they expressed their grief at the loss of the character, but admitted that her story came to a timely and appropriate end.

Show: The Killing (AMC)
Date: 6/17/2012

Resolving the central mystery of a series is a good way to get the Twitter spoil machine moving. Unfortunately, this doesn't work very well if the audience has already left the show behind. Loyal viewers of The Killing report one of the most frustrating TV experiences they've ever had. Season one came and went without resolving the central mystery, leaving fans to decide if they were willing to invest in another set of episodes. By the time season two came to an end, many fans were just waiting for sweet release from the clutches of the slow-moving show.

As far as The Killing's Twitter fan base was concerned, the finale could have been called Mercy Killing. Though the complicated cop-out of who "killed" Rosie Larsen was hardly satisfying, many fans were just relieved that they didn't have to watch anymore. We wonder if those who were spoiled on the ending were upset because they had invested so much time only to have the series secret ruined for them, or if they were thrilled that they were spared from having to watch the finale to find out what happened.

Show: Pretty Little Liars (ABC Family)
Date: 3/19/2012

Pretty Little Liars isn't usually included in any conversation about great television, but the show knows how to drive fan excitement in a way that many headier shows wish they could harness. Mona (Janel Parrish) being outed as "A" was a shock to the system of teens and tweens everywhere who had been long awaiting the revelation. The creative team turned the event into more than a spoiler, however: They used the revelation to drive fan interest beyond the events of season two.

Like most long-running shows these days, Pretty Little Liars is based on a series of books. Any of you Game of Thrones fans out there know that books and their snooty readers often act as the ultimate spoilers. The team behind the Pretty Little Liars TV show has created enough distance from the books that fans that have read them can't be sure that they have a clear road map of the series. After Mona was outed as A, she was visited by a mysterious figure, which was perhaps a nod to the book's reality that there is more than one A. Essentially, the staff used the books as a way of turning what would have been a definitive spoiler into a question to generate discussion and build excitement for future seasons. Rather than ruining viewing for those who hadn't watched the show yet, spoilers served to further excite the fan base.

This is such a savvy move that we wonder if Benioff and Weiss might take a page out of Pretty Little Liars playbook as they run out of canonical story and catch up to Martin's books on Game of Thrones.

Show: Homeland (Showtime)
Date: 10/21/2012

Homeland fans live in perpetual fear of their favorite show becoming 24. Creators Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon worked together on the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle before creating Homeland, and though the two shows have similar subject matter, 24 often went for style whereas Homeland goes for substance. When a major event occurs on Homeland it isn't met with the ecstatic glee that Scandal and Revenge fans muster up for big moments, but instead, a chicken little mentality breaks out as fans fear that the level of the show's craftsmanship is falling.

The expectations were incredibly high after the stellar first season of the show, and the result was a fan base that partook obsessively of Monday morning quarterbacking. Even if you managed to avoid Twitter for several days after a major plot point, odds are even casual TV fans were spoiled by the analyses and theories that cropped up from the Homeland fans turned conspiracy theorists. The Internet reached a consensus after season two that the show failed to reach it's season one heights. Maybe now this means that we can all get back to watching Homeland without obsessing over what the quality of Homeland is going to be.

Show: Downton Abbey (PBS)
Date: 12/25/2012

Downton Abbey delivered a pair of stunning character deaths toward the end of season three. While Sybil's (Jessica Brown Findaly) was less expected, as rumors were swirling about Dan Stevens's departure before his final episode aired, Julian Fellowes blindsided audiences with the way he took out Matthew Crawley. Matthew's death by slow moving milk truck was pretty weak, but in a way, that makes spoiling it worse. The method of his demise was as unexpected as it was unsatisfying.

The idea of spoilers for British shows is strange because, as they often air in Britain well before they are aired in the states, the Brits have months to spoil American audiences who refuse to flock to bit torrent. It's hard for us to imagine that many Downtown lovers have the fortitude to avoid taking a peek at a spoiler or two as they impatiently wait for their dose of costume drama. Those who do seek out spoilers before their favorite shows come stateside will appreciate that the Brits tend to be a bit more witty and poetic with their spoiling than Americans.

Show: Mad Men (AMC)
Date: 6/3/2012

Fans of Mad Men would call the show introspective, while those who are less fond of the exploits of Don Draper and company would probably accuse the show of navel gazing. Though the Pop Culture team has come out in favor of the series on numerous occasions, we have to admit that there are times when you can watch a handful of episodes and come away with little more to summarize them than "Don's having problems" or "the firm is having trouble keeping up." The rarity of Earth shattering events makes it all the worse when you're spoiled on a big moment in the show.

Shocking events are rare on Mad Men and when they arrive they carry a heavy weight. Lane Pryce's (Jared Harris) suicide is a prime example. To say Pryce's suicide was expected isn't quite right. We had long watched Pryce chafe against the financial and social pressures in his life; no matter what he did it seemed like he never quite fit in. So, in that sense, it was reasonable to expect his demise. On the other hand, Mad Men is so often a show about the pain of people who refuse to change their behavior despite abounding internal and external pressures. Given where their lives have taken them, it isn't hard to imagine Roger Sterling, Pete Campbell, or Don Draper sticking the barrel of a gun in their mouth. We are surprised when the characters make brash decisions nonetheless because Mad Men lives in a world where so many characters are doomed to retread the same paths until they grind themselves into oblivion.

Show: Scandal (ABC)
Date: 11/29/2012

Shonda Rhimes has pulled off a coup with Scandal. She has created a show that has become appointment viewing in an era when we thought appointment viewing was a thing of the past. That she's done so with a soapy melodrama no less, a form that many have written off as a vestigial component of TV drama, is all the more impressive.

Soap opera recapping is an American institution that once took place at the grocery store, and now it erupts on Twitter in real time. These days, so many beloved shows gravitate towards introspection punctuated by periods of violence, but Scandal has gone in the opposite direction, getting pulpy and soapy on the regular. The President doesn't get shot in the final episode, he gets blasted in episode eight out of 22. As a recent panelist on the The Nerdist Writers Panel pointed out gleefully, "She slaps the President in the pilot." Though the President getting shot is certainly a huge spoiler, Rhimes may have found the cure for loose-lipped Tweeters: make every event more exciting than the last one that was spoiled.

Show: Revenge (ABC)
Date: 4/12/2013

If Scandal has a competitor in the pulpy soap department these days, it's Revenge. A bomb went off in the most recent season finale and that was just half-way through the two-part episode. The second half of the episode is filled with mistaken identity, faked deaths, FBI manhunts, and double-crossings because, hey, how else do you fellow up a bomb detonation? Luckily for anyone who missed it, the entire event was spoiled point by point on Twitter. Why did we choose the bomb instead of any other plot points as the most unforgivable spoiler? We challenge you to wade through dozens of "tonight's episode of Revenge was the bomb" puns like we did and come to any other conclusion.

Show: Girls (HBO)
Date: 6/17/2012

Though there were certainly more intense moments on television in 2012, there was nothing quite as surprising as Jessa (Jemima Kirke) getting married to the aspiring DJ/venture capitalist Thomas-John (Chris O'Dowd). The show's loyal yet demanding fanbase took to Twitter to let Lena Dunham know that they didn't buy the surprise nuptials and that Jessa could have chosen a better outfit for her wedding day. Fans generally agreed, however, that the choice of Lady's "Yankin'" for Jessa and Thomas-John's wedding song was inspired.

The season finale certainly came out of left field, but fans didn't seem that upset about being spoiled on the show's surprise ending. This might be because most of the Girls audience is used to being spoiled: only 600,000 of the eventual 4 million viewers per episode watch as it initially airs.

Show: Vampire Diaries (The CW)
Date: 5/10/2012

Hate on Vampire Diaries all you like, but critics continually point to the show as the smarter alternative to other bloodsucking pop culture like True Blood and Twilight. Even if the vampire game isn't your thing, you have to respect the intensely dedicated fanbase. Twitter goes cray for the Vampire Diaries, and why shouldn't it? Reading a Vampire Diaries recap reminds us of dropping in on our mother's soap operas back in the day. There at least seven different plot threads moving through the synopses we read of the season three finale and those were just the ones that the recappers had the time to dive into with a limited word count.

Add supernatural creatures and hard bodies to the melodramatic plotting and you have the formula for a certified hit. If you think your favorite show's fans have anything on the dedicated Vampire Diaries viewers, just take a look at Twitter's intense reaction to Elena's (Nina Dobrev) turning, and bow down to the vampire kings.

Show: Doctor Who (BBC America)
Date: 9/29/2012

Even casual Doctor Who fans were aware that the departure of Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) was imminent. That didn't mean that the Whovians of Twitter weren't going to find a way to spoil the event. If they couldn't spoil what happened, they damn sure could spoil how it happened.

In the trademark style of showrunner Stephen Moffat, the companions' departure is an emotional sucker punch. The companion duo survives a fall from a skyscraper only to sent back in time by the Weeping Angels. First Rory is sent back unwittingly and then Amy chooses to follow him her true love to a life in the past. Think that's hard to spoil in 140 characters? Nothing is impossible on the Internet. As one tweeter spoiled it, "I'm gonna miss rory and amy like hell, but she let the angel touch her to be with him - absolute true love." The tweeter added, "crying like hell."

Show: The Walking Dead (AMC)
Date: 3/11/2012

While the audience seemed to hate Lori, many Walking Dead fans carried love for Shane until he met his bitter end. The writers did everything they could to turn Shane into an unsympathetic jackass, and when they couldn't sell that, they off'd him. As Grantland's Andy Greenwald wrote in his episode recap, "Rather than trying to rehab an already overdosed character, [showrunner Glenn Mazzara] unsheathed his bowie knife and gutted him without so much as blinking an eye."

The Twitter spoilers had a mixed response to this episode. Some lamented how clearly choreographed Shane's departure was; some even suggested that showrunner Glenn Mazzara was doing all he could to distance his story from the one Frank Darabont had been telling. Others lamented the passing of Shane simply stating that they'll "miss the son of a bitch." Regardless of what camp you fell in, you probably spoiled it for someone who wasn't among the seven million people who watched Rick and Carl eighty-six the troubled sheriff.

Show: Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Date: 12/11/2011

One of the biggest TV moments of 2011 came when Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) proved that Atlantic City was no country for young men. Traditional narrative expectations had us leaving season one thinking that Jimmy (Michael Pitt) was a man on the rise. Season two showed us just how wrong we were. The finale of the second season was a violent reminder that Steve Buscemi is the star of the show (as Alan Sepinwall said in his review of the episode, "check the credits if you don't believe me") and that Nucky Thomspon is a darker man than we would like to believe. As Nucky put it, "You don't know me, James. You never did. I am not seeking forgiveness."

Being spoiled on this episode was tough because the only person who seemed sure that Jimmy Darmody was going to die was Jimmy. Even up the final moments, when Darmody went to meet Nucky without a gun, we wanted to believe that this was going to end with the two men realizing they needed each more than they had thought, with a prodigal son returning home. Whether you found out on Twitter or firsthand that night, you learned that Nucky Thompson surely was not seeking forgiveness.

Show: Breaking Bad (AMC)
Date: 10/9/2011

Not only did they spoil the most important moment to date in an all-time great series for you, but they did it with references to "Two-Face" and The Terminator that they actually thought were funny. Sure, Gus's (Giancarlo Esposito) death was inevitable. To quote Sepinwall once again: "If Walt's going to become Scarface, then at a certain point, Scarface can't have a boss anymore."

The joy of watching Breaking Bad doesn't come from unpredictable plot turns, but from the skillful execution of expected results. If a spoiler merely let us know that Gus died, we could live with that. Spoiling the apparatus that gets us there is an unforgivable TV sin. Nonetheless, being spoiled on Fring's last moments doesn't change the force of the final image of Gus. We suspect that every viewer of Breaking Bad will have the image of the chicken king straightening his tie burned into the back of our minds forever.

Show: Gossip Girl (The CW)
Date: 12/17/2012

You have never seen the letters "OMG" strung together as many times in a row as you did if you were on Twitter on December 17th, 2012. Fans fell into two camps on the evening that the Gossip...boy...was revealed. Some viewers were delighted that the answer to the show's engine was one that they never saw coming. Others railed against how very contrived it was that Dan (Penn Badgley) was revealed to be the purveyor of prattle.

It may not surprise you to hear that we aren't terribly invested either way, but we've been told by the collective younger sisters of America that this was not an event that you wanted spoiled before you could learn first hand.

Show: Game of Thrones (HBO)
Date: 6/2/2013

The reason that the Red Wedding isn't the most unforgivable spoiler in recent memory is that you should have seen it coming. What did Robb (Richard Madden) do all season? He disobeyed his mom, banged a hot chick, walked around, and then went to a wedding: not exactly vital plot material. Samwell freaking Tarley (John Freaking Bradley) accomplished more than that with the weird incest lady in the frozen tundra. Oh, and Robb crossed the most evil looking dude this side of the wall. You should have seen this coming.

In all seriousness, the Red Wedding might actually be enough to change the way we deal with spoilers. There was a fair amount of spoiler soul searching after the episode as teenage inventor Jenni Lamere's spoiler blocker, Twivo, went viral all over again and spoiler think pieces abounded. Perhaps it was the intense amount of death involved in the event. Maybe it was that Twitter reaches more people now than ever before. Maybe it was because Robb Stark (Richard Madden) was hot. Whatever the reason for our national outrage following the Red Wedding, the anger was palpable for nearly a week after the "The Rains of Castamere" came to a crimson end.

We don't need to tell you who died. We're pretty sure that everyone on the Internet was either spoiled or doing spoiling. The Red Wedding brought up more interesting questions outside the world of the show. With the Internet moving into our eyewear and social media becoming as essential a part of life as breathing or eating, what is the future of spoilers? The rise of serialization in television has largely coincided with the rise of the Internet. One potential reason for this is that cliffhangers alone are not enough in the age of spoiling. With the constant, seemingly random death on Game of Thrones we seem to be taking another step forward in television history: the show helps us feel something again. As we consume so much advance information about our favorite shows, and even this kind of storytelling is no longer satisfying, will we continue to seek new ways to be surprised in a world where we know more and more in advance? Or, will we eventually leave behind the idea of spoilers, and enjoy our favorite stories even though we are virtually guaranteed to know the plot before we sit down to watch?

Show: Sons of Anarchy (FX)
Date: 9/26/2012

Anyone who's watched Sons of Anarchy from the beginning has been waiting for one character to die, and it isn't Opie. Ever since we heard the claim that Sons of Anarchy is "Hamlet with motorcycles" we've been holding out for Clay's (Ron Perlman) Claudius-style exit. That hasn't happened yet and maybe it never will. While Clay's is the death we've been expecting, Opie's (Ryan Hurst) was one we never wanted to happen. Opie has been the whipping boy for the Redwood Originals' sins ever since his old lady got off'd back in season one, and we've loved him for it. The big lunk with a heart of gold was always the moral center of this dark show, no matter what crimes he committed, and it was tough to see him go.

Sons of Anarchy has a broad appeal. It is one of the few cable shows, along with Walking Dead, that is appointment viewing for a large number of people that don't otherwise watch much television. The fervor of SOA fans was evident in their reaction to Opie's death. Within minutes, numerous parody accounts with some variation of "Dead Opie" were created. Both outspoken creator Kurt Sutter and Hurst were bombarded with questions from grieving fans and thanks for the great years with Opie's character. Many tweeters tweeted as though they had lost a brother. It's hard to feel bad for any die hard SOA fans who were spoiled, as even casual fans of the show know how fiercely dedicated and invested Sons of Anarchy fans are to the show. Spoilers are as common as Harley ownership among the loyal fanbase.

Show: Game of Thrones (HBO)
Date: 6/12/2011

For non-GOT readers out there, Eddard "Ned" Stark's (Sean Bean) death was a loss of televised innocence. Even the most radical television shows never dared to kill off the main character, and certainly not in the first season. We can hear many of your muttering "the main character of Game of Thrones is power" or something like that, but come on, the main character was Ned, and they killed him. Even those of you who put Game of Thrones a tier below the the first wave of HBO anti-hero shows in your personal pantheon have to admit that the show changed the game. When other shows do actually kill off characters, it's often well after their time has come, and they choreograph the death with heavy doses of symbolism and melodramatic music. To the credit of Game of Thrones, the show holds its harsh worldview close to its heart even when it comes to doing in movie stars. With the beheading of Ned Stark, we entered a new era of expectations for television where no one is safe and you'd better not get on Twitter until you watch the damn episode.