The Bud Knight Is Resurrected, Jon Snow Style, In New Commercial
The Bud Knight, the advertising mascot who has been the star of Bud Light’s “Dilly Dilly” TV commercials for the past two years, famously met a grisly end in a commercial during February’s Super Bowl when he was crushed by Game of Thrones character The Mountain in what was a surprise promo for that show’s final season.
But in yet another example of pop culture death never being real or permanent, the Bud Knight is coming back from the dead.
The knight will be resurrected in a new commercial debuting this weekend during broadcasts of the Final Four, per Variety.
The ad, which has already been posted to YouTube, continues the Game of Thrones theme. In it, a priest of some sort of shown standing over the Bud Knight’s dead body while spouting spells and incantations that upon closer inspection just turn out to be names of different pasta. After the priest and another knight leave, the Bud Knight suddenly sits up and says, “I could go for some Italian.” It concludes with the slogan “legends never die.”
The bit recalls the plot line in which Jon Snow was brought back from the dead by the Lord of Light and the Red Priestess Melisandre, although several other Game of Thrones characters have returned from the dead over the course of the series, including the one who killed the Bud Knight, the Mountain.
That which is dead may never die. Behold the newly revealed fate of the Bud Knight: https://t.co/LIKBpvsPav pic.twitter.com/SdsGRb2Xzb
— AdFreak (@AdFreak) April 5, 2019
The new commercial does not explain how the knight’s body remains intact after a dragon burned the entire village at the conclusion of that Super Bowl commercial.
According to a Wall Street Journal story about the Super Bowl campaign the day after it aired, when Anheuser-Busch and HBO came together to plan the commercial, an HBO marketing executive said that “The Bud Knight had to die.” But it doesn’t appear that it was ever required that the character remain dead forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnoulvE58W8
Meanwhile, rival Miller Lite has produced a commercial that pretends to depict the aftermath of the filming of Bud Light’s Super Bowl ad, in which the actor playing the Bud Knight gets up, walks over to a tent on set, and grabs a Miller Lite.
Following the Super Bowl ad, a Change.org petition asked Bud to “revive the Bud Knight.” However, that petition only received 73 signatures, out of a goal of 100, so it’s unlikely that impacted the brand’s thinking. More likely, the plan all along was to bring the character back after two months.
