Aegon Targaryen: Maekar’s grief and Dunk and Egg’s secrets in 'The Morrow' (aegon targaryen)
This story contains major spoilers from the season-one finale, "The Morrow. " The episode leaves three clear ruptures in the series: a fatal blow struck by Prince Maekar Targaryen, the revelation that aegon targaryen was secretly squiring Ser Duncan the Tall under the name Egg, and a new flashback that throws Dunk’s own knighthood into doubt—changes that matter now because they reshape who stays on the road with Dunk and Egg and how the next six-episode season may be staged.
Sam Spruell on Maekar, a fatal head wound and self-delusion
Sam Spruell plays Prince Maekar Targaryen, a widowed single father who serves his dynasty roughly 90 years before the original series and nearly 80 years after House of the Dragon. Maekar has three sons—Daeron, Aerion and Aegon (called "Egg")—and has long lived in the shadow of his older brother, Prince Baelor Targaryen, who is the heir to the Iron Throne and is portrayed by Bertie Carvel.
At the end of the trial at Ashford Meadow, Baelor unexpectedly collapses and dies from a fatal head wound received at Maekar’s hand. In the finale Maekar insists the Gods know it was an accident; Spruell says his character is "so susceptible to self-delusion, " arguing that invoking divine innocence is a way for rulers to absolve themselves. Spruell added that rulers have long said, "Well, God thinks I’m innocent, " when clearly they’re guilty, calling it a depiction of corrupt power.
Ashford Meadow: the joust, the accusation and the trial of seven
The season’s central event is the jousting tournament at Ashford Meadow. Maekar and his son Aerion, played by Finn Bennett, discover that Aegon, played by Dexter Sol Ansell, and Daeron did not arrive as scheduled. Ser Duncan "Dunk" the Tall, played by Peter Claffey, clashes with Aerion after Aerion assaults a puppeteer; Aegon intervenes on behalf of Dunk, the hedge knight he has secretly been squiring under the alias Egg.
The drunken Daeron is later found nearby and, to cover his neglect of Aegon, falsely accuses Dunk of kidnapping the youngest brother. Aerion responds by challenging Dunk to a "trial of seven, " in which each side must recruit six champions. Prince Baelor joins Dunk’s side; after a hard-fought battle Dunk compels Aerion to withdraw the accusation.
Aegon Targaryen’s secret role, Summerhall and a fractured offer
Aegon Targaryen—known to Dunk and others as Egg—has been secretly squiring Ser Duncan. Acting on Egg’s fondness for Dunk, Maekar offers Dunk a home at Summerhall so Dunk can train Egg as his squire and finish his own training under the castle’s master-at-arms. Citing royal exhaustion, Dunk rejects the Summerhall offer and instead asks to take the young lad on the road with him. Maekar refuses that path, unwilling to let his royal blood live like a "peasant. "
The context includes a truncated line about Aegon—"[Aegon] is his last chance to have an heir that’s worth anythin"—that is incomplete and unclear in the provided context.
Dunk’s knighthood questioned: Ser Arlan, the hillside flashback and the words left unsaid
The finale adds a flashback showing Dunk as a squire to Ser Arlan of Pennytree. In that scene Arlan is propped against a tree, pale, babbling and apparently dying; Dunk asks, "Why did you never knight me? Did you think I'd leave you? I wouldn't have. Or was it something else?" and receives no answer. The flashback is filmed on the same hillside where Dunk later buries Arlan’s body.
Book readers have long suspected Dunk is lying about being knighted. Dunk has told people that Arlan knighted him just before Arlan died, with "only a robin, up in a thorn tree" to bear witness. When Dunk tries to enter the Ashford Meadow tournament, he is told to find a lord or another knight to vouch for him; no one can verify his claim and hardly anyone remembers Arlan’s existence. The show drops subtle hints across the season that Dunk was only ever a squire and is using a lie to get a chance at a better life.
Showrunner Ira Parker said he wanted that new scene to be open to interpretation, noting that much of the exposition about whether Dunk was knighted is internal and that the show gets "pretty, pretty close" to him saying it but does not put it in black and white. When Dunk first meets Egg in the premiere, the boy tells him, "You don't look to be a knight. " In episode four, when Raymun Fossoway asks to be knighted so he can fight in Dunk’s Trial of Seven, Lyonel Baratheon urges, "Go on, Ser Duncan. Any knight can make a knight. " Still, Dunk does not draw his sword to perform the knighting.
Where season two stands: The Sworn Sword, scope and production limits
The series’ six-episode first season has already led into a second season now in production, which will adapt George R. R. Martin’s second Dunk and Egg novella, The Sworn Sword. The Sworn Sword centers on a dispute about water rights to a stream, features even lower stakes than The Hedge Knight, has much less action and is made up largely of characters talking—there is no tourney, for example.
Show plans call for another six-episode story. That presents practical challenges: The Sworn Sword lacks natural midseason climaxes on the level of an Egg-reveal, the production must film in warmer, drier locations because the book’s plot takes place during a drought and therefore cannot shoot exteriors in Belfast, and inflation has pushed costs up even as the budget "has stayed the same, " making a sunny, waterless location a major new expense that the first season did not face.
The adaptation will likely sideline most secondary characters from season one in the short term; Dunk and Egg will return (Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell), but characters who appeared in season one—Daniel Ings’s Lyonel Baratheon, Shaun Thomas’s Raymun Fossoway and every single Targaryen outside of Egg—do not appear in the book’s immediate follow-up and so are unlikely to return in the next season. The Sworn Sword also brings a lot of lore and talk about the Blackfyre Rebellion; an unfinished line in the provided context—"The first sea"—is unclear in the provided context.
