In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Egg is around 10 years old. A major reveal comes midway through the season when we learn the scrappy little squire is actually Aegon Targaryen. He is a few notches down the line of succession, but the Iron Throne looms in his future. By contrast, our other misfit hero, Dunk, hails from humble Flea Bottom. His life plan is to roam Westeros, being a hedge knight.
If you’ve only watched A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, you wouldn’t know much more than that. But George R.R. Martin book readers have a lot more context for both characters. And with one offhand remark, Dexter Sol Ansell—who plays Egg—swiftly upended some of that long-held lore.
As you can see in this talk show clip, Ansell and Peter Claffey, who plays Dunk, are asked if they’ve been told anything about their characters’ futures. Ansell answers—maybe too freely.
Dex Sol Ansell, who plays Egg in #AKnightOfTheSevenKingdoms, gives out a MASSIVE spoiler to the ending of his character regarding Summerhall and who survives as told to him by George R.R. Martin
This wouldn’t be the first time GRRM told actors in the show their character’s fate pic.twitter.com/mV6tRRR2n2
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms viewers will recall that in episode three, “The Squire,” the pair happen upon a woman who offers to read their fortunes. For Dunk, she says, “You shall know great success and be richer than a Lannister,” which seems so far-fetched Dunk laughs it off.
For Egg, though, she says, “You shall be king and die in a hot fire, and worms shall feed upon your ashes. And all who know you shall rejoice upon your dying.” This prediction comes before Dunk realizes Egg could be king and again he laughs it off. Viewers, however, can see Egg is spooked.
Fans of Martin’s books know that Egg does eventually become King Aegon V, long after his boyhood adventures in the Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas. They also know of something referred to as “the tragedy at Summerhall,” a great inferno that destroys one of House Targaryen’s castles—maybe, probably, caused by the king’s attempts to bring dragons back to life.
It’s always been said that’s how Egg will die as an older man—and that Dunk, who becomes his Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, also perishes there.
Until, well, this new bit of information. “I do know a bit about when Egg’s trying to make dragons in Summerhall, and then there’s a huge fire,” Ansell tells the interviewer in the above clip. “We know from George…”
Here, Claffey interrupts and talks over Ansell: “We don’t know if that is exactly what happens.”
Ansell continues. “We know Dunk survives. But we don’t know if Egg survives yet.”
Claffey makes a playfully frantic “Cut him off!” hand gesture and reiterates, “We don’t know exactly what happens. Let’s just get this season one out of the way, and we’ll see.”
Dunk and Egg forever! Maybe that fortuneteller was just blowing smoke after all. If anyone’s going to retcon this one, Martin is clearly the guy to do it, even if he might want to be more careful who he shares spoilers with moving forward.
New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms arrive Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
Ever since Game of Thrones came to its controversial end, HBO has had grandiose plans, in scope and scale, for what it wants to get out of telling more stories in Westeros and beyond. But for all that epic dreaming, it turns out that the quiet success of one of its intentionally smaller shows could turn all that on its head.
That show is, of course, the ongoing Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which, despite its oversized hero in the form of Ser Duncan the Tall, has charmed audiences with its lighter, more intimate take on the world of Game of Thrones—a story that is about ordinary people getting by underneath and away from the grand politicking of the realm, rather than huge wars and giant, mythical monsters. It’s not just audiences that are charmed, though. Apparently HBO head Casey Bloys is, too.
“If you think about the novellas, it’s a two-hander. It’s two unlikely friends and heroes wandering Westeros. From its inception, from the starting point, it is not warring families, it is not dragons, it is not giant battles. So the creative made sense first, and then the production follows,” Bloys recently told Deadline of the show’s source material, making the case for a project that is smaller in scope.
But according to Bloys, Knights‘ success doesn’t mean that suddenly every Game of Thrones spinoff to come will be a miniseries that eschews major events in Westeros’ past or future—more that the world of the seven kingdoms and the lands beyond are large enough to be able to host series ideas of varying sizes, so that shows like Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and House of the Dragon are able to coexist. Bloys also made note that the smaller-scale ideas could also allow for shows to have tighter production turnarounds, suggesting a series like Knight could be a yearly show, rather than have sizeable gaps between seasons (Knight‘s second season will air next year, sandwiched between 2026 and 2028 releases for House of the Dragon‘s third and fourth seasons).
“I’m not looking to change the way that we make television at all. Our business has always been a portfolio business, which means you can have shows like The Last of Us or House of the Dragon, and you can also have smaller-scale shows like Somebody Somewhere or The Chair Company, adding things that can come back on an annual basis, like The Pitt,” Bloys continued, “or adding things where the creative lends itself, in Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I don’t want to say an easier production, but something that allows you, on a smaller scale, to produce and come back on an annual basis.”
With new Game of Thrones material planned at least through 2028, it’ll be interesting to see how that lesson is applied for the myriad other spinoff projects still in the works for the franchise. Although Bloys didn’t comment on further plans, Deadline did note that there are several projects being planned at the moment, including the recently resurrectedThrones sequel focusing on Jon Snow and Arya Stark, the animated project Nine Voyages based on the life of House of the Dragon‘s Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake (with animation legend Genndy Tartakovsky attached), the Nymeria-focused mythological prequel 10,000 Ships, and a series based around Aegon Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros.
Time will tell which of those could get the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms treatment—or make it to the screen at all. But at least the future of Game of Thrones on the small screen is looking a bit brighter thanks to Dunk and Egg… much to the pleasure of their creator, we imagine.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdomskicked off its run with a makeshift funeral: Dunk (Peter Claffey) buries Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb), his longtime master, on a muddy hillside. It’s a turning point for the former squire, who decides to take Ser Arlan’s sword and head to the nearby tournament at Ashford to try his luck. After all, he’s a real knight now. Or… is he?
It’s unclear if Ser Arlan actually got around to knighting his protégé before he passed. But Dunk’s nervousness when he’s teased by the steward at Ashford—who jokingly (but convincingly) warns him of the hideous torture that awaits any man who pretends to be a knight—suggests maybe the ceremony didn’t quite come to pass.
Later in episode one, “The Hedge Knight,” Dunk blurts out that the sword he carries is rightfully his, a statement so odd even self-involved Ser Steffon Fossoway takes note of it.
But, in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter if Ser Arlan knighted Dunk—or are the life lessons and innate heroism that “Ser Duncan the Tall” carries within him more important? A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms showrunner, Ira Parker, makes a solid point for the latter.
Speaking on the official Game of Thrones podcast (via Winter Is Coming), Parker said it’s more important to consider what makes a good knight, rather than whether or not an official ceremony happened.
“It’s not like it’s an easy thing to do. It’s not like anyone can just stand up and say, ‘I am a knight; here we go.’ You need things. You need horses, you need armor, you need to be able to fight … These guys are professional fighters,” Parker pointed out.
He continued. “I think that’s ultimately, hopefully, what it comes down to, whether or not you have the name and the arms and the armor… you don’t even have to be a good person; you don’t even have to be a moral person. But if you try and help out in the immediate vicinity, you don’t have to go off and change the entire course of history in the realm. You just have to help the guy next to you that’s struggling at the moment. And I think Dunk… as we will see, sort of takes that as his guiding light, and you know, maybe gets him in a little bit of trouble.”
You can check out the full interview here; it starts around 24 minutes in:
Follow that trouble when new episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms arrive Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
The success of Game of Thrones—divisive last season notwithstanding—naturally inspired HBO to go back for more. House of the Dragon arrived in 2022, a prequel about warring royals patterned so closely after Thrones that it uses the same theme song. But A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which premieres January 18, is cut from a different cloth. A rougher, stinkier cloth. It’s an approach that perfectly suits the source material, George R.R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas—and it makes for a wonderfully entertaining TV show that explores Westeros from an entirely new point of view.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms—co-created by Ira Parker and Martin, and showrun by Parker—takes place between the events of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, which are themselves separated by 200-odd years. The new show, therefore, takes place generations after the Dance of the Dragons but generations before the Mother of Dragons. The Targaryens are still very much in power at this point, something that’s of zero concern to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ protagonist… until it suddenly becomes his biggest problem.
When we first meet Dunk (Peter Claffey), he’s burying his master, the very recently deceased Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb). A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms takes place far away from the castles we’ve seen in the previous Westeros shows. Instead, it shows us how people not born with fancy titles get by on the day-to-day—including hedge knights and their squires. It is a life of rain, mud, and sleeping under trees; dealing with buzzing flies and unpalatable food; and not owning much more than your horse, your sword, and the clothes on your back.
Being a knight gives a man a certain status, but there are limits to that. As Dunk—“Ser Duncan the Tall” is the plainly descriptive name he chooses for himself—is made to understand again and again, a dirt-poor hedge knight is the lowest rung of the ladder. That’s brought into clear focus when he ambles to Ashford Meadows, intent on entering a tournament where the other competitors include highborn lords and princes. He’s got close to no money, and this is a place where loyalty tends to be intertwined with whoever’s paying the highest price.
As A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms explores over its six episodes (all of which io9 was able to view for review), being a knight—sworn by oath to “protect the innocent”—and being an honorable man are not always the same thing. In fact, as the unintentionally blundering Ser Dunk discovers, there’s often a deep divide between the two. Even worse, the people with the most power can sometimes be the most despicable of them all, a timeless lesson that Dunk learns in the hardest way possible.
Deciding to check out the tourney at Ashford Meadows is literally Dunk’s first move after Ser Arlen’s passing. And he’s not on his own for long; though he resists the idea, he’s worn down by a bald-headed little oddball named Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) who really, really wants to be his squire. No spoilers here, but even if you haven’t read Martin’s novellas, close viewing of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will reveal Egg’s secret before the narrative comes right out with it.
And that narrative is a compressed one, especially compared to the sprawling likes of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. Though there are flashbacks to add important details—since Martin’s stories rely heavily on Dunk’s internal dialogue, this frees the show from needing any voice-over—A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms basically takes place over a couple of days in a single location.
But the stakes are still sky-high. They’re life or death both in the jousting ring, where men compete knowing the considerable risks, and also in the rowdy camp that springs up around the tourney. There, Duncan sees firsthand what an angry, impulsive, bratty Targaryen prince is capable of—bolstered by the confidence that comes with being above the law simply because of who his family is.
House of the Dragon fans are well familiar with that signature Targaryen trait, but you don’t need to have seen that show or even Game of Thrones to enjoy A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Previous Westeros know-how is a bonus, since you’ll recognize certain names and have a working familiarity with the kingdom and its tumultuous history. But with Dunk—an unconventional, immediately likable protagonist—as its entry point, the perspective here is much more immediate and intimate.
That extends to the supporting characters, who enter the story naturally as part of the bustle of the tournament and make an immediate impression, thanks to the show’s consistent blend of clever writing and wonderful performances. Claffey and Ansell are a fantastic leading pair, but the character actors who fill the rest of the cast are also memorable, whether they’re playing sleazy villains, sleazy guys just trying to get ahead, or sleazy good guys. That latter group includes Daniel Ings as the raucous, terrifying yet endearing Ser Lyonel Baratheon, as well as Webb’s craggy old Ser Arlen; the more we learn about Dunk’s time with him, the more it becomes a surprisingly touching backbone to present-day events.
Touching and full of deep ruminations on personal integrity? Yes. Gruesome violence? Indeed, lots of it. But also, bawdy humor and fart jokes? You better believe it. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is confident enough to embrace all of the above. It’s as self-contained as any Martin-adapted Westeros work could ever be, with an almost anthology format set down by the Dunk and Egg novellas. (This first season draws entirely from his first story, “The Hedge Knight.”) And while it takes place in a world Martin fans already know and love, it’s got its own flavor.
One example that illustrates this quite well: while its most recurring musical cue is a whistling motif that underlines the story’s Western feel, it also brings in that famous Game of Thrones theme in two important places.
One is a stunningly heroic, goosebumps-raising moment. The other is a cheeky-as-hell invocation—followed by the show’s first display of ridiculously crude humor, a tactic used sparingly but effectively throughout the series. This show takes its characters and situations seriously, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that makes all the difference.
It’d be easy to complain that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is too short, because we’d love to spend more time hanging out with Dunk and Egg. But six episodes is actually pretty perfect—much like the show itself ends up being. Thank the Seven there’s already a season two on the way.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres January 18 on HBO and HBO Max, with a weekly rollout of new episodes.
He’s Ser Duncan the Tall—but if, like Dexter Sol Ansell’s pint-sized Egg in this new featurette for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, you’ve never heard of him, you soon will. If this glimpse at Peter Claffey’s endearing performance is any indication, he’ll also soon shoot to the top of your list of favorite Game of Thrones-adjacent characters to ever stomp around Westeros.
We’ve seen Dunk in action in trailers so far, but this is our best look yet at the hero of George R.R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas—at least until the show hits HBO in a couple of weeks.
Claffey recalls nervously barfing at his first rehearsal and feeling embarrassed about it—only to be told “That’s great, that’s just like Dunk!” by showrunner Ira Parker. Claffey describes Dunk as a “typical underdog” at the start of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, learning to make his way through Westeros without his mentor, the recently deceased Ser Arlen of Pennytree.
His first stop is a nearby tournament, where he’s soon snarkily classified as a hedge knight—”like a knight, only sadder“—and as Claffey explains, Dunk’s journey will involve squaring that awkward naivete with the feeling that maybe he could be a “glorious knight” if he wanted to.
Claffey also briefly touches on the show’s stunts and unexpected sense of humor—and calls working on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms “the greatest experience of my entire life.” The show premieres January 18 on HBO, and a season two is already on the way.
For the past few years, HBO has kept Game of Thronesgoing by looking back further in its history. While that’s not changing for the rest of the 2020s, creator George R.R. Martin revealed the TV franchise knows it has to move forward, and indeed plans to do just that.
At a recent event in Iceland attended by Los Siete Reinos, the author revealed some of the “five or six” other spinoff projects in the works he’s involved in. Of those, “some” are sequels that’ll pick up where the original series left off back in 2019. HBO certainly seemed poised to continue the stories of Arya and Jon specifically, and he even had a spinoff announced. Those plans eventually fell through, while Martin teased last year that something could be percolating with Arya’s actor, Maisie Williams.
Beyond the just-renewed House of the Dragon and A Knight of Seven Kingdoms, Martin has previously talked up spinoffs for Aegon the Conqueror, the animated Nine Voyagesfocused on Corlys Velaryon, and a prequel focused on Queen Nymeria. (There might even be a movie too, remember?) A lot of Thrones, the apparent move on HBO’s end being to fill fans with enough prequels to soften them up for whatever’s next in Westeros. Has everyone moved on from hating the ending to where that’s possible? We’ll find out if such a follow-up ever actually gets announced, much less made.
2025 has been a bit of a holding pattern for Game of Thrones fans (even beyond whatever is perpetually happening, or not happening, with Winds of Winter). With no House of the Dragon and a long wait until early 2026 for the next Game of Thrones spinoff, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, ravens from Westeros have been few and far between. But with HBO’s new plans, it’s hoping that the next three years will be much more plentiful.
This morning HBO confirmed that it had renewed both Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and House of the Dragon for new seasons, setting out an alternative release schedule that will see the shows both broadcast in 2026, before alternating releases in 2027 and 2028.
“We are thrilled to be able to deliver new seasons of these two series for the next three years, for the legion of fans of the Game of Thrones universe,” HBO head of Drama Series and Films Francesca Orsi said in a statement provided via press release. “Together, House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms reveal just how expansive and richly imagined George R. R. Martin’s universe continues to be. In January, I think audiences will be delighted by the inspiring underdog tale of Dunk and Egg that George and Ira Parker have captured so beautifully. And this summer, House of the Dragon is set to ignite once again with some of its most epic battles yet.”
To mark the announcement, HBO also released new images from both shows—check them out below.
Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to premiere January 18 next year, with the third season of House of the Dragon slated for a summer 2026 release window. After that, Knight‘s sophomore season will broadcast in 2027, and House‘s fourth season in 2028.
Although HBO did not confirm it in its renewal announcement today, showrunner Ryan Condal previously stated shortly after the conclusion of House of the Dragon‘s second season that the plan for the Targaryen-focused spinoff would remain to tell the story of the Dance of the Dragons across four seasons, bringing the series to an end in 2028.
What HBO has planned for the future of Game of Thrones beyond 2028 remains to be seen. If House does indeed finish that year, it might be time for another Westerosi spinoff to emerge—although it’s not been for a lack of ideas that another series hasn’t made it to production in the years since Game of Thrones itself came to a controversial end.
And if there isn’t? Well… at least we’ll have Windsat some point.
As fans eagerly await the arrival of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, bringing another corner of George R.R. Martin’s Westeros to HBO, the showrunner of the Game of Thrones spinoff is teasing the return of a familiar character. Sort of. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms takes place about a century before Game of Thrones, so it would have to be someone we met on the latter show very, very late in their life. Someone like, say… Walder Frey.
The Lord of the Crossing—very well known to fans of both Martin’s books and the HBO series for hosting the infamous Red Wedding—is of extremely advanced age when we meet his incarnation played by David Bradley. But time hasn’t softened his devious, unforgiving nature, as Robb Stark and company learn the hard way. And, as Martin’s Dunk character learns in The Mystery Knight, the third novella in the series that inspired A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Walder was a pill even as a tot.
In the story, Dunk and Egg find themselves at a wedding feast involving a daughter of House Frey—a wedding hastened into being because the bride’s younger brother caught her fooling around with a servant. The younger brother is a toddler that Dunk finds so annoying he has a thought to chuck him down a well—imagine the history he could’ve rewritten!
And A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms showrunner Ira Parker teased he wouldn’t be against giving wee Walder a cameo, according to Polygon.
“My favorite [cameo idea] is, and look, it’s not until the third book, but there’s a baby Walder Frey,” Parker told the outlet. “I have this, hopefully, really funny idea that people are probably gonna kill me for. But this idea that something’s happening, like there’s a runaway horse cart, and this baby’s about to be killed, and Dunk intervenes and saves baby Walder Frey.”
If A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms goes there, Parker continued, it wouldn’t involve a big wink at the audience to make sure everyone caught the reference. “We don’t ever make a thing of it,” he said. “It just happens, and we’re on with the story. That’s sort of the closest we get to [a direct crossover with characters] in the three novels that have been written.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which adapts The Hedge Knight, the first Dunk and Egg tale, hits HBO January 18.
Game of Thrones is not without funny characters and meme-able moments, but you might be surprised with just how dang funny and delightful A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Without giving too much away, the show, a spin-off set 100 years before the OG series based on a series of George R. R. Martin novellas, delivers punchlines and editing choices that might remind you more of Family Guy than Game of Thrones. At round table interviews as part of New York Comic-Con 2025, A Knight Of the Seven Kingdoms‘ showrunner Ira Parker and star Peter Claffey, who plays Ser Duncan the Tall a.k.a. “Dunk,” talked about how funny the show is and how they maintained that tone in a Westerosi environment.
For Claffey, a former professional Rugby player and alum of both Bad Sisters and Vikings: Valhalla, a love of/desire to make comedy is part of what brought him to performing. “When I finished playing rugby and kind of went into this and tried to go full hog into this,” he said, “I started by writing a lot of sketch comedy stuff, and I really enjoyed it.” This show leans into comedic moments and opt for comedic takes on moments that Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon wouldn’t necessarily choose. There aren’t just comic relief characters, like Tyrion Lannister or The Hound. Everyone on this show is funny, from Claffey himself to Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg and Daniel Ings as Ser Lyonel Baratheon.
“I think because of writing the sketch comedy, filming different skits and stuff like that I was honing the craft slightly in order to play those comedic beats, and I was quite glad that I had that in the artillery to then take a scene and have a discussion with Ira or have a discussion with [directors Owen Harris and Sarah Adina Smith] and say how can we make this that sort of theme that we wanted.”
That does not mean that the show isn’t dark at times.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is as violent, action-packed, and grotesque as you’d expect regardless. It’s still Westeros, after all. There are still ambitious characters, cruel characters, and a morbid aversion to telling morally black and white stories. However, Claffey continued, “you can find so much comedy from terrible situations.” It’s one of his favorite kinds of comedy. “I’m an enormous fan of Ari Aster and Robert Eggers,” he said, “and Ari Aster especially has developed this genre of nightmare comedy where you find yourself horrified but also laughing your head off. Movies like [Kristoffer Borgli’s] Dream Scenario, and I really loved [Aster’s] Beau is Afraid. I do think when the stakes are so high in this series that we’ve shot, there are moments to take a breath away. When we watched it back it was nice to see those things. Hopefully everybody feels like we pulled it off.”
Parker, who is also a writer on House of the Dragon, reiterated that it’s important the show still look and feel like Game of Thrones. “People like sitting in Westeros” and pretending the fantasy world is be real, he said, so any comedy has to have a subtle touch so as not to disrupt the “gritty, grimy, Earth-” world Martin created. “Certainly in our shooting of the show we wanted to be as faithful as as classic and we didn’t want to be too stylized in the camera movements and the way that it was shot,” said Parker. “We wanted people to feel like this was a world that they recognized but then also start giving subtle nods to, you know, we’re gonna try and do a little something different with our storytelling.”
The biggest difference between this show and the shows in this universe we’ve seen before is that it has a singular perspective. This is entirely Dunk’s story. If he’s not in the scene, we don’t see the scene. So, as Parker explained, the comedy was a way to sneak in backstory and not bore the audience. (Remember how Game of Thrones used to do that with sex scenes so much that people started calling it sexposition? Different times…)
“So obviously, very early on, letting people know with the slaps and the cutaways,” Parker continued, referencing a gag in the show’s pilot as Dunk thinks back to the abuse he endured as a squire. “Dunk is standing at that graveside thinking about the good and the bad. He has such a conflicted relationship with Ser Arlan, obviously in the books and in this show, and it’s important to show both sides of this so it wasn’t just somebody eulogizing and thinking about how great they were. We see the knight and squire relationship can be quite brutal and quite complicated at times.”
Taking a moment like that and playing it for laughs is “just a very handy tool to get a bit of background on Dunk […] very quickly so that you can launch into the story with us,” Claffey explained. “Obviously we don’t have the benefit of Dunk’s inner monologue as we do in the books and we can’t ever cut away from [his point-of-view] either. Everyone has to be in with this one human being from the get go. So packing information into there was the fun, was the challenge of this series.”
Leah Marilla Thomas (she/her) is a contributor at The Mary Sue. She has been working in digital entertainment journalism since 2013, covering primarily television as well as film and live theatre. She’s been on the Marvel beat professionally since Daredevil was a Netflix series. (You might recognize her voice from the Newcomers: Marvel podcast). Outside of journalism, she is 50% Southerner, 50% New Englander, and 100% fangirl over everything from Lord of the Rings to stage lighting and comics about teenagers. She lives in New York City and can often be found in a park. She used to test toys for Hasbro. True story!
Bam! Just like that, New York Comic Con 2025 is underway, taking over the Javits Center from October 9 through 12. So far, the convention has debuted trailers for the more lighthearted Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and a Chris Pratt movie called Mercy, with more previews to come. Below, all the trailers released at NYCC so far.
We knew The Vampire Lestatwould have some slight mockumentary energy to it, with a camera crew trailing Lestat on his rock & roll exploits. But thanks to the new extended first look from AMC+, we now know that none other than Daniel Molloy will be directing it. The NYCC panel also unveiled the show’s Akasha, All Dirt Roads Taste of Saltand Woman King star Sheila Atim.
The Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on a series of novellas by GoT scribe George R.R. Martin. From the trailer, it looks to be the first time a GoT property could be called a comedy. Starring Peter Claffey as Sir Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as his squire, Egg, Seven Kingdoms is set 100 years before the original series but well after House of the Dragon. “Rob me and I’ll hunt you down with dogs,” Sir Duncan tells his squire in the teaser. Egg counters, “You don’t have dogs!” The HBO series will return to Westeros beginning January 18, 2026.
Chris Pratt is begging for mercy and they won’t release him in the trailer for his new science-fiction film. Pratt plays Detective Chris Raven, a man who programmed an artificial intelligence called Mercy, which Los Angeles courts are using to determine guilt. When accused of murdering his wife, he gets only 90 minutes to prove his innocence. Inevitably, the AI goes haywire. “This was never about my wife,” Pratt tells Mercy, played by Dune star Rebecca Ferguson. “This was about me and you.” The film comes out January 23, 2026 — if AI hasn’t taken over by then.
Marvel is going meta with the teaser trailer for its upcoming series Wonder Man. Yahya Abdul-Mateen stars in the series as an actor who auditions to play Wonder Man, and the teaser is largely based around an interview with the “Wonder Man” movie’s fake director, Von Kovak (Zlatko Burić). “I know your question is ‘Why one more superhero film?’” Kovak says in the trailer. “Everyone is tired of superheroes. Why go see them in the cinema?” After the lackadaisical box-office performance from Thunderbolts*,Fantastic Four: First Steps, and Captain America: Brave New World, Kovak promises that “there is an opportunity to shock audiences.” Well, maybe Wonder Man can do the same as a limited series when it debuts on Disney+ in January.
Prime Video, leader of all dad-TV shows, released a trailer for Cross season two. Based on the Alex Cross books by James Patterson, the series follows the D.C. homicide detective, played by Aldis Hodge, hunting down a serial killer going after corrupt billionaires. “This begins and ends with me,” he says, so you know it’s serious. Season two premieres on February 11.
There’s trailers for everything nowadays! NYCC was the venue for Wizards of the Coast’s big Magic: the Gathering and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collab. The set is part of their Universes Beyond collection, which also includes cards from The Walking Dead, Doctor Who, Fallout, and more.
Game of Thrones fans rejoice because A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms just blessed us with a new trailer at New York Comic-Con. During a panel for The Hedge Knight hosted by Phase Hero’s Brandon Davis, attendees crowded in to see what the newest additions to the mammoth series would be. Interestingly enough, the route to the future lies directly in the past.
As HBO wants fans to know up front, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms begins before the original series that the entire Internet fell in love with. To be exact, the new show happens about 70 years after House of the Dragon, but 100 years before Game of Thrones! So, it’s a little bit of a mind-bender before you get a true handle of the timeline at play here. Needless to say, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will deliver all that action and intrigue you’ve come to expect from this universe.
It’s a real wonder that these kinds of sprawling stories can now hit the air without worrying about the narrative complexity of the universe being too much for audiences. George R.R. Martin actually talked about that during the panel today. He called the stories “too big, too expensive” to realize on-screen in the past. But, clearly that’s changed!
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms brings Game of Thrones back to our screens
One of the big draws for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is how much the idea of a medieval tournament comes into play. During today’s panel, Martin explained that this aspect was always something he was looking forward to adapting. And, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms presented the perfect opportunity to really zoom in on these contests.
Expect some of that noise during The Hedge Knight as well. It’s shaping up to be a massive year for Game of Thrones fans. With multiple spinoffs seeing the light of day in short order, the land of Westeros is going to be anything but dull in the coming months.
Remember back in 2022 when you settled in to watch House of the Dragon‘s first episode? Here was a fresh start after Game of Thrones‘ disappointing final season. A clean slate, a new cast, a new (earlier) era of Westeros. But… the exact sameRamin Djawadi theme song?
It made sense on some level—it’s an awfully catchy bit of music—but it also felt a little bit repetitive. Good news for people hoping A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will try something different: HBO’s latest journey to Westeros will not only not use that same opening theme, it won’t even have a theme at all.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Ira Parker explained why that choice was made. It’s a way right from the start to let viewers know that this series is far more scaled down than Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. Rather than the massive canvas both of those shows occupy, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms keeps a tight focus on Dunk and Egg, the characters who star in the George R.R. Martin stories it’s adapted from.
“All decisions came down to Dunk, trying to channel the type of person he is into every aspect of this show, even the title sequence,” Parker said. “The title sequences on the original [Game of Thrones] and House of Dragon are big and epic and incredible. Ramin Djawadi’s score is orchestral and large and beautiful. That’s not really Dunk’s MO. He’s plain and he’s simple and he’s to-the-point. He doesn’t have a lot of flash to him.”
Parker also said that unlike those other Westeros-set shows, which revolve around all the drama associated with fighting over who will get to claim the Iron Throne, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms—which is set 50 years after House of the Dragon, making it a later prequel to Game of Thrones—will keep its perspective pointed away from the upper classes. “To find a totally different version of this world that everybody seems to know so well was very, very appealing,” he said.
There aren’t any dragons left by the time A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms rolls around. (Obviously, it takes place some time prior to the emergence of a certain Mother of Dragons.) “The fact that we live in this world, though, where magic once existed is very interesting to me,” Parker said. “This is the ground and the grass that has seen dragons and dragon fire before. So everything is just like how the world is, but a little stranger, a little different.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is having a New York Comic Con panel later this week, so presumably we’ll be learning a lot more—like its exact arrival date in 2026, for starters.
We did already know that Game of Thrones spin-offs A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and House of the Dragon season three would arrive in 2026. But now we have more concrete details on when we’ll be heading back to Westeros—and the time between visits could be surprisingly short.
As Deadline reports, HBO and HBO Max head Casey Bloys offered some morsels for George R.R. Martin fans as part of an interview celebrating the outlet’s many Emmy wins. (Hell yeah, The Penguin star Cristin Milioti!)
According to the trade, House of the Dragon‘s return is “possibly in June,” based on Bloys’ estimate that “I think it’ll be just outside of [the 2026 Emmy eligibility window],” Bloys said; the window closes May 31.
But even earlier than that, the trade confirms, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms “will premiere in January.” That lines up with reports from May 2024 that the show, originally touted as dropping in 2025, would arrive in early 2026—though a month wasn’t specified at that time.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has already been confirmed to run six episodes. Just speculating here, but if it kicks off the first Sunday of January, it would run through the second week of February. If House of the Dragon arrives the first Sunday of June, that would be just 17 or so weeks between Game of Thrones-adjacent adventures.
Does that feel like overkill, or the right amount of time to maximize the hype? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Around mid-April 2023, HBO announced that it had officially ordered another Game of Thrones prequel—the success of the first season of House of the Dragon having assured the powers that be that the horrid garbage fire that was the two final seasons of GoT miraculously did not kill the franchise. The latest prequel series is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight.
Just like George R.R. Martin, the creator of A Song of Ice and Fire, HBO realized that focusing on the three centuries of Targaryen rule that happened before all the events we saw in Game of Thrones is both very fun and really entertaining. That’s what happens when you take a family riddled with incestuous tendencies and god complexes and put them on the throne of a fantasy realm.
So, even though news about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is still sparse, let’s recap what we know so far—both from HBO’s announcements and from what the ASOIAF canon can tell us.
What is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms about?
The new prequel is titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight. It will be set almost a century before Game of Thrones, and about 80 years after House of the Dragon (and the devastating Dance of the Dragons the show is readying to unleash upon our television screens).
The two main characters, as the caption of HBO’s announcement post says, are “Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, Egg.” The two have been mentioned a couple of times in the main A Song of Ice and Fire books and have also gotten their own little trilogy of novellas, the Tales of Dunk and Egg—The Hedge Knight, published in 1998; The Sworn Sword, released in 2003; and The Mystery Knight, published in 2010. The three novellas were also collected in a single illustrated edition in 2015, released under the title A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
This new show’s official synopsis, as reported by a 2024 The Hollywood Reporter article, goes as follows: “A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros… a young, naive but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes and dangerous exploits all away these improbable and incomparable friends”.
We can guess the plot will follow the story of the first novella and then continue with the other two—maybe while also taking a peek at what’s happening in the wider world beyond Dunk and Egg’s adventures.
Of course, the fact that the novellas exist obviously means that readers can easily pinpoint the major plot points of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and which characters will appear around the two leads. If you want to go into the show completely spoiler-free, skip the next three paragraphs—otherwise, here’s what the existing ASOIAF canon can tell us.
While nothing has been released yet about the plot of this new prequel, we can safely guess it’s going to follow what has been laid down in the three novellas about Dunk and Egg (Subterranean Press)
Ser Duncan the Tall and Egg are pretty well-known figures in the history of Westeros: a hedge knight turned Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and his squire, who is secretly a Targaryen prince—one who everyone assumes will never inherit the crown (being the fourth son of a fourth son), which is why they allow him to follow a knight of little importance around the realm. We, of course, know that Egg will grow up to become King Aegon V the Unlikely—Daenerys Targaryen’s great-grandfather.
The plot of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms depends on how many seasons they intend to develop. The most obvious of answers seems to be three, maybe even with a reduced number of episodes compared to the usual 10, with each tackling one of the three novellas. We’re bound to follow the whole series of complicated events at the tourney at Ashford Meadow at the start, with Dunk and Egg actually meeting for the first time and the Trial of the Seven.
With a focus on Dunk and Egg, this new prequel is definitely going to be less intrigue-filled and more like that chunk of Game of Thrones season 3 where Arya and the Hound were trotting around the realm and exploring the typical “grumpy man and his feisty surrogate daughter” trope. Still, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set in a particular period of Westerosi history that definitely allows for some venture into politics—we are in the middle of the Blackfyre rebellions, after all.
Who will star in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms?
Despite the fact that a new rumor about Henry Cavill playing this or that ASOIAF character surfaces regularly every couple of months—and it’s never young, Rebellion-era Robert Baratheon, which is objectively the only correct answer—absolutely nothing has been announced yet when it comes to the casting of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Considering how Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon have been cast, we can expect a mix of established names, especially for the older characters, and newcomers—Egg in particular, being around 10 at the time the story starts, will probably be cast in the same way that the younger Stark children were, for example.
The same thing happened for the younger version of the children in House of the Dragon, so we can expect the actor portraying Egg to be a previously unknown name (HBO)
What about the team behind the scenes?
We know a bit more about the people who will take up the roles of executive producers in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The people listed in the HBO announcement are George R.R. Martin (always a good sign) and Ryan Condal, who is also part of the team behind House of the Dragon. The other executive producers are Ira Parker and Vince Gerardis.
When is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms coming out?
According to a February 2024 statement by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, reported by The Hollywood Reporter, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to premiere sometime in late 2025.
It definitely makes sense, considering that the second half of 2024 will be entirely dedicated to the second season of House of the Dragon—while the release date is yet to be announced, we know it’s going to be in the summer of 2024 just like season one took up the months between August and October of 2022.
According to the same The Hollywood Reporter article, A Knight of the Seven Kingdom is set to start principal photography very soon. If both productions can stay on track, it could potentially mean a new ASOIAF show every year—for however long they both run.
Benedetta (she/her) lives in Italy and has been writing about pop culture and entertainment since 2015. She has considered being in fandom a defining character trait since she was in middle school and wasn’t old enough to read the fanfiction she was definitely reading and loves dragons, complex magic systems, unhinged female characters, tragic villains and good queer representation. You’ll find her covering everything genre fiction, especially if it’s fantasy-adjacent and even more especially if it’s about ASOIAF. In this Bangtan Sonyeondan sh*t for life.
How many prequels can a single television series get? It seems like HBO is determined to find out.
As part of their enormous announcement of new programming coming to Max (the former HBO Max, which you are no longer allowed to call HBO Max, ever under any circumstances) HBO revealed that they had ordered a second Game of Thrones prequel to compliment the ongoing House of the Dragons. This one has the somewhat unwieldy title A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight.
Here is how the new show is described:
A century before the events of “Game of Thrones,” two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros… a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.
In other words, this is the long-rumored “Dunk and Egg” prequel series that has previously been mentioned as a potential Game of Thrones continuation on HBO.
The Dunk and Egg characters come from a trilogy of novellas by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. The first was titled The Hedge Knight (followed by The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight). The later collection that grouped all three novellas into a single volume was titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — hence the slightly confusing title of the new television series. The novellas are set about 100 years before the start of the primary Game of Thrones books.
HBO also recently announced that House of the Dragon Season 2 is now in production, and is expected to premiere some time in 2024. Other Game of Thrones prequels beyond these two shows are also rumored to be in development at HBO.
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