'Star Wars' Now Has Its Own "Coffee Cup" Controversy

In the age of the internet, there isn't a piece of popular media that doesn't have every single frame dissected and poured over to get every last detail spotted. This goes double for culturally popular shows and movies. From Easter eggs to continuity errors to anachronisms, there are few things that eagle eyed viewers will not spot.

One of the most famous recent examples of this is in the Game of Thrones season 8 episode "The Last of the Starks," in which a Starbucks coffee cup appears on set during one of the scenes.

Although I admit that I've been staring at this picture for half an hour and still can't spot it.

It makes sense, really. Shows and movies have hundreds if not thousands of moving parts to them, and odds are that something is going to slip through the cracks that people only spot after the internet has latched onto it and quickly memed it to death. It's vaguely amusing when something like that pops up. Well, now the biggest and best show on television, The Mandalorian, has its own "coffee cup" controversy.

Though if we keep referring to instances like this as a "coffee cup moment" or something like that, future generations are going to have no idea where the phrase came from, and it's just a seemingly random term for something that is in a scene that shouldn't be.

In any case, the oopsie in The Mandalorian is that a crew member can be clearly seen in one of the shots, and not a crew member of the place that Mando and his buddies are blasting their way through, unless the new uniforms for the Empire's crew members is a t-shirt and jeans.

Or maybe it is. Budget cuts and all that. The lowly crew might have to scrounge for anything that looks semi-professional.

Crew members and boom mics and other things of that nature have been spotted in film and TV since the early days, whether through shadows, reflections, or, as seen here, just straight in the frame, unnoticed unless you weren't focused on the thrilling action of Mando and his crew invading an Imperial ship full of weapons, and were looking around the blaster fire to see, of all things, a random dude in a t-shirt and jeans.

To be fair, the episode was directed by Carl Weathers, who plays Greef Karga and is in the shot in question with his back turned to the crew member. It would be a simple mistake that nobody noticed him in the shot. All joking aside, the scene is legitimately thrilling, and showcases some of the exciting action that The Mandalorian has become known for. We as the audience are more worried about whether or not our lovable crew will be shot by the stormtroopers firing at them (ha) than distracted by something else. The scene holds your attention enough that nothing else is important, and you have other things running through your mind.

But again, this is the internet, and there are entire websites dedicated to spotting things like this. It's amusing when something like this flies under the radar. You notice it after the fact, which helps keep you in engaged when you're watching the episode the first time around. At the end of the day, it doesn't change the scene at all, and Disney/Lucasfilm can edit him out, if they haven't already. As stated before, this is a common part of film and TV. He isn't the first random crew member to accidentally be in a shot, and he won't be the last.

Until then, congratulations, random guy. You are The Mandalorian's coffee cup. Enjoy.

Written By Paul Durbin

Syndicated From Culture Slate