HBO isn’t having the best luck keeping its Game of Thrones secrets under wraps.
The broadcaster accidentally aired the next episode—episode 6—of the hit fantasy drama on Spanish television, five days before its official premiere. And as you’d expect, the episode quickly began circulating online. Although the official title hasn’t been revealed, the title “Death Is The Enemy” is being widely touted on the web.
Several hours after the leak, a spokesman for HBO Europe said that a “third-party vendor” was responsible for the error.
“We have learned that the upcoming episode of Game of Thrones was accidentally posted for a brief time on the HBO Nordic and HBO Espana platforms,” Tom Krogsgaard Nielsen told the BBC.
“The error appears to have originated with a third-party vendor, and the episode was removed as soon as it was recognized. This is not connected to the recent cyber-incident at HBO in the US.”
Last month, hackers stole 1.5 terabytes of HBO data, including two upcoming Game of Thrones scripts. Shortly after, “The Spoils of War,” episode four of the current season, was leaked online, not by the hackers, but by a pay-TV provider in India, which received the episode in advance.
As early as last summer, plot details for the new episodes made their way onto Reddit, and while many dismissed them at the time, they’ve proven to be eerily accurate.
Despite the leaks, Game of Thrones has continued to go from strength-to-strength this year, with “The Spoils of War” breaking the show’s ratings record, in spite of its early release. The most recent episode, “Eastwatch,” quickly broke that record with 10.7 million viewers in the US.