[This story contains spoilers from the premiere of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.]
The world of Game of Thrones is known for having scenes that are shocking and graphic.
But HBO‘s new prequel series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, opened with a jaw-dropping moment that not a single viewer could have possibly expected.
A few minutes into the show’s season premiere, a wandering young knight, Ser Duncan (Peter Claffey), is grieving the death of his liege lord and mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb). Despite being broke and inexperienced, Duncan decides to enter a jousting tournament. His moment of decision is accompanied by swelling music — HBO’s iconic, Emmy-winning Game of Thrones theme song. Just as the music starts to crest, the music is interrupted by a shock cut of Duncan graphically projectile defecating.
It’s a moment that even surprised co-creator George R.R. Martin. “Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise,” the author told The Hollywood Reporter during interviews for last week’s cover story profile of the author and his media empire. “Not to say that my characters don’t take shits, but I normally don’t write about them at any length. When I saw the rough cut, I wrote, ‘What is this? Where did this come from? I don’t know if we really need the shit.’ But [showrunner Ira Parker] liked it for whatever reason.”
We asked Parker for his reasoning behind the moment and he broke it down, explaining it’s not meant to be disrespectful to the original show.
“So in the script it reads, ‘Duncan hears the hero theme in his head’ — which wasn’t necessarily going to be the Thrones theme at that moment,” Parker said. “He was going to hear that call to greatness that we all hear that when we decide we’re going to do something really difficult that we’ve never done before. It’s a little scary and you feel like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna be the guy. I’m gonna do it!’ He picks up the sword. He’s thinking about it.”
Continued Parker: “But then the reality of doing this, how difficult it is, how scary it is — that turns his guts to water. Because he’s not a hero yet, you know? All we’re trying to say here is that Dunk is not a hero yet. He’s just a nervy kid with a nervous stomach — just like me. And as badly as you want to do something great, as soon as you actually have to go off and do it, it becomes trickier. And that’s what the whole season is for him.”
Also, no spoilers, but this isn’t the last time the Thrones theme is used this season. The next time it’s used puts this particularly moment into a slightly different context.
As Parker has discussed previously when previewing the season, the new show is a bit of a slow burn — at least at first.
“We’re not throwing a kid out of a window in the very first episode,” Parker says. “But just, like, give us a second.”
“Being able to do six episodes, anywhere between 30 or 40 minutes, was perfect for us,” he added. “It meant we didn’t have to stretch the story. It meant that we could do a faithful adaptation of this – which is obviously very much what George wanted, and I was very keen to deliver one because I’m a big fan of these novellas and this way the stuff we did add doesn’t feel tangential. It feels like it’s filling out [Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas] in a way that hopefully George would have done and had just written them as novels instead of 80-page nuggets.”
For more on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, see this weeks Hollywood Reporter cover story: Heavy is the Crown: Inside George R.R. Martin’s Triumphs and Torments.
