Early Christmas
The whole point of waiting for a new season is that you build a ritual around it. Monday nights, cheap takeout, the slow consumption of a story over weeks. You’re not just waiting for television—you’re waiting for that specific shape your week takes.
Then the leak happens. The first four episodes of the new Game of Thrones season show up online before HBO even finished marketing them. They have names now: The Wars to Come, The House of Black and White, High Sparrow, The Sons of the Harpy. They’re real. Everyone knows they exist.
The choice seems obvious either way. Wait like a decent person and keep the Monday ritual, or do what thousands of people have already done and watch them all at once. But there’s something weirder happening in the middle—knowing they exist but not watching them. That knowledge ruins the anticipation anyway. You’re not waiting anymore. You’re choosing, over and over, not to do something you could do right now.
By the time the first episode airs officially, you’ve made the same decision a hundred times. It’s exhausting in a stupid way that nobody really talks about. Either way, the Monday ritual is already gone.