Warning: Spoilers ahead.
After the heartbreak that was A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ (AKOTSK) penultimate episode, there was really only one question fans of the show had for its finale: where do we go from here?
Well, it looks like Ser Dunk (Peter Claffey) was thinking that exact same question, because he’s lost and unmoored for a good chunk of this final episode. Never mind that the maester has told him that his wounds from the Trial of Seven are dangerously “mortified” (whatever that means), and never mind that Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) has not-too-subtly offered him a place at Storm’s End (the bromance continues). Like us, Ser Dunk is devastated that the most upright (and perhaps the daddiest) Targaryen has lost his life, and for Ser Dunk’s own cause, no less. Prince Baelor (Bertie Carvel) is no more, and our poor hedge knight must live with the fact that he played a part in the death of who could have been Westeros’ most honorable king.
Baelor looms like a ghost throughout the entire finale, making it difficult for both us, viewers, and the people still left at the tourney to move on. His brother, the usually ill-tempered Maekar (Sam Spruell), has lost all his fire, especially since it was he who dealt the final blow against Baelor at the trial. “Some men will say I meant to kill my brother,” Maekar tells Ser Dunk as they stew in their shared grief. “The gods know it is a lie, but I will hear the whispers till the day I die.”
There is plenty of grief to go around, but what is arguably more concerning is how Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) is dealing with the trial’s aftermath. While his uncle lost his life, Egg’s older brother Aerion (Finn Bennett) (a.k.a. Aerion Brightflame, a.k.a. Aerion the Monstrous) escaped the trial with just a few scrapes and scratches. What’s more, now that Ser Dunk is getting ready to leave this whole mess of princes behind him, Egg may be resigned to life as another cold, cruel, and mad Targaryen. The young prince even pays Aerion a visit with a knife hidden behind his back, but thankfully, Egg’s descent is not complete, and there is still time for someone — ahem, Ser Dunk — to save his faithful squire’s soul.
The AKOTSK finale is definitely setting things up for its second season (which has already been greenlit for production), but it’s also leaving audiences with these bigger questions of honor and what it means to be a true knight in a shitstorm like Westeros. All those flashbacks to Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb) meant something, after all, because despite wanting to run away from all the horrors that the tourney brought with it, Ser Dunk cannot leave Egg behind. It would not be the knightly thing to do, and, just as Ser Arlan saved him from a life in Flea Bottom, Ser Dunk must save Egg from losing himself in House Targaryen.
After a bit of back and forth between Ser Dunk and Maekar (and perhaps, a little harmless deception), Egg runs to meet the hedge knight before he departs for the open road and pledges himself again to him. Just as the season started, we are left watching a knight and his squire try to figure out what quests lie ahead of them and live up to a code of valor that the people of the Seven Kingdoms have already forsaken.
Or, excuse me, Nine Kingdoms, as Egg so stubbornly points out before the final credits roll. “Crownlands, Westerlands, Stormlands, Riverlands, the Iron Islands, the North, the Reach, the Vale of Arryn, and Dorne,” he lists out to Ser Dunk while counting all nine on his fingers. It isn’t quite a bombshell, per se, since at this point in the Game of Thrones timeline, the Targaryens rule over nine separate realms. But nonetheless, Ser Dunk is dumbfounded at the news, because it means that there are more lands for him and his squire to see.
AKOTSK has proven to be one of the more lighthearted additions to the Game of Thrones franchise (think explosive shits, drunken bromances, and perhaps the most clueless hedge knight in the entire nine realms). But that doesn’t make it any less earnest about what is to come, and, especially after its last few episodes, the show is more than capable of meting out devastating losses with a little bit of hope.
