April 17th marks 10 years since you borrowed someone’s HBO credentials (and / or connected to someone unscrupulous website) to see the first episode of The Game of Thrones, it has been a decade since all the happy Stark children had a cute wolf cub to love, a decade since Sansa first saw the adorable Joffrey Baratheon, and a decade since Jaime Lannister has affectionately considered the things he does for love. To commemorate the occasion and possibly to remind viewers that there was a time when The Game of Thrones was universally praised, HBO announced a month-long event called The Iron Anniversary, which will feature a lot of things from HBO Max, a “MaraThrone” on HBO (it’s a “marathon” piece) and some kind of special prize offering for people “who got married in Westeros-themed ceremonies”. Finally, a The Game of Thrones marriage will result in something other than a knife in the stomach and confused questions from her relatives (“Isn’t that the incest show?” No Nana, it’s the show where a teenager is sold to a barbarian warlord and then gives the light dragons, and also yes, there is some incest.)
The HBO Max material will involve a new The Game of Thrones “Featured page” with collections of curated episodes, Easter egg guides and lots of behind the scenes videos and interviews with the cast, and there will be some kind of charity challenge that involves trying to watch the entire season. It looks like the episode collections will be based on watching episodes in a different order, as if you just wanted to see Daenerys’s storyline or just liked the big battle scenes. MaraThrone, for its part, will debut on HBO2 on April 10 and will go through all episodes of the series.
You can see a teaser of the Iron Anniversary event below (but, in fact, it’s just a 40-second highlight roll for the show).
[via Deadline]