About

Where Is Gendry? refers to a series of jokes made about the long-awaited return of the character Gendry on the HBO fantasy television series Game of Thones. After a four-year absence, Gendry, last seen rowing into the sea, appeared in the fifth episode of season seven of Game of Thrones, to which many online made jokes about how he had been rowing since his exit.

Origin

On June 9th, 2013, the 10th episode of season three of Game of Thrones aired on HBO.^[1] In the episode, the character Gendry, the skilled blacksmith and bastard son of the former king, escapes a witch who intends to burn him at the stake via a rowboat (shown below). Following the episode, Gendry took a four season break on the series, and did not appear again until season seven. In between then, people online begane theorizing that Gendry had just been rowing his boat since his last appearance.

Spread

On June 3rd, 2014, BuzzFeed ^[4] released an article entitled "Seriously, Where Is Gendry on 'Game of Thrones.'" The article contains a series of gifs expressing appreciation and intrigue in the character.

On June 7th, 2014, the actor who portrays Gendry, Joe Dempsie,^[2] tweeted, "Still rowin'…#GoT." The joke indicates that Gendry has been rowing since he was last seen on the show. The tweet (shown below) received more than 7,200 retweets and 6,600 likes as of August 2017.

Following Dempsie's tweet, fans of the show began posting image macros of Gendry's final season. In general, the tweets revolved around the same joke about Gendry rowing, which became the prevailing joke about Gendry.

Two years later, on March 27th, 2016, Redditor Sergiotor9^[5] launched the subreddit /r/IsGendryStillRowing. The subreddit has one thread entitled "Yes." Two months later, Redditor Eycore^[6] launched the subreddit /r/WhereIsGendry. On June 18th, as fan interest in the character continued to grow, the website PopSugar^[3] posted a slideshow about the character.

On August 13th, 2017, the fifth episode of season seven of Game of Thrones premiered. In the episode, Dempsie as Gendry re-emerged. In the episode, the character Daavos acknowledged the rowing jokes by saying to Gendry, "I didn't think I'd find you. Thought you might still be rowing."

Fans of the show began to express their excitement through rowing jokes on Twitter. The night of the premiere, fans began posting image macros and jokes about Gendry and rowing (examples below).

Several media outlets covered the popularity of rowing memes, including Bustle,^[7] Heavy,^[8] TV Line,^[9] Mashable^[10] and more.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References