‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Episode 6 review: “The Morrow”

About halfway through A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 6, “The Morrow,” Dunk sits across from Maekar and explains why he can’t take Egg to Summerhall. Why he can’t accept proper training from a master-at-arms. And why he can’t do the sensible thing that would give him stability and education. A future that isn’t ditches and hard salt beef.

“I think I’m done with princes,” he says. And you can hear everything he’s learned over six episodes compressed into those five words. Princes get people killed. Princes create systems that twist glad children into monsters. Worst of all, princes have the luxury of strategy, where hedge knights only have their hands and feet and the morrow.

Maekar doesn’t accept this, of course. Because how could he? His world is princes. But Dunk walks out anyway, and the episode moves forward with the conviction that sometimes the only way to be good is to refuse what everyone else calls opportunity.

The show’s thesis statement.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has been building to this choice since Dunk buried Ser Arlan in the premiere. It’s the choice between comfortable corruption and difficult integrity. Between what you’re supposed to want and what you actually need. Being a knight in title and in practice is a constant struggle. The season finale is 31 minutes of people having conversations about that choice, and it shouldn’t work as television at all. But it does. Because the show has done the patient character work that makes these conversations feel like the most important confrontations the series could stage.

And so, the show ends its first season with Dunk nailing a penny into a tree, Egg lying about his father’s permission, and Arlan’s ghost riding away across a grassy field. We don’t see dragons. The show doesn’t deliver any shocking twists. There’s no cliffhanger designed to make you desperate for the next episode. We see two people choosing each other over easier paths. And we see the quiet understanding that this choice will cost them in ways they can’t yet imagine.

It’s almost perverse how much A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms refuses to do what we expect from prestige fantasy television. But that rebellious attitude, that Knight’s Tale punk rock, anachronistic “F*** you” to expectations, is exactly what’s made this underdog of a series such a phenomenon in its last few weeks.

What goodness looks like when you don’t make it easy.

The remarkable thing about Peter Claffey’s performance as Dunk this season is how completely he commits to playing goodness as an active choice rather than an inherent virtue. Watch him in the opening scene as Lyonel offers a life at Storm’s End. He talks of hunting, sailing, friendship, the kind of uncomplicated bromance that would be the happy ending in another story. It’s even what Dunk himself set out to find by going to this tourney in the first place.

Yet Claffey doesn’t play this as temptation resisted. He plays it as a sincere consideration of a sincere offer, weighed and found wanting, not because it’s bad but because it’s not his path and he knows it.

This happens again with Maekar’s offer of Summerhall. Dunk wants what Maekar is offering. You can see it in Claffey’s face when Maekar talks about proper training. About finishing what Arlan started. But wanting something doesn’t mean taking it when the cost is Egg becoming just another Targaryen prince. A prince bent toward cruelty by the iron machinery of court life.

The argument has been all season long.

The episode understands that goodness isn’t about not wanting things. It’s about wanting things and choosing to do right anyway. Dunk gives Sweetfoot to Raymun even though it’s one of his last connections to Arlan. A horse he truly loves. He attends Baelor’s funeral even though Valarr will ask him why the gods took a prince and left a hedge knight. He turns down everything he’s supposed to want because the alternative is abandoning Egg to become Aerion.

That’s what the show has been arguing all season. And A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 6 makes it explicit. In a world organized to reward self-interest and punish altruism, choosing to be good anyway is the most radical act available.

Which makes it all the more funny that the central question of the entire series was: Was Dunk actually knighted? — remains completely unresolved. And thank the gods for that.

Ceremony versus character.

The flashback to Arlan’s death is the episode at once its most playful and its most serious. Arlan explains the Pennytree custom, which is to nail a penny when you leave, remove it when you return, because a good knight always finishes a story. (Hear that, George? Love you.)

Then Dunk asks the question the show has been dancing around. “Why did you never knight me?”

Arlan doesn’t answer. In fact, he appears to be dead. Then he wakes up again, cheerfully finishes his thought, and the scene ends without ever confirming whether that final moment was real or Dunk’s desperate imagination. Or something else entirely.

Showrunner Ira Parker has said this ambiguity was always meant to be deliberate. And you can feel the glee in that choice. The show knows many fans want this answered. It knows the knighting question has weight. And it can’t resolve it because the resolution would undermine the entire thematic argument.

See, if Ser Arlan technically knighted Dunk, then his legitimacy comes from a deathbed ceremony. Which means everything he’s done since is just proving he deserved it. If Dunk was never knighted, then his legitimacy comes entirely from his actions. That would mean the ceremony was always irrelevant. Either way, the show wins the argument it’s been making since the first episode. Knighthood is about what you do, not what you’re called.

The gods don’t favor a fraud.

Lyonel makes this argument explicitly when he calls Baelor a fraud for making a strategic calculation to fight for Dunk. The Kingsguard couldn’t harm their prince. Steffon wouldn’t risk his new lordship, either. So only Baelor’s family was the real threat, and his family loved him.

“He risked nothing!” Lyonel says. “And the gods don’t favor a fraud.”

But Baelor died anyway. And Dunk, possibly-not-actually-a-knight, possibly-the-biggest-fraud-in-Westeros, survived. And Maekar wants him to train Egg. Raymun asks him to be the model for his own knighthood. And the realm will eventually need those hands and feet Dunk speculates about in his “on the morrow” speech to Maekar.

The show’s answer to “what makes a true knight” isn’t ceremony, legitimacy, or technical correctness. It’s choosing to act like a knight even when it costs you everything. Especially when it costs you everything, the ambiguity might seem like a cop-out. But it’s anything but. It’s actually the thematic point made visual.

What the court does to children.

The scene where Egg contemplates murdering Aerion is the episode’s most significant invention. And it works because Dexter Sol Ansell plays it as tragic temptation instead of righteous indignation. Watch his face when he looks at his reflection and sees his silver hair growing back in. He claimed in episode four that he had disgust for it. But here, we see his recognition. We see the Targaryen identity reasserting itself. The violence and entitlement that come with it.

The fish with a knife through it is almost too on-the-nose. (Daeron just described Aerion as a “glad child who loved fishing”). But it lands because the show isn’t being subtle about the parallel. Aerion was a child once. Egg is a child now. The difference between them isn’t inherent goodness but the path chosen.

Egg picks up that knife. He walks to Aerion’s chamber. He stands over his unconscious brother with the blade in his hand. And Maekar catches him. Rather than angrily rebuke his son, he puts his hands on Egg’s shoulders. And both Targaryens are in tears because they both understand what almost happened and what it means.

Fishers of Targaryen men.

This is what Daeron warned about earlier in the episode, when he told Dunk that Aerion “was a glad child once, who loved fishing.” Before the machinery of the court twisted him. The show has done something sophisticated with Aerion over the course of six episodes. It made him both monstrous and understandable. Made him someone who chose cruelty but was also created by systems designed to produce exactly this kind of monster.

Egg has that same capacity. The knife scene proves it. But he also has Dunk. And Dunk offers the road rather than the court, service rather than power. He offers Egg the chance to become a hedge knight’s squire instead of a prince.

Sam Spruell’s performance as Maekar crystallizes in that moment with Egg. He looks terrified. He knows what Daeron knows, what the episode keeps saying. Aerion wasn’t born a monster. Daeron isn’t inherently weak. Baelor wasn’t guaranteed to be good. The difference is what shaped them.

Maekar has one son left who might not be broken by the throne. And when Dunk offers to take him, to save him through ditches and hard salt beef and a life without the iron machinery, Maekar says no. He can’t imagine that life has dignity.

That’s the real tragedy. Maekar loves his son enough to cry with him over Aerion, but not enough to let him go. To let him be better.

What the show adds versus what it preserves.

George R.R. Martin’s “The Hedge Knight” novella ends. We just read about a few conversations (Dunk and Valarr, Dunk and Maekar, Dunk and Egg departing). And then the road. The show uses that structure but adds extensive connective tissue. We get Lyonel’s Storm’s End offer, Raymun’s marriage, Sweetfoot’s return, Daeron’s plea about saving Egg, the Egg-contemplates-murder scene, the Arlan flashback, all the character work that makes the final conversations feel earned rather than perfunctory.

Ira Parker’s clear goal was to make sure the new material fit the characters. That whatever they added would be an enhancement or furthering of Martin’s established context. So Lyonel becomes a real friend whose offer Dunk seriously considers. Raymun’s joy at buying back Sweetfoot makes Dunk’s gift of the horse to him more meaningful. Daeron’s warning about glad children becoming monsters recontextualizes everything about Aerion and Egg.

The one addition that doesn’t work is the end-credits stinger in which Maekar realizes Egg is missing. In Martin’s novella, Maekar actually consents to Egg leaving. It’s a moment of growth and wisdom where he recognizes his son needs this, needs Dunk. Needs to escape the machinery that destroyed his brothers. The show changes this to Egg running away and lying about his father’s permission. It comes off as a gag.

A strange change.

It’s a great gag in terms of the comedic timing. And I guess that Maekar will accept this and accept these two running off—sort of a situation where Egg makes the hard choice for himself.

Still, the cost is real. Book-Maekar’s consent was atonement for accidentally killing Baelor. It was a recognition of his failures as a father and a demonstration of wisdom about his sons. Show-Maekar just gets undermined and potentially set up for Season 2 conflict. It’s the one place where the adaptation favors plot setup over character resolution.

But even that choice is defensible if you squint. The show is interested in how hard it is to choose goodness. So, Egg choosing to lie and run away rather than accept Maekar’s refusal is consistent with that theme. It costs Egg his honesty. It costs Dunk his certainty about Egg’s character once he learns the truth. And it costs Maekar his son. Everyone loses something when they choose what they think is right.

That’s more thematically rich than the joke deserves, but it’s there if you want it.

Conversations as combat.

There is no action in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 6. No swords, no battles, no violence beyond Egg’s contemplated murder that doesn’t happen. The episode mostly shows us people talking. In other words, the structural template is pure Game of Thrones, where the big battle lives in the penultimate episode. Then the character resolution happens in the finale. That said, GoT’s finales always had something propulsive. Some twist or reveal or setup for next season’s conflict that drove momentum.

“The Morrow” offers none of that. It’s deliberately static. People sit, talk, make choices, and then ride away. The closest thing to a cliffhanger is Maekar asking, “Where the f*** is he?” And again, even that’s played for comedy.

What might save this is the show’s absolute commitment to character as drama. Every conversation is a confrontation with real stakes. When Lyonel dismisses Baelor’s death, he’s not wrong. Baelor did make a strategic calculation when he took Dunk’s side. The Kingsguard were oath-bound, his family loved him, and the “risk” was minimal. But he’s not right either, because strategy doesn’t erase the choice to fight for someone who needed help. Dunk and Lyonel are arguing about what honor means when power structures make pure altruism impossible.

Hedging his bets.

When Valarr asks Dunk why the gods took his father and left a hedge knight, he’s asking the question everyone in the audience has been asking. And the show doesn’t answer it, either. Because no answer satisfies. There’s only the terrible reality that good people die for questionable causes and the world (or wheel?) keeps turning.

When Maekar refuses to let Egg live like a peasant, it comes off as rational, despite being a little pompous. He genuinely cannot imagine that kind of life having value. And he loves his son. He wants better for himself. Maekar’s tragedy is that he loves his children and has no idea how to save them.

These conversations matter because the show has earned them. Six episodes of patient character work, of showing rather than telling, of trusting the audience to understand subtext. The result is a finale where people talking feels as urgent as swords clashing. And choosing to leave feels as dramatic as choosing to fight. Even nailing a penny to a tree carries the weight of, well, a golden dragon.

It’s a profound rejection of what prestige fantasy television is supposed to do in the modern era. And it pays off specifically because it’s a rejection that the creative team seems to have fully thought through.

How to visualize letting go.

The final image of Dunk and Egg riding away while Arlan’s ghost peels off into a field is the show at its most emotionally intelligent. It’s not subtle, to be clear. But grief rarely is.

Arlan is riding Sweetfoot, the horse Dunk just gave to Raymun. He’s heading into a field, not staying on the road where knights travel. And he’s leaving Dunk and Egg to their own path, not guiding them anymore. The man is explicitly a memory, conveyed through framing and lighting, and the simple fact that he doesn’t interact with anything.

This is Dunk’s internal process made external. He’s honoring Arlan (the penny in the tree), carrying forward Arlan’s lessons (finish your story, keep your oaths), and simultaneously letting go of the need for Arlan’s validation. The knighting question no longer matters. What matters is the road ahead and the royal squire beside him.

Goodness is hard and worth it anyway.

It’s the kind of moment that could be treacly or overwrought. But Sarah Adina Smith directs it with restraint. The ghost appears, rides parallel for a few moments, and turns away. It’s easy to imagine a bit of dialogue messing this up completely. So it’s nice to see that the show trusts that we understand the meaning. And the meaning behind the meaning.

That trust is characteristic of how A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has approached its entire first season. It truly avoided hand-holding and over-explanation. It rarely treated the audience as if we needed help understanding emotional beats or thematic arguments. The show presented its thesis — goodness is hard and worth it anyway — and then dramatized it through characters making choices and living with the consequences.

That’s why Arlan riding away is Dunk choosing to move forward. The penny in the tree is Dunk honoring his roots. Egg lying about Maekar’s permission is Egg choosing Dunk over his family. The nine kingdoms correction is the show’s final joke, underscoring that nothing is as simple as the stories claim. And for Dunk, there’s a much bigger world out there waiting for him than he even knew.

Hence, the final shot is two people on horses heading toward Dorne. Toward puppet shows and wherever the morrow takes them. With everything uncertain except their commitment to each other and to becoming better people.

Why small-scale matters.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms adapted a 118-page novella across six episodes totaling roughly 210 minutes. It took a story that’s basically “hedge knight goes to tourney, gets in trouble, fights his way out, leaves with a squire” and turned it into a meditation on class, honor, institutional corruption, found family, and the cost of integrity. Not bad.

It did this by subverting almost everything we had come to expect from Westeros stories, really, by doing what George RR Martin himself did with the fantasy genre when he published the first book of the series in 1996. In this case, the show takes quite a gamble by avoiding what fans of the series like most. Fans love the sprawling ensemble, complex politics, and dragons. Some expect shocking violence for its own sake.

But this story is deceptively simple so far. We only visit one location, and the Dunk is the primary POV character throughout. Sure, we hang out with Egg from time to time as well, but he’s never the main focus. That is, at least, until the end.

The show has proved that small-scale storytelling can work quite well in this universe. But only because the character work is there. Getting the characters right makes it so that the fancy dragon show spinoff doesn’t need to escalate constantly to justify its existence. We’re looking at you, House of the Dragon.

This show also proved something about adaptation that the original series got right from the start. Fidelity to source material doesn’t have to mean slavish recreation. Additions can enhance rather than dilute when they serve character rather than plot. Every major addition in “The Morrow” deepens the material without changing the fundamental story.

A Knight of the Nine Kingdoms?

The title card gag is perfect, Parker. The show is called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, yet Egg corrects Dunk that there are actually nine kingdoms. And an old joke among book readers, to be clear. Suddenly, we get “A Knight of the Nine Kingdoms” on screen before the credits roll.

So yes, it’s a throwaway joke, but it does arguably serve another thematic purpose. See, the whole show has been about correcting misconceptions. Knighthood isn’t what people think. It’s not a ceremony, it’s an action. Targaryens aren’t what they claim. They’re people bent by systems, not inherently special. The realm is more complex than simple stories suggest. There are nine kingdoms, not seven. And even that’s a historical fiction that doesn’t match political reality.

In other words, names don’t change what things are. Seven or nine, ser or not-ser, prince or hedge knight. Whatever. What matters is what you do when faced with hard choices. That’s really it.

The joke is that fantasy loves its naming conventions and rigid hierarchies. It’s insistence that titles, bloodlines, and ceremonies define people. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms keeps saying: no, actually, what defines you is the choices you make when no one is watching, and everything is at stake.

A Song of Season 2.

You can call it seven kingdoms or nine. You can call Dunk a knight or a fraud. And you can call Egg a prince or a squire. The names matter less than the reality underneath. The reality of two people choosing each other, choosing the road, choosing to try being good even when the world is organized to punish exactly that choice.

That’s what the season has been arguing since Dunk buried Arlan on a hillside in Episode 1. “The Morrow” makes it explicit. And then sends its characters off to Dorne to see what happens when you actually follow through.

The result is a finale that feels simultaneously complete and open-ended, resolved and full of possibility. True to its source and enriched by its changes. It’s a 31-minute conversation about goodness that shouldn’t be as gripping as it is. To the point where it’s easy to see the entire series ending right there. And it would still be satisfying in its own way.

But the late-bloomer success of this show (and thank goodness for word of mouth carrying the day with this one) means we will indeed get more A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It’s reinvigorated the Game of Thrones franchise exponentially more than House of the Dragon did, even in its first season.

So yes, a good knight always finishes a story. Dunk and Egg are finishing this one and starting another. And the show is doing the same. Season 1 is complete. The morrow waits.

Stray observations.

• The opening needle drop of Kenny Dorham’s “Alone Together” is characteristically anachronistic but thematically perfect. Dunk is alone together with his grief, with his guilt. With his questions about whether he deserves to survive. And it’s yet another playful nod to A Knight’s Tale, one of my personal favorite films of all time. It’s no wonder this show instantly won me over.

• Valarr doesn’t get much in this episode, but Oscar Morgan still makes quite the impression. “Why would the gods take him and leave you?” The weight in this voice as he says this is rightfully chilling.

• Raymun buying back Sweetfoot is fittingly sweet. And I truly enjoyed how his new wife, “Lady Rowan” (the actress’s real name as well!), seemingly pulled a fast one with her claim that he for sure impregnated her after one night of lovemaking. Clearly, there are no sex education classes outside of maybe the Citadel.

• “Sixteen Tons” over the credits is…a choice. And I’m not entirely sure it works. But I do appreciate the commitment to anachronistic music as a character statement. Dunk has indeed sold his soul to the company store. Except the company is the Targaryen dynasty, and the store is Egg’s future. No pressure.

• A bit off topic, so forgive me. But the review bombing war between Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones fans is genuinely one of the dumber things the internet has produced. And I say this as someone who loves both shows. “Ozymandias” and “In the Name of the Mother” can both be landmark episodes, folks. There’s no shortage of appreciation for good television.

• See you all in 2027 for Season 2, when presumably we’ll get Dunk and Egg dealing with the consequences of Egg’s lie, and a few spoilery details from The Sworn Sword. Until then, may your ditches be comfortable and your salt beef not too hard.

All six episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 1 are available to stream on HBO and HBO Max.

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Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery