'Game of Thrones' Season 8 Premiere Featured 2 Celebrity Cameos Everyone Missed

There were huge celebrity cameos in the Game of Thrones Season 8 premiere that went largely [...]

By Michael Hein

There were huge celebrity cameos in the Game of Thrones Season 8 premiere that went largely unnoticed online.

Fans flooded social media to discuss character reunions and plot developments after Game of Thrones returned on Sunday. It is understandable that they did not seem to have time for things like the cameo appearance from Rob McElhenney, co-creator and star of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Still, there was a clear shot of McElhenney standing on a ship in Blackwater Bay on Sunday, and social media is finally catching on. In fairness, the ill-fated sailor got an arrow through the eye before he could utter a word, so fans might have mistaken him for Rickety Cricket if anything. McElhenney was joined by actor Martin Starr, known for Freaks and Geeks, Silicon Valley and, more recently, Spider-Man: Homecoming.

McElhenney posted a close-up of his eyeless face on Instagram to draw followers' attention to cameo, writing: "don't blink." In a behind-the-scenes video from the episode, he joked that Game of Thrones was so authentic that his eye had literally been removed for the scene.

"They gouged my eye out!" he said. "They gouged my f—ing eye out. They can put it back in, right?"

McElhenney has been an outspoken fan of Game of Thrones for years, and has even worked with showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss in the past. The duo wrote an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia in Season 9 titled "Flowers for Charlie."

Unfortunately, the super fan's tenure in Westeros did not last long. McElehenney played one of the silent crew members on Euron Greyjoy's ship, who was slaughtered when Theon and his small band of Ironborn arrived to rescue Yara. They killed the sailors — who also included one of the show's writers — in a characteristically gruesome, axe-throwing scene, and Theon redeemed himself for allowing Yara to be captured last season. She repaid him with a fearsome headbutt to the face.

The reunion ended with Theon sailing north to join Jon Snow in his war against the White Walkers. Yara, meanwhile, returned to the Iron Islands to hold them in case the armies of men needed a place to retreat to. That could be the case, as the preview for next week's episode warns that the White Walkers are nearly at Winterfell's gates. With battle so soon at hand, there is no telling where this season could go.

Game of Thrones airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

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