A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the next Game of Thrones spinoff, will break one record for HBO’s franchise – and it’s ultimately going to be for the best. The network has been looking to tell more Westeros stories since Game of Thrones‘ ending back in 2019, with only House of the Dragon making it to the screen so far. It will return for season 2 in 2024, and then there’s one more show ordered to series, based on George R.R. Martin’s The Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ story centers on Ser Duncan the Tall, aka Dunk, a knight, who goes on adventures across Westeros alongside his squire, a young, bald boy named Egg… who just so happens to be the future King Aegon V Targaryen. While the immediate focus for the franchise is on House of the Dragon season 2, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is expected to release on HBO in 2025. When it does air, it’ll be something very different.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ episode count is reported to be just six episodes, which was revealed alongside a change to its title (the show was originally called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight). The new, streamlined name for the series is certainly less of a mouthful, but it’s the number of installments in its debut outing that’s particularly interesting. That will mean it’s breaking with tradition – Game of Thrones season 1 and House of the Dragon season 1 both had 10 episodes – and is also set to break a record for having the shortest season.
Game of Thrones season 8 infamously only had six episodes as well, but several of those were much longer than the standard 60 minutes. That was because showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt those supersized episodes were needed, but that’s absolutely not the norm and highly unlikely to be the case for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It’s much more plausible that it will have hour-long episodes, if not slightly shorter, which means it should run for around six hours in total, the shortest run yet for any Game of Thrones show.
The biggest relief from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ episode count is that it means HBO isn’t trying to expand the source material too much, nor make it more epic like Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. While those shows are pretty similar in tone, The Tales of Dunk and Egg books are very different. They’re much shorter than Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, and also a heck of a lot lighter and breezier to get through.
The book A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which collects the three Dunk & Egg novellas, is around 368 pages. In contrast, A Game of Thrones, the first and shortest A Song of Ice and Fire book, is 694 pages. That highlights the difference in scope and scale, and while it’s likely some additions will be made to make the novellas into a TV series, the shorter episode count should mean they’re not pushing it too far.
In a sense, The Tales of Dunk and Egg are to A Song of Ice and Fire what The Hobbit is to The Lord of the Rings. Much shorter, less epic fantasy, and accessible to a younger audience. The Hobbit movies, however, were expanded to try and match the style and scale of the Lord of the Rings movies, much to the detriment of the story. It’s easy to imagine a world where that happens with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, trying to mimic Game of Thrones‘ success, but this episode means that definitely shouldn’t be happening.