Bloody Revenge

HBO wouldn’t stop dropping season four trailers, and I genuinely couldn’t tell if they were building hype or just enjoying the torture. Months until April, and they kept releasing new footage like I didn’t already have enough to obsess over. But in this one, the whole thing distilled down to a single thing: revenge. Bloody, pointless, obsessive revenge.

By that point in the show, half the cast was dead. Everyone owed someone blood. Game of Thrones had spent three seasons getting you attached to people and then casually erasing them, so a trailer built entirely around vengeance felt honest somehow. You’d watch it and find yourself wondering which of your remaining favorites would actually make it out alive.