Subverting Expectations — Daenerys Targaryen looking distraught in a smoky landscape from Game of Thrones Season 8

Subverting Expectations

2017catchphraseclassic

Published September 29, 2026

Subverting Expectations is a sarcastic catchphrase used to mock story twists in franchises like Star Wars and Game of Thrones that fans found illogical or lazy. It took off after The Last Jedi in December 2017 and became a standard fandom insult by the time Game of Thrones ended in 2019.

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Overview

Subverting Expectations works as a sarcastic quote of praise that critics gave to writers like Rian Johnson and the Game of Thrones showrunners. Fans flip the compliment back on itself, using it to mean the writing chose shock value over coherent storytelling3. The joke lives in the gap between what the phrase literally says and what fans think actually happened on screen.

The format is mostly text-based. It shows up as a caption on screenshots of jarring scenes, as a tag on angry review threads, or as a one-line reply to anyone earnestly defending a twist1. When the phrase is used sincerely by a critic praising a bold choice, fans quote-tweet or reply with the same words to signal they think the twist was cheap2.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2017

The exact spark is hard to pin down, but the phrase started circulating as an ironic putdown right after Star Wars: The Last Jedi opened on December 15th, 2017. Reviewers had praised the film for breaking series conventions, and unhappy fans latched onto the specific words "subverting expectations" as shorthand for what they thought was lazy writing dressed up as boldness3.

RedLetterMedia's community pushed the phrase hardest. The channel's Last Jedi review, posted December 19th, 2017, pulled in millions of views over the following years4. Ten days later, on December 29th, the crew's annual Best of the Worst episode dug into subverting expectations as a narrative shortcut that could sink a story5. The next day a poster in /r/RedLetterMedia opened a thread titled "I don't understand the 'subverting expectations' meme," which is the first written record of fans calling it a meme1.

How It Spread

Through early 2018 the phrase stayed mostly inside Star Wars circles. On January 18th, 2018, YouTuber ThatAnimeSnob re-cut the RedLetterMedia Best of the Worst discussion into its own video, which pulled over 4,400 views within a year and a half1. That September, a /r/RedLetterMedia thread asked whether the channel had actually invented the meme or picked it up from behind-the-scenes Rian Johnson interviews, signaling that fans were tracing the joke's roots6.

The phrase got a second wind with Game of Thrones season eight in April and May 2019. Fans who felt the final episodes traded character logic for shock beats reached for the same insult, and a /r/OutOfTheLoop thread on May 7th, 2019, asked why the phrase kept coming up in Game of Thrones discussions7. Two days later YouTuber Yah_way posted "Game of Thrones S8 Sucks: 'Subverting Expectations,'" which crossed 26,000 views inside a week8.

By the time season eight wrapped, subverting expectations was a stock caption on Game of Thrones image macros, especially ones targeting the Night King's death and Daenerys's turn1. It stuck around as a general fandom insult for any twist critics defended and fans hated.

How to Use This Meme

The typical use is to quote a critic or creator praising a twist, then reply with "subverting expectations" as the caption, often on a screenshot of the scene in question. It also shows up as a standalone reply to any earnest defense of a divisive plot choice. Common convention includes air quotes or italics around the phrase when written out.

Frequently Asked Questions