HBO‘s “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” the latest “Game of Thrones” spinoff series, made its official debut last night, and we’re already learning some tidbits about the future of the show, which is currently filming season two (Westeros will be experiencing a drought) in Northern Ireland with leads Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell back in their roles of Ser Duncan The Hall and his young squire Egg.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Ira Parker not only confirmed that the follow-up season will yet again only have six episodes but might have even a smaller scope than the first round of episodes. Also, sharing that behind-the-scenes, George R.R. Martin has given them plenty of material in the form of 12 outlined stories that could be used for future seasons, and giving them a greater roadmap than the original creative team got.
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“It’ll still be six episodes. I think the scope will be same, maybe even smaller. The budget has stayed the same, but everything is more expensive due to inflation. Plus, book two takes place in a drought, so we can’t shoot exteriors in Belfast. We have to go to a sunny location with no water, which costs money; that’s a major expense that we did not have in season one,” Parker said of the second season.
Episode counts have been more in flux than usual, as the first season of “House of the Dragon” had 10 episodes, but season two was cut down to 8 episodes, with season three expected to keep that number for the next batch of episodes. The final season of the mainline series ended with only 6 episodes, which made sense given the extent of budgetary costs of VFX (after the first six seasons had 10 episodes apiece).
You might remember a scene from the mainline series where the vile King Joffrey is impressed that Ser Duncan having four pages of adventures in a book of the greatest knights of Westeros (alluding to Dunk’s MANY adventures, while mocking his “uncle,” Jamie Lannister), well, it looks like Martin is keen on helping the production out if they want to have multiple seasons as Parker says the author has shared with them 12 more “Dunk & Egg” stories way beyond novellas that were published, giving the folks on the show more source material to work from and greater details of the characters’ lives.
“Even though we don’t have the ins and outs of every story, we know canonically the major beats of Dunk and Egg throughout their lives. So we wouldn’t necessarily run into the same trouble as the flagship did. And George has outlined 12 more of these stories that he’s shared with me. These stories take them all the way through their lives. Some of these are just a paragraph, but they give you a sense of where they’re going to go and the people who come back in and out of the story.”
Some of those things we already know, like Egg going on to become King Aegon Targaryen and one of his grandchildren becoming the infamous Mad King (Daenerys is Egg’s great-granddaughter and the great-great-grandfather of Jon Snow), and his older brother is the blind Maester Aemon, introduced to us at Castle Black.
This is quite the juxtaposition to how Martin has worked with previous “Game of Thrones” franchise showrunners, with the author recently pointing out his “abysmal” working relationship with Ryan Condal on the follow-up seasons of “House of the Dragon.”
If the season premiere from Sunday night is any indication, there likely will be demand for more Dunk and Egg adventures as they’ve clearly established they’re going attempt to be a tad more accessible and add a bit of lightheartedness to the HBO fantasy franchise.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
