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Published August 22nd 2017
Episode six of Game of Thrones Season 7, Beyond the Wall, has (officially) come to our screens and we have the data.
**SPOILER NOTES: There are two parts to this post. In the first, we won’t go into the details of what happened in the episode but we’ll tell you which characters were mentioned most and when spikes in mentions occur. In the second, we’ll tell you exactly what the top mentioned moments are. Big time spoilers. You’ve been warned.**
Last week saw HBO Spain accidentally air episode 6 instead of episode 5 during the usual slot. So basically everyone (not us) watched the show online in advance of its official air date.
We found 29,620 mentions of “leak” (or leaked, or leaking, or leaks) in the week leading up to the show airing.
That was a bit of a blunder, HBO.
Anyway, we still measured data during the official show time as usual.
You can check out our social data run-downs of all of the episodes so far this season here:
Mentions undoubtedly peaked at the end of the episode, so brace yourself for a big finish if you’ve not watched yet.
This spike in mentions is huge in comparison to what we’ve seen so far. Expect drama.
Surprise, surprise. Jon Snow is (for the fourth time) the top-mentioned GoT character this week.
Actual surprise: The Night King made his first appearance in our chat-stirring character chart.
Arya, Sansa and Daenerys have also been regulars in this chart so far this season, while Bran has also made an appearance. The Stark family are basically the Kardashians of Game of Thrones.
During the tense fight with the white walkers Jon is pulled into the frozen lake. It doesn’t look good for Jon at this point, with Daenerys taking off with the others aboard Drogon the dragon.
Daenerys is known as Dany across social media – it’s one of the search terms we use to find mentions of Daenerys for our ‘top mentioned character’ graph.
She isn’t a big fan of it on screen, though.
Through some convenient twist of fate, as Jon Snow emerges from the frozen lake, alone to face the White Walker army, Uncle Benjen Stark swoops in and gives him his horse. For some reason he says there is no time for them both to flee on the horse, so he takes on the White Walkers with his fiery rope thing while Jon gets away.
Uncle Benjen not being able to fit on that horse with Jon is like Jack not being able to fit on the door with Rose. #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/VM4ZerzfG1
— Steph Seacat Hulesch (@stephhulesch) August 21, 2017
The death of Viserion was a huge moment for the season, and it was pretty traumatic for dragon lovers. He was hit by an ice spike thrown by the Night King, causing him to plummet from the sky, and slip dead into the frozen lake.
The final scene will go down as one of the biggest moments in the GoT social data history book which is, of course, a heavily referenced text.
The Night King looks on as Viserion’s corpse is dragged from the frozen lake (quite a feat given that those pulling the chains are dead and Viserion is a massive dragon).
Stroking him on the nose, the Night King wakes Viserion up to his new reality: Blue-eyed zombie dragon.
Will he breath ice or fire? Will he turn on his mother in battle? Is he any match for Drogon? Only time will tell, but the White Walkers are now far more powerful.
Our coverage of Game of Thrones data spans years, and we have a huge archive of season and episode specific data over at react.brandwatch.com/gameofthrones. Our wavey data visualisations will also be covering season 7 as it goes on. (Note: You may notice some subtle differences in how the viz looks to how the charts in blogs do – we’re using slightly different methods of tracking character mentions).
You can also take a look at our recently released Game of Thrones infographic that we released alongside Dr. Jillian Ney. It analyzes a million Reddit posts to find the most loved, overrated and underrated characters and more.
Still want more? You can download our case study on how Brandwatch helped DDB and Sky inspire New Zealanders who had previously dismissed the show to get excited about the upcoming season.
If you’re a journalist looking to cover our data email us at [email protected] for more information
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