5 Things We Learned About A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms, The New Game Of Thrones Prequel [NYCC]

Some franchises are tougher to quit than others, and the world of Westeros might rank right at the very top of the list. Many a viewer swore off "Game of Thrones" by the end of its final season, dismissing what was once the biggest and most talked-about series on the face of the Earth. Well, not only did "House of the Dragon" prove those angry words to be largely empty, bringing us right back to this universe full of some of the richest world-building details of any property currently streaming. But "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," the newest spin-off/prequel series based on author George R.R. Martin's work, is now set to make lightning strike thrice.

You could practically feel the buzz in the air as Martin, co-creator and showrunner Ira Parks, and main leads Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell descended upon New York Comic Con. The first major event of the weeklong pop-culture celebration centered squarely on "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," packed to the brim with fans anxious for any and all information they could get their hands on in New York City's (only slightly humbler) version of Hall H. I was fortunate enough to be in attendance on behalf of /Film as HBO unveiled the first official footage from the upcoming series, but that was only the opening salvo in what turned out to be a thoroughly entertaining and somewhat chaotic panel — highlighted by fun detours such as Claffey accidentally stoking a "The Lord of the Rings" and "Game of Thrones" rivalry (he's a big fan of both, don't worry), our collective amazement at child actor Ansell filming the series at the age of 9(!) and carrying on press responsibilities at 11, and the conspicuous absence of any talk about the status of Martin's penultimate novel "The Winds of Winter."

What they did talk about, however, could take up several articles filled with the absolute nerdiest of details. Instead, we've narrowed it down to the five coolest takeaways we had from the NYCC panel. And now, our watch begins ... again.

Let's just say that there are several reasons why you should have "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" on your radar. Not only is George R.R. Martin completely jazzed about the latest adaptation of his work, which he reiterated on multiple occasions during the panel. (He even went so far as to proclaim "The Hedge Knight," the first short story in his "Dunk and Egg" novella and the basis for season 1 of this series, as "one of the best things I've ever done.") And it's not just that this series contains an attention to detail that will end up winning over even the most hard-to-please member of the fanbase. Ser Duncan the Tall himself, actor Peter Claffey, praised the "badass" armor his character sports during the course of the story and noted that it was a "carbon-copy" recreation of the illustrations from the novella. No, arguably the most exciting reason to tune in has to do with addressing one of the biggest complaints about Martin's original book.

According to Martin himself, the best part of "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" has to do with its focus on the smallfolk of the kingdom. When he published the initial book in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" saga, titled "A Game of Thrones," Martin recalled that the harshest critique revolved around his choice to follow royal families, princes, and other highborn folk powerful enough to sway kings and armies:

"One of the things that one of the [critics] said was that, 'Here's another fantasy and we get to hear more about kingdoms and lords [...] nobody ever writes about the common people,' the smallfolk as I call them. And that resonated with me. We do listen to some of the critics, if they know what they're talking about, and that is true."

So when we end up following figures such as lowborn hedge knight Duncan the Tall and the diminutive, easy-to-overlook squire Egg, we'll be witnessing something even "Game of Thrones" couldn't pull off.

For those unfamiliar with the plot of "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," the series ends up incorporating a significant jousting tournament known far and wide in Westeros as the Tourney at Ashford Meadow. When Ser Duncan the Tall enlists in the festivities, eager to prove his skills as a true knight, neither he nor his loyal sidekick Egg could imagine just how their presence would change the course of history in Westeros. To do proper justice to this event, however, George R.R. Martin knew that the creative team had a tough challenge on their hands — and, naturally, he decided to raise the bar to the highest level possible. 

Martin explained to the NYCC crowd that we've seen tournaments depicted in "Game of Thrones" before, but the one in this series needed to take things further than we've ever seen before. His previous gold standard, 1952's "Ivanhoe" starring Elizabeth Taylor and directed by Richard Thorpe, set a sky-high bar for Martin. But, as he explained:

"I set [showrunner Ira Parks and the creative team] a challenge, which I think Ira has delivered [...] I said, 'Let's do the best jousting sequence that has ever been put on film. A modest little challenge for Ira and his crew."

By all accounts, it was mission accomplished in that regard ... but this was far from the last of the show's biggest obstacles. According to Pars, the trickiest aspect to nail in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" was the tone. As he described it, the source material leans hard into being "lovely and sweet and [filled with] so much hope," but also contains "really brutal elements of this world that we've all come to love in Westeros, where anything can happen." Challenge accepted.

With any spin-off, it's not necessarily about recapturing what's been done in the franchise before — it's about what new elements it brings to the forefront now. The creative team behind "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" feels this pressure acutely, but don't mistake that for shrinking from the challenge. One key point emphasized again and again during the panel was that Ira Parks and his writing team are eager to forge their own identity, separate and distinct from either "Game of Thrones" or "House of the Dragon." The most immediate way to do so? The action. According to Parks, this manifested through taking how Martin wrote battle scenes and other tense moments in the novella and translating them to the screen through Duncan's point of view:

"Our guiding light on this show was to follow Duncan and let this character, in terms of tone and POV in the mud and the dirt, we want the audience to feel what he feels. We want to be with him as closely as possible. This isn't action sequences that are cut up very rapidly, it's not big, sprawling "Game of Thrones" that we've come to know and love. This is close and this is intimate and this is brutal and this is horrible. This is what it would have been like to be facing this."

Even that wasn't as simple as it may sound, however. Longtime readers of George R.R. Martin know that his "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels were told through strict point-of-view characters, with each chapter told through the eyes of specific individuals without ever leaving their perspective. Martin faced a similar decision in "The Hedge Knight" over whether to switch back and forth between his two main characters. Instead, he opted to remain with Ser Duncan throughout all the action, and the HBO series followed suit. But viewers will find at least one familiar aspect carried over from "Game of Thrones" — Martin confirmed the penultimate fifth episode will feature the largest battle of the season, continuing the same trend first established in the parent series.

As much as "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" has to remain of a piece with the rest of the universe established in "Game of Thrones," it'd be a mistake to view the spin-off as nothing but mere spectacle. Duncan might not seem like the deepest or most complicated character at first blush, but the would-be knight harbors all sorts of insecurities about his lot in life. Born in the slums of King's Landing, the capital city seen so prominently in both the original series and "House of the Dragon," Duncan is constantly trying to put his lowborn origins behind him and ascend to the heights of a landed knight. But as Peter Claffey explained, this is much easier said than done:

"Obviously, he's trying to be the most respectable, honorable knight he possibly can be. It's funny, because he tries to put away or extinguish that side of him that he wants to forget, that young boy in Fleabottom just trying to survive almost like some half-human, half-dog roaming the streets. And I think he's constantly trying to extinguish that and forget about that. But it serves him to know that that is who he is in certain situations towards the end of our story, and it serves him to have that personality, that never-give-up and fight-tooth-and-nail characteristic. He gets to sort of accept that — it's one big, violent therapy session."

Not to be outdone, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" will apparently save some of its deepest material for last. In one of the rare moments of the creatives letting slip more specific details from the end of the season, George R.R. Martin hinted at a finale that will take a page right out of "The Lord of the Rings." Comparing it to "The Scouring of the Shire" chapter from the end of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Return of the King," Martin teased that the episode (his favorite of the season) will similarly deal feel like an epilogue, dealing with the aftermath of a big battle and how it fundamentally changes our characters ... while also setting up future seasons to come.

Who says Westeros can't be a little wholesome every now and then? By its very nature, as a two-hander story between Duncan and Egg, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" keeps its central dynamic in the foreground of every episode. So it should come as no surprise that this fictional relationship ended up blending into real life, as well. HBO enacted a rigorous casting process to land on both Peter Claffey and relative newcomer Dexter Sol Ansell for the main roles, even if they're not entirely perfect mirrors of their on-page counterparts. (George R.R. Martin joked about the casting of "short guy" Claffey in particular, whose imposing height of 6 foot 6 still pales in comparison to the nearly 7-foot-tall Duncan in the novellas.)

But even the hilarious physical discrepancy between Claffey and Ansell only ended up fueling their real-world bond. To decompress between grueling filming days, both on set and on location in the rain and mud of Northern Ireland, the inseparable pair would hit up local towns to play everything from arcade games to "Mario Kart" — the latter of which Claffey good-naturedly claimed to have become proficient in kicking Ansell's you-know-what on many occasions. For Claffey, he had a first row seat to watching fact and fiction blur together as the actors evolved alongside their characters:

"The concept that you're working with a 9-year-old is over within half an hour of a day on set, and you realize you're working with a 25-year-old in an 11-year-old's body. He's incredibly mature and I'm really in awe [...] I do think Dunk looks up to Egg a lot, and looks to him for guidance. And I find myself doing the exact same thing with Dexter, for sure."

"A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" premieres on HBO January 18, 2026.