Apart from news of their $200 million Netflix deal, you’d be forgiven for wondering if Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had fallen off the face of the earth after the series’ endlessly-divisive finale. The pair famously vowed to be “drunk and very far from the internet” long before that night—but nonetheless, they’ve proved uncharacteristically quiet since, skipping Comic-Con and scarcely acknowledging their show’s record-setting haul of Emmy nominations.

That long silence ends now—well, sort of. Weiss and Benioff offered rare public comments on the final season to Japanese outlet Star Channel (courtesy of Watchers on the Wall), albeit without wading into the swampy discourse of the final episodes’ actual quality. Instead, D and D reiterated their awe with how the franchise became a cultural phenomenon in just a few short years, and named a few highlights from Season 8.

Their favorite moment? (And likely ours, especially given the season’s trajectory thereafter?) Brienne’s “Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” spotlight. Benioff cited the knighting scene between Gwendoline Christie’s Brienne and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Jaime: “It’s just a wonderful thing in the story, and to see Gwen’s face in that moment,” he said. “I’ve probably seen that scene four hundred times, and every time, it gets me. It makes me a little bit thrilled, it makes me tear up. I love that scene.”

Elsewhere, the showrunners at least acknowledged their slip-up with a modern-day coffee cup making its way to a Winterfell table in a subsequent episode. (HBO digitally edited the viral gaffe out later.) Benioff jokingly likened the error to intentional flaws in Persian rugs—“it’s tradition that you make a little mistake when making the rug, because only God can do anything perfect”—before explaining why the slip-up likely happened. “We were concentrating so much on Daenerys and Jon Snow that we just didn’t see this coffee cup right in the middle,” he admitted. “So at first I couldn’t believe it, and then it was embarrassment; ‘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.”

And while the duo escaped questions about the finale itself, Weiss admitted some uncertainty with its Emmy reception. “I thought that the [previous] season would have been the peak, and that we would’ve ended up with maybe a couple less [nominations], at best,” he offered. Benioff, meanwhile, hopes to continue their booze-soaked victory tour. “Ten of the actors are nominated, and so many of the crew members,” he noted. “So it’s just a great excuse for everyone to get drunk again.”