When the dust finally settles on the fantasy phenomenon known as "Game of Thrones" and fans are able to look back without being clouded by emotion (along the lines of what's been happening recently with the 20th anniversary of "Lost" and its ongoing reappraisal), time may prove to be quite kind to the groundbreaking HBO series -- controversies and all. Some of those controversies have become an inextricable part of how we discuss and analyze the epic undertaking, like its iffy approach to depictions of sexual violence or the various ways the adaptation strayed from author George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Others fall into a different and more nuanced category entirely, one that's worth dissecting even all these years later. In that light, a particularly odd scene from over a decade ago might be worth a second look.
No, we're not talking about Daenerys Targaryen and her fire-breathing dragon razing King's Landing to the ground or Bran the Broken somehow ending up as King of the Seven Kingdoms because had "the best story." Rather, the most confusing moment in the entire series had to do with the most mundane of topics entirely: beetles. Wind the clocks back to season 4 of "Game of Thrones," right when Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) had been accused of murdering his sociopathic royal nephew Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) and subsequently put on trial for his alleged crimes. On the eve of the trial by combat to decide his fate, in which he placed his very life in the hands of the vengeance-seeking Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal), the disgraced Lannister has one last conversation with his brother Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) where they end up reminiscing about a mentally ill cousin of theirs and his childhood obsession with, well, smashing beetles.
Almost immediately, viewers began wondering exactly what this was supposed to mean and what metaphor (if any) revealed the secret meaning behind it. Ten years later, this mystery might be considered solved.