April 17 marks 10 years since you first borrowed somebody’s HBO credentials (and/or logged on to some unscrupulous website) to see the first episode of Game Of Thrones, making it a full decade since the happy Stark children all got a cuddly wolf puppy to love, a decade since Sansa first glimpsed the adorable Joffrey Baratheon, and a decade since Jaime Lannister fondly considered the things he does for love. To celebrate the occasion, and possibly to remind viewers that there was once a time when Game Of Thrones was pretty much universally lauded, HBO has announced a month-long event called The Iron Anniversary that will feature a bunch of HBO Max stuff, a “MaraThrone” on HBO (it’s a play on “marathon”), and some kind of special prize giveaway for people “who were married in Westeros-themed ceremonies.” Finally, a Game Of Thrones wedding will result in something other than a knife in the gut and confused questions from your relatives (“Isn’t that the show about incest?” No Nana, it’s the show where a teenager gets sold to a barbarian warlord and then gives birth to dragons, and also yes, there’s some incest.)
The HBO Max stuff will involve a new Game Of Thrones “spotlight page” with curated episode collections, easter egg guides, and a bunch of behind-the-scenes videos and cast interviews, and there will be some kind of charity challenge that involves trying to watch the entire season. It sounds like the episode collections will be based around watching episodes in a different order, like if you just want to see Daenerys’ storyline or you only like the big battle scenes. The MaraThrone, meanwhile, will kick off on HBO2 on April 10 and will run through every episode of the series.
You can see a teaser for the Iron Anniversary event below (but, really, it’s just a 40-second highlight reel for the show).