About

Protect the Starks refers to a series of jokes and memes referencing the shared last name of Marvel superhero Tony Stark and the fictional family from the book and television series Game of Thrones "the Starks."

Origin

In April 2019, the two popular fantasy action franchises Game of Thrones and The Avengers "Infinity Saga" were set to conclude. These events led to speculation that main characters would die, including both franchises' respective Starks.

On April 7th, 2019, Imgur ^[1] user vegetablecheekkd36 posted a photoshopped image of three of the Game of Thrones Starks standing with Avengers character Tony Stark. The post received more than 3,000 points and 120,000 views (shown below).

Later that month, on April 23rd, several days before the release of Avengers: Endgame and the anticipated "Battle of Winterfell" episode of Game of Thrones, Twitter ^[2] user @weirwolves tweeted the image with the caption "friendly reminder that the starks are in danger this week." The tweet received more than 6,500 retweets and 18,000 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Spread

Following the post, others made jokes about how that weekend in April would be a significant one for characters named Stark. For example, on April 24th, Twitter ^[3] @frankpallotta tweeted, "Good luck to all the Starks this weekend." Within two days, the tweet received more than 22,000 retweets and 69,000 likes (shown below).

On April 25th, Twitter^[4] published a Moments page about the references. Additionally, Mashable ^[5] published a piece about "Protect the Starks."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References