HBO Asked Fans for Their Top 3 All-Time Favorite Characters and Twitter Went Wild
People really, really love Tony Soprano.
![hbo-favorite-characters](https://www.maxim.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/hbo-favorite-characters-scaled.jpg?w=788&h=444&crop=1)
Given the passionate fandoms of so many of its original programs, HBO should’ve known what it was getting into.
Okay, maybe the prestige cable giant does know what it’s dealing with, but its social media manager running HBO’s Twitter account wasn’t thinking about the superfans or it never would’ve asked followers to name their “Top 3 HBO characters of all time. Aaaaand go.” An avalanche of fictional names ensued.
Top 3 HBO characters of all time. Aaaaand go. #humanreco
— HBO (@HBO) September 17, 2019
Twitter rolled with the question and flooded the zone with characters from HBO hits going back years. There were plenty of predictable answers, too.
https://twitter.com/spence_harr/status/1174370131440525315
Daenerys
Targaryen
Mother Of Dragons pic.twitter.com/Oz9YpXWwow— Victoria (@victoriagab62) September 17, 2019
https://twitter.com/Tribbiani115/status/1174004606994669568
Matthew McConaughey won an Emmy for his portrayal of Rust Cohle in season 1 of True Detective—of course he was a fave. And Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen was positively iconic by the time Game of Thrones aired its controversial finale in summer 2019.
Where The Sopranos is concerned, James Gandolfini‘s Tony Soprano is an all-time great character. There will never be another—even his son Michael Gandolfini is playing a younger version, so in a way, a very different Tony.
But it turns out plenty of people had other faves, including characters from current HBO offerings like Barry and Succession.
@KFCradio @HBO Top 3 characters 1. Jimmy McNulty 2. Spencer Strasmore 3. Ari Gold
— Michael Jackson (@HeyMikeJackson) September 19, 2019
https://twitter.com/JensenKarp/status/1174697711007875073
We're doing the top 3 HBO characters debate?
1. Jaime Lannister
2. Tywin Lannister
3. Cersei LannisterPls don't @
— Tko ❤️🔥 (@NormalTKo) September 18, 2019
https://twitter.com/ToddHaynesVEVO/status/1174040482298490880
3. Cersei Lannister
2. Selina Meyer
1. Omar LittleRT @HBO: Top 3 HBO characters of all time. Aaaaand go. #humanreco
— Paul Hastings Kitala (@mrkitala) September 18, 2019
Was there a consensus, though?
Not a formal one, but a look at Twitter search results related to the query reveals an awful lot of mentions of Tony Soprano and Daenerys Targaryen, as there should be.