"It was a conscious, concerted statement of our imperfection."

When we sift through the remains weeks after the finale to 'Game of Thrones', is it possible that the internet's reaction to it was slightly overblown?

Maybe. Maybe not.

One thing's for sure, though - showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, also known as D&D, didn't come out the other side of it unscathed. Considering how their Google results were changed to be 'Bad Writers', the internet pretty much savaged them.

This is probably why the pair have been more or less radio silent since the finale aired, but in an interview with Japan's Star Channel, they broke their silence - not so much on the overall quality of the eighth season, but the slight goofs picked up along the way.

For example, the coffee cup next to Daenerys? Actually put there on purpose, according to the two showrunners. "It's like in Persian rugs it's tradition that you make a little mistake when making the rug, because only God can do anything perfect, so for us I guess that just was our (mistake)," Benioff joked.

"That's why I put the coffee cup there. It was a conscious, concerted statement of our imperfection," Weiss added.

Sure, OK. Make jokes.

As Benioff tells it, it simply came down to their focus being on Jon and Daenerys in that scene, and not the coffee cup right in front of her. "So, at first I couldn't believe it, and then it was kind of embarrassment, because how did we not see this coffee cup in the middle of the shot? And then, eventually, it was just funny. This one is just a mistake, and it’s kind of funny to us now."

Of course, to everyone else, it was emblematic of a series that had taken a nosedive in both quality and in how it squandered both the chance to create an ending worthy of what came before it.