Sam Spruell on Maekar’s Grief, Aegon Targaryen and why aegon targaryen matters in The Morrow

Sam Spruell, who plays Prince Maekar Targaryen, spoke about Maekar’s grief and Egg’s lie after the season one finale “The Morrow, ” and about the place of aegon targaryen in that episode. Spruell framed Maekar as a man prone to self-delusion who leans on divine absolution to avoid confronting his own actions.

The Morrow finale and aftermath

The season one finale, episode six, is titled “The Morrow. ” Its central set piece is the jousting tournament at Ashford Meadow. At the tourney, Maekar and his son Aerion, played by Finn Bennett, discover that Aegon, nicknamed Egg and portrayed 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; he had secretly been squiring for the hedge knight under the alias Egg. A drunken Daeron is found nearby, and to deflect guilt for neglecting Aegon he falsely accuses Dunk of kidnapping his youngest brother.

Aerion responds by challenging Dunk to a “trial of seven, ” in which the accused and the accuser each recruit six champions for combat. Prince Baelor Targaryen, the heir to the Iron Throne and played by Bertie Carvel, joins Dunk’s side. After a hard-fought battle Dunk compels Aerion to withdraw the accusation. Dunk then bends the knee to Baelor; immediately after that, Baelor unexpectedly drops dead from a fatal head wound he received at the hand of Maekar.

Aegon Targaryen's role in finale

The episode makes clear that Aegon’s presence and intervention are key to the trial’s outcome. Maekar tries to manage the aftermath by insisting that the Gods know Baelor’s death was an accident. Spruell rejects that reading of his character’s own explanation, saying, “Maekar is so susceptible to self-delusion. How handy that you can refer to the Gods knowing it’s an accident to absolve you of your crimes?” He continued that rulers saying, “Well, God thinks I’m innocent, ” when they’re guilty is a depiction of corrupt power. Acting on Egg’s fondness for Dunk, Maekar offers Dunk a home at Summerhall where Dunk could train Aegon as his squire and complete his own training with the castle’s master-at-arms. Dunk, citing royal exhaustion, rejects Maekar’s offer and instead asks if he can take the young lad on the road with him; Maekar refuses to let his royal blood live like a “peasant. ”

One line in the record is incomplete: “[Aegon] is his last chance to have an heir that’s worth anythin” — unclear in the provided context.

Dunk’s knighthood and Arlan

The finale also adds a flashback for Dunk: his time as a squire for Ser Arlan of Pennytree. As 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?” He receives no answer. That scene is filmed on the same hillside where Dunk later buries Arlan’s body. Book readers have long suspected Dunk lies about being knighted; Dunk claims Arlan knighted him just before he died, with “only a robin, up in a thorn tree” to bear witness. When Dunk tries to enter the jousting tournament at Ashford Meadow, 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 existed.

Private struggle and identity are central to Dunk’s arc. In the written source, after Egg is revealed as a Targaryen prince in disguise, Dunk is shocked and embarrassed for being deceived but feels compassion: “He knew what it was like to want something so badly that you would tell a monstrous lie just to get near it. ” The showrunner described the question of whether Dunk was truly knighted as deliberately up for interpretation: “A lot of the exposition around whether or not Dunk was knighted is internal thoughts in his head. And we get pretty, pretty close to him coming out and just saying it. It’s just like, what else could he be thinking of? What else could he mean by this?" Parker added, “But it’s not said in black and white. ”

Early exchanges underline the doubt: when Dunk meets Egg in the premiere the boy says, “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. ” Dunk does not draw his sword to perform the ceremony. The traditional investiture words—“In the name of the warrior, I charge you to be brave. In the name of the father, I charge you to be just, ” etc. —are referenced but the record here truncates at “kn... ” — unclear in the provided context.

Season two and The Sworn Sword

The first season ran six episodes. Season two is already in production and will adapt The Sworn Sword, George R. R. Martin’s second Dunk and Egg novella from 1998. That novella centers on a lower-stakes conflict—a dispute about water rights to a stream—and contains much less action, with most of the story driven by characters talking rather than a tourney. The plan is to tell another six-episode story in Season 2. That presents creative challenges: the Sworn Sword is less naturally episodic and lacks a big midseason twist on the level of Egg revealing himself to be Aegon Targaryen.

Per the book, none of the secondary characters from season one return in the next story; Dunk and Egg will return, portrayed again by Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell, but Daniel Ings’s Lyonel Baratheon, Shaun Thomas’s Raymun Fossoway, and every single Targaryen outside of Egg are likely absent in this adaptation. A new cast of characters will orbit Duncan and Egg.

Production costs and location logistics

Producers face budgetary pressures. “The budget has stayed the same, ” the showrunner said, “But everything is more expensive due to inflation. Plus, book two takes place in a drought, so we can’t shoot exteriors in Belfast. We have to go to a sunny location with no water, which costs money—that’s a major expense that we did not have in Season 1. ” The upcoming season will require shooting in warmer, drier locations, stretching the existing budget. The adaptation will also touch on deep franchise lore, including discussion of the Blackfyre Rebellion and other elements; one fragment in the coverage ends at “The first sea” — unclear in the provided context.

Spruell’s casting follows notable recent work: he delivered an indelible turn on Fargo season five as a “500-year-old sin-eater, ” and he appeared in a couple of episodes of Dune: Prophecy, which he shot before his role on Fargo. The series itself is a meticulous adaptation of Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg and has been praised for balancing faithfulness to the novellas with new twists.

Closing: The Morrow ties together courtroom-like combat, family deception and a violent, contested aftermath that leaves Maekar insisting on divine absolution even as others question his truthfulness; the show now moves toward a six-episode second season that will test how low-stakes material adapts to serialized television.