A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS Creator Says Dunk and Egg Are Westeros’ Next Great Odd Couple; Compares Them to Arya and the Hound
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms looks like it’s going to be a very different kind of Westeros story, and creator Ira Parker knows exactly what kind of energy is driving it.
Rather than sprawling politics or world-ending threats, the upcoming HBO series zeroes in on a single relationship. According to Parker, that focus puts Dunk and Egg in the same lineage as some of Game of Thrones’ most beloved duos.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, Parker explained how stripped down this new series really is when compared to Game of Thrones.
"I would say the main difference is that we're just Game of Thrones without all the stuff. We don't have the dead coming to kill mankind. We don't have the politics, really.
“We don't have the massive roving POVs from different families and different characters. We have one character: we have Dunk, and we have Egg, our little stable boy, and I would say that relationship is probably closest to the dynamic of something from Game of Thrones along the lines of the Hound and Arya or Pod and Brienne."
In seasons three and four of Game of Thrones, Arya Stark’s uneasy road trip across Westeros with Sandor Clegane became one of the show’s most memorable stretches, mixing danger, dark humor, and an evolving bond neither character expected.
Around the same time, Brienne of Tarth reluctantly took on Podrick Payne as her squire, creating another mismatched pairing that grew stronger with every shared hardship.
Those relationships helped humanize a brutal world, and Parker clearly sees that same potential in Dunk and Egg.
"George [R.R. Martin] does odd couple pairings better than anyone, and those were always my favorite moments from the original series. So now we have an entire series just based on a little odd couple pairing here, and it's a lot of fun, and hopefully it's enough for audiences."
Set roughly 90 years before Game of Thrones and about a century after House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows Ser Duncan the Tall, a lowborn hedge knight trying to survive tourneys and carve out a name in Westeros.
Along the way, he’s saddled with an unusually sharp stable boy who calls himself Egg. What starts as a practical arrangement slowly becomes something deeper, with both characters shaping each other as they travel.
By narrowing its scope and betting everything on character chemistry, the series is sure to offer something refreshingly intimate within the franchise. No armies of the dead. No council chambers full of scheming nobles. Just two unlikely companions navigating a dangerous world together.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres on HBO and HBO Max on January 18.