The Last Trailer

Game of Thrones season four was coming and I was completely bought in. For months I’d been fed trailer after trailer, each one engineered to make you think about nothing else. Another landed that week—supposedly the last one before the premiere. That felt like both relief and letdown at the same time.

I wanted the show exactly for what it promised: blood, breasts, spectacle, the kind of thing that didn’t flinch. You could feel the whole machine building toward it, showing you just enough in the trailers to drive you crazy without telling you anything real.

Now, looking back at that particular hunger—before I knew what the show would actually become, before all the disappointments—there’s something pure about it. You could still imagine it going anywhere. The marketing had you exhausted and completely hooked, which is usually how you know something has its hooks in you deep.