Movies & TV A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Prophecy and Revelations in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: “The Squire” As always, the Targaryens are basically Westeros’ messiest telenovela. By Tyler Dean | Published on February 2, 2026 Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO The midway point of the season has arrived, and it comes with major revelations and a set-up for what the rest of the season will look like. Also, as a heads up, there is a clearly marked section in today’s explainer that gets into some very, very big spoilers that go beyond the scope of this week’s episode. (It’s only that specific section, though, so please take that in mind when you read ahead.) Let’s get into it.  The Title Tonight’s title, “The Squire,” feels pretty self-explanatory insofar as it centers on the ultimate reveal of Egg’s identity. It’s a bit of a misdirect as well, seeing as Egg is, of course, not a squire at all.  Cracking the Egg This show’s big spoiler was always going to be Egg’s true identity. There are plenty of other major plot points and bits of intrigue that will unfold this season, but the main thing that a book reader might be able to ruin for someone who’s going into the show cold is now out of the bag, and we can speak about Egg plainly. It is interesting, however, that the show did not take great pains to hide this fact. Some of my non-book reading friends guessed his identity after the first episode based on the fact that he shaved his head. After all, on House of the Dragon, Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) shaves his head to hide his telltale Valyrian hair. Ironically, that is a plot point that was invented for HotD that was likely taken from Egg in the original Hedge Knight novella.  But the Egg as Prince Aegon reveal is great: The show underscores it with some truly bonkers choral music to try and lend it a telenovela-level of seriousness and, as in the book, it comes in the moment when Dunk’s life must be saved and the fantasy of playing a squire needs to end. This little twist has always felt the most like a fairytale of Martin’s plot lines—the Prince in disguise revealing himself to save the life of the chivalrous peasant. I’ll talk a little bit more about it in my more spoiler-y section, but for those of you who wish to remain unaware, all the tropes here speak to this Golden Age of Westeros—a time when the sorts of things that happen in fairy tales (or less grim fantasy novels) are possible.  I also love that the show has preserved the distinction between “my lord” versus the commoner’s version, “m’lord,” which was introduced all the way back in season 2 of Game of Thrones when Tywin Lannister immediately recognizes Arya as a noble for getting it wrong. Egg consistently says “my lord.” Greatness and Madness Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO This episode also reveals Prince Aerion Brightflame (Finn Bennett) as one of the Targaryens who has teetered over the edge into incest-born madness. Martin uses all sorts of ways to describe and discuss this aspect of the family, but the original show coined the most succinct description: “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin.” Aerion is, according to Raymun Fossoway (Shaun Thomas) “vain and cruel,” but the show also hints more thoroughly at his madness when he breaks Tanselle’s fingers for the crime of portraying a knight who slays a puppet dragon. In the books, they take this a step farther, with Aerion believing (as some Targaryens do throughout history) that he is actually a dragon in human form.  It’s also worth noting how tenuous the peace is here. In the book (told in close third person through Dunk’s eyes) we never really clock the reaction of the smallfolk to Aerion intentionally killing Ser Humphrey Hardyng’s horse, but the show makes it clear that this makes him deeply unpopular with the crowd. Baelor is doing his best PR spin by letting Aerion dangle right up until the point when the Kingsguard needs to intervene. While the Blackfyres are dead or imprisoned or exiled, lots of Westerosi houses had fought for them, wanting to see them ascend and replace the main branch of the family. Raymun Fossoway also illustrates these looming tensions when he excoriates the Targaryens as “incestuous aliens” who destroyed Westerosi culture.  Down the Royal Line Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO (Spoilers!) This section is going to be an interesting one, seeing as it might spoil things from future seasons of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms or even for House of the Dragon or other shows in the Westeros TV universe. If you don’t want to be spoiled for major events—seriously—skip ahead to the Odds and Ends section below. So: Egg grows up to be Aegon V (Aegon the Unlikely), King of Westeros and the great-grandfather of Daenerys Targaryen (though Game of Thrones implies that there is a missing generation and Egg is Dany’s grandfather). Dunk does indeed achieve lasting fame as Ser Duncan the Tall, who becomes something of a legendary figure as the head of Egg’s Kingsguard and one of his closest confidantes.  The reason I feel compelled to write about this here is twofold. First of all, the story of Aegon V and Ser Duncan as older men ruling over the very last era of Targaryen peace and prosperity before the end of the dynasty is deeply important in Song of Ice and Firelore. Aegon’s attempts to hatch dragon eggs at the Targaryen winter palace, Summerhall, led to a conflagration that killed him, Ser Duncan, and many other Targaryens, placing his younger son Jaehaerys II on the throne and paving the way for Aerys II (the Mad King) and eventually Daenerys herself. We know something magical happened that night. It was, incidentally, the same night that Rhaegar, Dany’s potentially prophesied brother (and Jon Snow’s father), was conceived and it may have played a key role in why Dany’s dragon eggs were able to hatch in the first place.  This is a story that the TV version in GoT largely eschewed but that HotD, with its focus on prophecy and “the Prince That Was Promised,” remains deeply interested in. Martin hasn’t fully revealed what happened at Summerhall in the books, and when and if he finishes The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring it will likely play an important role in understanding ASoIaF as a whole. But weirdly, in the TV universe, there isn’t really a place to tell this story. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the Dunk and Egg novellas which, as of this time, finish decades before the tragedy of Summerhall and at least a decade before Egg becomes King. I doubt this show will depict those events. Maybe a future series, not yet announced, will delve into that era of Westerosi history, but it seems unlikely. As a result, I’m not sure how these revelations will ever come to light in the HBO version. Showrunner Ira Parker has said he’d like to cover the entirety of Aegon’s life, but that was in a statement that said it would take 15 seasons (30 years at the current rate) so let’s call that a slightly facetious plan.  The second reason Egg’s ultimate fate is worth discussing is because this episode does literally foretell it. The fortune teller they encounter tells Egg that he “shall be king” and “die in hot fire, and worms shall feed upon your ashes. And all who know you shall rejoice in your dying.” It’s hard to tell if this is meant as an Easter egg for book readers or if it’s something they plan to follow up on. If it’s the latter, it would have to come to extreme flash forwards or prophetic visions that don’t seem like they are part of this show’s general ethos. Though, it’s worth noting that the show did include Daeron’s dragon dream in the first episode, when he tells Dunk that he saw a dragon fall upon him.  We are left in a strange situation where I don’t know if any of the later history of Aegon V and Ser Duncan the Tall will matter for this show (or another) but, because the original GoT did not fold those particular bits of the lore into its mysteries (and remember that, especially in the last few seasons, showrunners Benioff and Weiss dropped tons of plot points in their desire to end it quickly) it seem likely that the end of the story won’t be told in a meaningful way. It’s also interesting insofar as The Hedge Knight was written in 1998, concurrent with the second main series novel, A Clash of Kings, and predates a lot of the series’ more mystical backstory. In later Dunk and Egg novellas, it becomes much more important that we are watching not only the story of how Egg becomes one of the best kings Westeros has ever seen, but also one of the most consequential to the entire mythos of the series.  Okay. Rant over. Resuming spoiler-free discussion now!  Odds and Ends Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO I really love the show’s weirdo comedy bits. Opening on that long take of Egg only to have him whicker like a horse before smash cutting to the title was fantastic.  Ser Robyn Rhysling (William Houston) makes his first appearance in this episode. In the novella, Egg simply tells Dunk that Ser Robyn lost his eye to a splinter from a broken lance in a previous tourney. Here, we get a cutaway to him riding down his opponent with his eye dangling from the socket. It’s a great bit of visual grotesquerie that drives home the point of the story: Robyn is driven and single-minded; the “maddest knight in the Seven Kingdoms.” It’s also good to hear his house name pronounced aloud. I’ve been pronouncing it “Riesling” (like the wine) for the last twenty-five years.  We get more backstory about the First Blackfyre Rebellion (which I went into detail about in last week’s explainer) in the form of a dirty schoolyard rhyme that Egg sings. This is not one of the songs from Martin’s source material (as a fair amount of the diegetic music in GoT, HotD, and AKot7K’s tends to be) but a delightful original creation that seems to take inspiration from “Miss Susie” or “Bang Away Lulu”— the playground rhyming songs that cheekily walk up to the line of swearing before swerving into the next verse and a more innocuous word. I’m here for it! We get a brief shot of a joust between Humfrey Hardyng and Humfrey Beesbury during this episode. It’s really just a backdrop for Dunk and Egg to have a fun back and forth, but in the novella, this is a grueling and lengthy match that gets memorialized as “the Battle of Humfrey” later in the tourney. Again, always great to see the show nod to things they had to cut for time. The subplot about Plummer asking Dunk to challenge Ser Androw Ashford as a way of easing Lord Ashford’s beleaguered coffers is new to the show. That said, it does follow some general themes in The Hedge Knight. First, that this is an era of uneasy peace when the shadow of war has everyone worrying about an imminent shift in the balance of power and scrambling to maintain the status quo. Second, it’s another great illustration of the effect that Dunk has on people—every good-hearted person that meets him wants, in their own way, to reward him for his honesty and bravery. I like expanding Plummer’s character to give him this bit of courtly intrigue.  Aerion’s armor and his horse’s barding are great and very book-accurate. I will never tire of how these shows’ costumers are given enthusiastic carte blanche when it comes to decking out Targaryens in improbable dragon armor. It’s worth noting that every scene of Ser Lyonel Baratheon up to this point has not been in the original novella. The show loves Lyonel Baratheon and is working as hard as it can to shove him into every episode. I think it’s better for it.  When Dunk talks to Egg about his father, he mentions a pot shop in Flea Bottom that made “brown.” In Martin’s books, “bowls of brown” is the euphemism for perpetual stews made with all sorts of unsavory meats. They also serve as convenient cover for disposing of dead bodies, with royal spies and assassins selling the corpses of those who need to disappear to the proprietors of those shops. Grim stuff.  Bennett’s performance as Aerion is great. The temptation to play him as unhinged and frothing is probably high, but he lends him an unnatural calm even after being kicked in the teeth by Dunk. He’s fascinated at the idea of someone standing up to him and curious about what comes next. That seems like an infinitely scarier depiction. In Conclusion What do you think? If you are new to this tale, did you see the reveal about Egg’s identity coming? Are you excited for what lies ahead? If you read my long spoiler section, do you think that the show will ever catch up to the events of the far future? Bloodraven, anyone? And how about those breakfast sandwiches? Tell me all about it in the comments![end-mark] The post Prophecy and Revelations in <i>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms</i>: “The Squire” appeared first on Reactor.