Protect The Starks

2019catchphrasedead

Published September 23, 2026

Protect The Starks is an April 2019 joke that grouped Marvel's Tony Stark with House Stark from Game of Thrones during the weekend when Avengers: Endgame opened and the Battle of Winterfell aired. Fans spent days ranking, photoshopping, and pleading for every character sharing the surname.

game of thrones memesmarvelglobal crossover memesphotoshop memesfandom hype memes

Overview

Protect The Starks works by treating Tony Stark as an honorary member of Game of Thrones' House Stark, then worrying about the survival odds of the combined family. Common formats include photoshops that place Tony beside Arya, Sansa, and Bran1, mock rankings of which Stark was most likely to die that weekend1, and short pleas along the lines of 'good luck to the Starks this weekend'2.

The gag rides on the calendar overlap between two franchises whose big deaths were heavily anticipated by fans. Avengers: Endgame closed the ten-year Infinity Saga while Game of Thrones aired the Battle of Winterfell, both pointing to lethal, character-killing showdowns1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Imgur (initial post) / Twitter (viral spread)
Date
2019

The earliest widely shared image was posted on April 7, 2019, by Imgur user vegetablecheekkd36, who uploaded a photoshopped picture of three Game of Thrones Starks standing next to Tony Stark; the post pulled over 3,000 points and 120,000 views2. On April 23, 2019, Twitter user @weirwolves recirculated the image with the caption 'friendly reminder that the starks are in danger this week,' collecting more than 6,500 retweets and 18,000 likes in three days2.

How It Spread

The next day, April 24, 2019, journalist @frankpallotta tweeted 'Good luck to all the Starks this weekend,' pulling over 22,000 retweets and 69,000 likes within two days2. Related posts stacked up quickly, including mock 'Stark rankings' listing Arya, Tony, Bran, and Sansa by likelihood of dying1.

On April 25, 2019, Twitter published a Moments page collecting the jokes, and Mashable ran a piece describing the online panic around every character named Stark1. The framing tied fan dread about the Night King's army reaching Winterfell to widespread predictions that Tony Stark would not survive the fight against Thanos1. Activity dropped off once both events aired and the actual fates of the Starks were known, making the meme a short, event-driven burst rather than an ongoing template.

How to Use This Meme

Posts typically list Tony, Arya, Sansa, and Bran together, sometimes with a ranking of who is most likely to die that weekend1. Photoshops combining Marvel and Game of Thrones promotional imagery are another common convention1.

Frequently Asked Questions