‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Episode 6 Reactions | Talk the Thrones

hello and welcome to talk the thrones my name is chris ryan i am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio is joanna robinson hi hi and she's ready to hunt and hawk and sail and make merry it's mallory rubin we are here to break down the season finale of a night of the seven kingdoms right after this welcome back it's great to see you guys once more i'm sad it's gonna be three months and we'll be back again you know and we also work together so i do we do see each other all the time. That's true. Programming reminders. You are listening to us on the almighty house of our feet on Spotify, probably maybe elsewhere, but it's probably Spotify if you're being honest. And you can check out Mal and Joe's deep dive into this episode of a night of the seven kingdoms in a couple of days or all the episodes of a night of the seven kingdoms. You can also listen to me and Andy casually discuss the show on the watch. You guys are in. Yeah. I'm, I'm trying to do my best. Do you know what I mean? I'm a salesman. We stumbled over the flashback, but it's not a big deal. So Andy and I are on the watch. Mal and Joe here on Alice of Our Feed. You can also watch Mal and Joe on the Ringerverse YouTube channel. That's right. All right, let's get into the recap of this wonderful finale episode, but a little bit different than everything we've come before it. You know, a little bit of a different beat. A coda. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into it right after this. All right, the Moro episode with like about 100% less action, but that's okay because it had a lot of heart. Emotional action. The day after, Dunk is either somewhat bruised up or dying, depending on how much stock you put in Lionel Baratheon's terrible maester. That guy can't even fix an itchy asshole, so not much stock. But what do you take of his method of like rubbing his finger in the wound and then smelling it? I don't think you make it the past one day on the page. I feel like in Westeros, the one thing you need to be prepared to account for is an itchy asshole. Gloves, hand sanitation? No, thank you. LB wants Dunk to come with him to Storm's End and just let his freak flag fly, man. Play with some hawks, but Dunk is like, let me listen to Elliot Smith and feel bad about myself. Lionel mentions a war coming, which I will ask our experts about later. But the takeaway here is that the vibes are bad. Maykar looks beaten up about killing his brother. Valar is bummed about his dad dying in his armor. The only person with a smile on his face is Ray Fosway, who is happy to have stuck it to his traitor-ass cousin, Steph. And... Uh-huh. It's not a word. Yeah. Oh, lady. Yes. Proven to be the character in Westeros most likely to fall for a modern-day fishing scheme. I think we can now say that for sure about Raymond Fosway. I don't believe in True Loved in general, but I believe in Raymond Fosway and Lady Rowan. Yes. I believe in them. Duncan is summoned to meet with Makar and they talk a little bit of blame pie over Baelor's death and then Makar tries to get Duncan to become Aegon's mentor and move to Summerhall and then Dunk would train with Makar's Master of Arms honestly all things being equal not a bad deal not a bad deal you take that over Hawken with Lionel Baratheon I don't think Egg gets to go to Lionel Baratheon to finish his training too Duncan's done with princes though no matter who asks him make our dunk even in his cups darren who shows up at like the post trial feast wonderful new hairstyle by the way yeah oh ponytail ponytail era no that was a very important beesbury parting double funeral finally got a little bit of recognition a feeling of brotherhood is flowing through clan targaryen as egg ponders finishing what dunk started during the trial and cutting up what little remains of his sadistic brother arian too bad their dad is just sitting there in arian's room eventually dunk decides to take egg on the road unbeknownst to make our who had some conditions in this apprenticeship that did not get met uh he takes him away from the castles his brothers the cat torture uh it's all for a life of in hopping and salt beef eating they are free to explore the nine kingdoms i guess look at that um thus changing the name of this show i hope not the vampire list dad is gonna be like the falcon and the winter soldier renamed and uh that's it that renaming is coming next week there is a little coda to the coda of this episode which is basically make our being like where's a guy like that basically but it's too late because he's already on the road um very reflective very somber episode yeah apparently there's jazz in westeros they opened the episode with a little bit of clarinet it's like a comedy it was like an episode of the detectorists is how this episode started after the fireworks of the previous episode what was your favorite moment of this one I think it's when Lionel said wait let me get the quote right he says will you come to my cottage this summer don't go to summer hall come to my house we'll have so much fun it's so private no one will know it's very private maybe two we'll grill we can swap shirts just us yeah great stuff what's your favorite moment um i loved it all i thought this episode was beautiful and that the tone and mood of reflection was just a delight i think that it's a tie for me between the conversations between make art and dunk which i thought were exquisite and the arlen flashbacks and this insight into the penny tree and what it represents and the way that arlen talked about stories which can go very right or very wrong in game of thrones and i would love to circle back to and talk about uh at some point during today's discussion but i thought that was just lovely i feel like all directed at george and i'd always finish this story uh two things for me yeah one daniel angs uh amazing maybe the highest hit rate to minutes on screen of a television character and an actor in recent memory just the way he did that tree stump pitch to dunk about coming to his house and also just like the way he will do these little gestures to express frustration or exhaustion and speaking of exhaustion the fact that all of the characters who participated in the trial limping yeah they are all limping they've all got like bruises and blood coming out of parts that shouldn't be bleeding but only lionel has a crutch made of antlers yes to drop a fit like that while you're convalescing is frankly remarkable but this is why i think this show kind of stands a little bit and and this world in general i think has often done a really good job of showing the consequences of violence as well as like the excitement of it is to have all these guys just be so laid out after this thing and really to have like an empty there's an empty space in the middle of it because of what it costs to go through this stupid trial and Aryan's dumb idea of like you know honoring the Andals with like a trial of the seven and now we've lost the Hand of the King and the Eropera of the throne so that's where I wanted to start and Beesbray and Harding I could not think out of the lineup can I just say like my even with the bright yellow mustache can I say my MVP of the episode which is Sam Sproul as Makar because I've been watching a lot of his interviews this week as he was talking about his perception of Makar and like Sam's rule is just such an odd little goofball of a guy and so we see him like in Fargo or all these other things we've seen him play these like very severe hard-ass kind of characters um and he's just like a kind of a weirdo so that like and I said that with like love but I just love hearing him talk about he's like Makar Baelor read all the books Makar didn't read all the books so we see Makar reading in this in this episode but like his delivery of like he's my last boy or just like all these moments i just thought he was so good yeah i thought that whole scene with dunk and him saying like they're gonna whisper about me the rest of my life and he's like they're gonna whisper about you too was so cool incredible to do be able to thread the needle of simultaneously like having make our issue yet another like belittlement right of the idea of a hedge knight and the life of a hedge knight while also giving the most human moment that he's given yet to this person right and saying like to be clear uh the will you have him i thought had just as much emotion but that that line that joe mentioned that he's my last son it's like all of his children are alive right just to be clear but he's lost darren to it's true he's lost darren to drink and to bitter disappointment he's my last chance to get it right he's lost arian to basically mania evil uh reputation and a body and shatters aemon beloved and and blameless always at the citadel and so egg the idea to say like okay i have to confront the fact now that the last boy i thought that moment i can't wait to talk about the arian egg scene but when makar goes over and puts his hands on egg's shoulder and then eggs like sags back into his dad and they have that moment of tenderness together to say to dunk basically like okay you're saying he's got to be away from his family and that's the very thing that may car has to confront is the only way to save the last boy that i have is to get him as far away from all of us as possible but it's interesting that they make this choice to have this moment of like he did not actually give egg permission to go what did you think of that because that's that's an update that's what i'm saying it's not in the book in the book he does like eggs a little liar in this episode as as consistently as ever um i don't know how i feel about it actually i think i want to wait and see how it plays out r.i.p maker you would have loved adolescence crying on your bed my son yeah i was uh curious about that whole rope-a-dope of like a guy i mean like dad said it's okay if i go and then he's obviously got this little beat at the end yeah i like earlier in the episode when duncan's like were you spying and he's like no no i'm just like you little yeah he describes him as unruly and like it felt it was a really interesting choice to make this clearly like a this just something egg decides to do even though make our has has decided not to accept dunks terms and dunks version of his initial pitch i was like revisiting the text and you know make our just walks away from the conversation with dunk and then egg shows off it's really in the second novella in sworn sword where there are details that make it like seem that they are doing this with a blessing and with the sanctioning and that um you know it's not credible to me that like make our would not hunt them down basically so that's a little bit i mean that might be a part of the second season yeah not to do too much like fanficking of it but could it be possible that make our is almost like i'm making a public show of this because i don't want people to think i gave my son away there is that wasn't that read on that scene but that would fit though with like in general the idea of needing to keep his identity to you secret. I don't mind that at all. I think there's just a lot of like kind of very fascinating. What are you willing to say about somebody when what do you think the fact that he goes to Dunk and then has to kind of like process what Dunk is saying? There's this line when he because he opens by talking before he gets to Egg. They talk about Baylor. But before that, he tells him about Arian, right? Like I sent him away and Dunk is just silent. Like, what is he supposed to say to this, you know? And in the book, there's this great line that was not a thing you told a father of his son when Dunk is basically thinking in his head, like, I hope this guy never comes back. Great. He's gone. I hope he never comes back. But then he has to muster the courage to actually look at May Carter in the face, the Prince of Summerhall, Targaryen Prince, and say, well, Daryon probably never slept in a ditch. Narrator, he probably did. But that's not in the way that he means. And every stake that Aryan ever had was thick and rare and bloody, like the lives that they have been accustomed to. When May Carter's saying, I don't want my son to live the life of a peasant. Well, what if that's what could save him? But he's just sort of like, yeah, in saying so, he's like, you fucked up. You fucked up two of your sons, the third one's at the Citadel. What are you going to do with this one? Let me have him. I want to talk about the other big sort of like flashing light in this episode was the brief interaction between Lionel and Dunk in the beginning of the episode where Lionel says there a war coming based lionel baratheon yeah um there nothing gets me head up in a show than somebody being like war is coming especially one of these what was he talking about to the extent that you feel comfortable discussing it i have a couple things i can say i think which is one is this feels like a game of thrones reference right because robert baratheon says to ned stark there's a war coming ned i don't know when or who will be fighting but it's coming this sort of like let's be brothers okay so it's like a baratheon thing to a certain extent but also it is ira parker like pointing at the fences for like a potential it's like something that george hasn't written oh i would say okay that is like hasn't fully i mean i feel like this is okay to say right okay i don't know you're making a face like i'm spoiling anything i don't think i think it's something that he's just sort of like we can't talk about obviously because we don't want to spoil it's information that we like have but george hasn't put in novella so i feel like this is ira parker saying like if i want to do this story in a future season i'm just gonna drop a seed here so having not read it my read on it was i hate the targaryens and now there are fewer of them yeah and the only good dragon is a dead dragon i mean i think that's pretty accurate so many legs propping up the table at this point and so this might be yeah coming to a head soon which was like fascinating because you know we talked when when raymond said what he said to dunk in the middle of the season about like incestuous aliens and you know their black magic and uh shocking that raymond doesn't understand how uh impregnating a woman works given that he told us in that scene that he learned about jizzing on tits and pulling out from his cousin stephan amazing that dunk the virgin knows more about women than raymond great stuff in this episode this is a good example of me not remembering television shows i completely forgot it's a great moment you remember that great line when he said jizzing on tits? Did he really say that? Or is that you? Finish on a woman's tits is what he said. So like, pretty close. Yeah. It was pretty close. But the shock of hearing him say that like treasonous thing out loud about the Targaryens. There's nothing funnier than when you say something like that and then try to immediately try to get back into scholarship. I feel like this, it's just like this show more than any other show, it's the right place to do it. Because that's what they do inside of these episodes. But to hear a Baratheon of Storm's End, like a much more consequential figure with respect to House Fossilway, Like, say something like that is notable. And to Joe's point about invoking Robert, which, of course, how can it not make us think about Robert's rebellion? Who ended the Targaryen dynasty? Robert Baratheon. And, like, that's a long, long, long journey from Oris Baratheon beginning House Baratheon as Aegon the Conqueror's bastard half-brother and Hand of the King and best friend. And a million things have to happen along the way. And with Robert, we all know it's Rhaegar and Lyanna and all of that. But what is the evolution of the relationship between these two great houses? Like, all of those moments are really interesting to cast a light on. But it also just gets back to the thing we've been talking about all season. Flop era. No dragons. And now the greatest knight of his age, Baelor Targaryen, is gone. We were talking about this at the beginning of the season when Lionel was, like, basically wearing a crown. Yeah, right. Which is, like, a nice thing to do. Yeah. So, like, I think when he says something like that, it's pointing to just a general state of play of, like, the Targaryens are vulnerable in a number of respects. They were already before this. That's why they're at Ashford in the first place to do the diplomacy and maintain relationships. The fact that that vulnerability can come from outside or within the trial of seven just pitted this house against each other. Yes. That matters for how people think about the fragility of that family. The Blackfire rebellion was only 13 years ago and the Blackfire pretenders didn't all die. Right. Bittersteel is in Essos right now. I thought they might change. Everybody knows who Bittersteel is. I thought that they might change. I thought they might change sending Arian across the NRC. Because the Blackfire canon wasn't written yet when that was in the novella. But now, like, would they send him where the Blackfire pretenders are? Do you think it's significant that they snipped Leith out of it? Maybe. It's possible. Keep it open on the geography front. I was going to ask about his summer abroad. Yeah. What do you think? You excited? Arian. You want that season? Just Arian on the road? You want to learn about himself a little? Arian. Semester at sea. learning a lot about himself and what he's capable of no i was curious about some of the places that are mentioned offhandedly because i don't know what happens in the second novella but like this show is very very very strict about showing things that dunk sees no an exception in this episode a lot of egg pov i don't think we're well i don't think we're gonna get like we're going with arian on the road pov right like well what i think is really interesting is like you know and people who have read the novellas have been asking us about this is like a lot of the characters that are in this season aren't in the other two novellas that are published you know and so like will the show be able to resist pulling Daniel and his comeback you know or having Raymond Fossey who was a huge popular hit like you know are we just gonna leave the Fossey's there I mean again a lot of novellas George has not written a lot of the story but like season two we're starting with a basically a whole new cast of characters if they you know follow strictly to the book so i have a question because i've seen i think because of the success of this show and it is quite quite a quite a hit for especially its its budget um the debate about needing george text to make a show is like kind of been stirred up again and people are relitigating them the end of the thrones and they're talking about house of dragon and how little they have to work with so what do you expect he's gonna have to embellish things it's been interesting hearing the two of you talk over the course of this season often about pieces of internal monologue yeah uh happening on the pages of the novellas informing not only how you're watching the show but just like the depth of the character and everything like that yeah i'm putting you on the spot but in a world where this is now a once a year show yeah so by 2028 we are done with the printed works of duncan egg correct yes oh geez what do you think what do you think the challenges would be or do you think this could be a show that kind of broke the rule of you can write you can do a george show without george text i wonder if george um can be convinced to put aside whatever else he's doing and maybe write some like scenes for them or something like that because like we've been talking about the novella format as an like an adaptive choice and it's like so different to adapt a novella versus the sprawling a song of ice and fire series or fire and blood which is this like p you know like wikipedia page yeah odd history and the competing narrative narrative the this episode is a really good example because this is a huge hugely expanded upon the text episode there's like three scenes that are from the book and the rest like there's just a ton like all of raymond stuff all of lionel's stuff like um being an eggs pov like all of this is expanded stuff so there are certain scenes like make our and dunk which are in many ways word for word right you know or or dunk an egg like going on the road a bit like you know there there are there are or velar and and dunk like there are things that are lifted directly from the text and when you get those lines when you get some of make ours line it just really rings but i think ira parker and his and his writing team did such a good job with these expanded scenes inside of this episode so like we didn't love the flashback that or i didn't like love love love the flashback last week which was a departure from the text but this episode is as much a departure from the text as that was and i think it it feels like it rings true to me honestly all of these added scenes yeah because i guess i was reading a bit about how ironically reading about these books rather than reading them um of the pov structure of yeah thrones of yeah of those novels is one of the main reasons why he's been slowed down so much is because he's now created like two dozen pov things he's got over expanded and he over expanded and they were going through like all the things that got cut out of the actual show i was like oh yeah i remember that talking about mal that with mal yeah but that doesn't necessarily have like the these novellas are pretty tight they're pretty strict they've got two povs correct so theoretically he could just be like and then they do this and then they do that and here's like five things that they need to say to each other yeah that's what i'm saying is like he's outlined i think it was like 13 other so there's three that are printed and there were 13 other sort of like adventure stories right that he has informed ira parker of like duncan a go to x yeah um and these are the bare perhaps these are the bare bones of the things that happen and like i said if he could just like write them a couple scenes yeah per season i think we could be cooking with gas honestly yeah i i think i agree i definitely agree with what you're saying about the additions here feeling so true to the spirit of the thing that arlen flashback one of my favorites not a thing in the end of this novella the arian make our egg scene definitionally not a scene from the novella because it's not from dunk's point of view i thought that was like exquisite and really be coughing the beat most perhaps most crucial of importantly the bee coffin oh your sweet applesauce brain that was great um there that is still an expansion off of a complete text though and so i don't know what the exact math is of how much i do think though that ira has a feel for this world and these characters not just the sensibility and voice but the heart of the thing all of the additions have felt so core and true to the the the theme and like the heart that is the engine of the story that it does give me so much faith i like have been i guess maybe deluding myself since the end of thrones into thinking that george would be so motivated by like seeing the kind of bastardization of the ending of his opus you know his great work that it would inspire him and i i now really have felt that again this season because the positivity like the the reanimation of a fan base around this show if there's ever going to be something where he's like we were down to keep going with this i just it was so over now it's so back and there are a lot of like canon points along the timeline for these characters that do exist there are key events and key moments that are known so that and then there's a roadmap yeah there's a roadmap and like if if we could just get a couple more couple more they're only a couple hundred pages i'm always fascinated with the idea of like i mean this is not really germane to recapping an episode of television but i am having a good time talking about it about whether or not he's like transcribing things that he's already decided you know he's like i know where the game of thrones novels are going definitively and what happens to every single character and it's just a matter of me sitting down no i know i know for a fact he's changed his mind like he's told people one thing several years ago and is now saying other things in the media and he might that's fine he's allowed to change his mind again because he didn't like the way the show ended and that's like how writing works you discover things as you go you know and so it's just sort of like he can't he shouldn't be held accountable for exactly what he said five years ago about what was going to happen to a character that's not how like art works or whatever but for him to say now for him to come out this year and say like well i never intended this to happen in a song of ice and fire and you're like okay george write it then yeah i mean he's like i might kill that guy who lives or i might let this person live or die and write it you know interesting to see what he does with it yeah um i'm trying to think if i had anything else specifically you said that the Velar scene was in the books. Yes. Yes. Lovely scene. God, that was sad. Fathers are supposed to watch their kids die in their armor. That's added. That's added. That's added. There you go. I love cooking. But I love the text of that scene, which is like, you know, and then echoes into Dunk talking to Makar about his foot versus a prince's life and all of that, which is a hugely famous part of this story but um thinking about velar talking about what a kind of king his father would have been and now velar is heir to the throne right so he's like it's on me now i have to be king when my father was this sort of he was the hammer he was this great thing he's bail or break spear i'm just velar um i've just got this one patch of white in my hair by by arian at the it's true It's true. But back in October 2022, George R. R. Martin did like a Q&A with with Random House for his fans. And they were asking him, like, what is a minor this has been resurfaced this week, but like, what is a minor moment that changed the course of Westerosi history? And he said in 2022, the death, quote, the death of Baelor Breakspear, who was next in line to the throne, I think would have been a very strong and very competent king who dies to defend the honor of an insignificant hedge knight. How is Westeros history different If Baelor does not die that would be very significant So this is like as we were talking about like the tourney at Ashford Meadow is famous forever because this is where Baelor Breakspear dies and the history of Westeros is forever changed because whoever as Makar says right the old king is he old yeah you know and there's a line that's cut from the book that it's like Volar's next in line people aren't going to be as excited about that as they were about Baelor so you know and that's forever going to be on me and on you there's only one solution I can see what's that multiverse oh yeah great it's it's gone fine in every other yeah what if baelor lived spider-man goes back in time to save baelor damn hold on that's a pretty good idea you're onto something here man reach out to george yeah he's got time the i love the way that in like the really macro broad sense just the whole history of westeros you know we talked about the description in um in darren's dream like the the wings you know casting this this massive shadow over the the meadow so the quote joe shared then you have something very intimate and specific for every person another thing that like that that foot idea the people whisper this thing that ties make our and dunk you have what velar says to dunk you have this conversation with make our like the fact that make our is like so torn up and tortured and you can feel the love for his brother you can feel the regret and you can feel the shame just as you can feel dunk shame but there's also this like again i think really human element of and every time someone goes wrong they're gonna say balor would have done better like balor from the grave his shadow looming large over all of them. His presence and his might is so hefty that it's like, how can any of them hope to exist in its shadow? And then the question is like, well, what do you do if you're Magar and you're like, man, I didn't, the gods know I didn't mean to do it, but like, people are always going to say that I meant to do this thing, right? You have that line from Lionel to Dunk, come here and I'll love you like a brother, or don't fuck off and I'll hate you like a brother. And that's a through line of the season. Love your brother, hate your brother. you have Makar and Baylor you have this amazing area and egg dynamic with a fish knife yeah I can't wait to talk about that that gave me chills the like this element of that that knife's edge fish knife and flies otherwise that you're always on with the people closest to you and like if you're dunk and you're carrying and you're saying well what like maybe one day we'll come when I have needed that foot what do you do with your shame and your guilt and your despair in the book he's thinking of his scar and he like he's like I can never he can't ever look at the scar without thinking of Baylor ever, right? And that's like really sad and heavy. But does he let the guilt lead him to despair and destruction? Or does he find purpose in it? Can he find meaning in it? Can he say, well, like, if I had a foot and I had my hands and I had my teeth and look how I saved Tenzel. And there's a little bit of a one must, you know, need not intend to do it element to it. Another theme, but there's like the, okay, I helped. I was able to help. And so now I can choose to help again. I think also the, this, you mentioned, uh, both Lionel and Makar are like, come to the cottage, come to my cottage and we'll train you. And I feel like Makar saying, I really love Sam Sproul's delivery when he's like, your Sir Arlen did his best. Like he's, It's a really soft, sweet delivery, right? But he's like, but come on, we can do better, you know? And then for Dunk to be like, I don't think you can actually. And this being in such contrast to earlier in the season when his like one hope out of all of this is if I fight well, some Lord may take me into his household. I will ride in noble company then and eat fresh meat every night in a castle hall and raise my own pavilion at Terny's. But first, I must do well. Like this is what this was his dream. Yes. A Lord is going to invite me and I will not be homeless anymore. And then Lionel's like, come. Maker's like, come. And he's like, no, I'm dragonflies are dragons. I'm choosing I'm choosing the road. And that's an affirmation of like, to be cheesy, I'm enough. Yes. And my own my own moral compass is the right one. I think even though it doesn't happen in the same order of conversation. Well, actually, I guess it does. I was going to say that I think that the crucial conversation might be with Darren then because Darren tells him he was a glad child to like fishing and the next thing I think that we see is an egg noticing that his hair is growing and it's like this kid has a few years before he gets poisoned exactly we'll make a man out of him that gives me a chill and that's ultimately why I think dunk does what he does yeah that whether or not may card gave a sign off or not you know or whether or not that's somewhat of a production or or not or whatever i think ultimately he's like this kid gets to be a kid for six or eight or nine years or however long it's going to take before they get their claws into him right yeah and he's not a prince right and he's not a prince and and what's going to happen once that spins out there's a i thought that that made the darren and it was also tragic because darren's just like i never had a fucking chance like i'm just going to drink myself to death did you like uh darren's stitches on his face that he got i thought that was a little bit like own horse stepping on his head he was just like make sure the stitches are like really big so people can tell give me like busted sclera get some drinks bought for me for this there's a there's a line in the book at the funeral they put a hat on him at the funeral a great hat that the internet has loved for the last week but um there's a line from that scene where it says egg's hair was growing back as bright as his brother's right and so when we get this moment when he sees himself in the mirror which is like when he decides to like but like the score is like thrumming like a horror movie in that moment it's so good and i just think that like we've already said so much about how good dex has been this season but like everything he had to bring to that the like the menace and like there's menace in that scene and then there's also just like point like he doesn't get that much screen time in the last two and a half episodes right so he has to really make the most out of what he's got the fact that when he's tapping the hair and seeing it you can just feel the terror yeah right it's like this thing is rising inside of me that i don't want absolutely and i when he said to dunk on that that window bench earlier like maybe you're not the night i thought it's like he sees the person you know think of him on the hillside earlier in the season like i think i could be quite happy in a place like this he is able to recognize even at that age that there is a path to him being a better version of himself and it's not with these people. I thought that this Aryan scene, picking up that knife, going in, the tears pouring down his face, that ominous score, this is such a there but for the grace, off the heels of Daryan saying, I'm sure we'll make a minimum, so this inevitability in what Daryan says there. Aryan loved fishing. Yeah, Aryan loved fishing. He was a glad child. We've talked about that, the way that Maester Eamon described uh in game of thrones when he's thinking back to his brother egg the jolly child like this language is really intentional to draw this parallel so it's like there but for the grace of what of a hedge knight there but for the grace of dunk and dunk pulling egg into like it makes me really emotional like it's the fact that this like chance meeting i just thought this episode was great it's really good i just have some beautiful we're gonna have to save it for the deep dive for the deep dive but i just have some questions about some larger points that the show is making that slightly i think undercut that but we can talk about do you mean in terms of the text itself and like future stuff about george r martin stuff or just like i i mean i think if it's not i think the fortune teller stuff yeah i think there's just some some stuff that they're some track that they're laying that that is not in the book that i'm just sort of like that sort of changes this but dunk saved egg but i think that i think that makes it richer because it's like if it's just like everything else in a george story it's complex and it's nuanced and like if the path to any choice or any decision that you make in your life is simple then it's probably not going to be interesting for us to watch so yeah i think you know that i'm not asking for it to be simple but i think they're like it's just a different message than what i always got from the novellas yeah and that's the interesting thing about what happens when these shows break contain which is like if something's getting 13 million viewers a week that's probably a larger slice of the population that have read the novellas and we saw this happen with game of thrones maybe not in the ways in which it broke away from like the doctrine of the books but i think different actors brought different things to different parts and people were like we should probably like keep this guy on screen a little bit if we can you know and yeah so i i to your point about earlier about like this incredible ensemble that they've put together who aren't really supposed to be in the next season that is that is a really interesting question as to like whether we'll get any sam spurl or finn bennett or or daniel inges or could we get birdie coming back like garrett dillahunt in season two of daniel or whatever just a bigger beer why not man hbo's done it before if you could pick one side character is it your guy arian bright flame who would you most want them to sort of I think I got it. You know what I mean? I love him but like I don't know if he's going to be like become like a big reader. I assume you want the Rowan Raymond spinoff immediately. Oh I want Lionel. Naming her Rowan bizarre given a central character's name in the second season being Rowane. Could they stop at Storm's End on their little adventure? I mean at some point. I mean I think Lionel will return at Avengers Doomsday. Don't worry about it. Let me ask you about this nine kingdoms thing was that funny i i mean i was just kind of like is this just one of those things where like uh i don't know i'm trying to think of like an actual real world and uh comparison of this but we've you know conventional wisdom or just like the phrase is seven kingdoms but actually is nine what happened there the well actually i believe correct me if i'm wrong is that we like don't count dorn ah right usually because dorn has not always been part of the seven kingdoms and then we usually allied the iron islands and the riverlands right yeah i mean And Doran in the fold now. Egg, as usual, fact-checking and educating Dunk, I thought was a nice element of this. Like, the fact that Egg right away is like, I've got some stuff to teach you. I think that the, like, kind of Night's Watch vows equivalent of, like, realms of men, you know, reminding Dunk or the reader or the viewer of, like, well, you know, do you actually even understand, like, who you're supposed to protect or help or serve? What was interesting, the changing of the word mark, I thought was kind of hokey. I didn't like that. I just thought that it was like, I thought that was for the nerdy fans who have always been like, why is it making the seven? And it's had a tongue-in-cheek attitude, you know, like from pooping after the Game of Thrones theme or whatever. It's had a pretty tongue-in-cheek. I wonder how many people are going to get PTSD thinking back to the Six Kingdoms from, again, the Thrones finale. You know, anytime we mention the exact number, it's going to make us think of that. the on that front on the thrones finale when you know famously the universe had tyrian and sold an entire viewing public by invoking the power of story after shitting on our collective goodwill for two years uh with a couple notable exceptions you know we we love the episode called a knight of the seven kingdoms for example um i thought that this this arlen memory have you heard this story before and dunk sang many times was so such a like a lovely way to tie a bow around this through line of the season this uh tales that grow in the telling a tall tale that became legend like the the arlen weaning the the first of all the like uh from where you you know many times okay have we heard this story many times or is this going to be different right part of the storytelling tradition very um really made me think of frodo and sam like the last pages are for you when arlen the kind of like shade of Arlen and Sweetfoot peel off to the left of the screen and Dunk and Egg continue now because it's like a true knight always finishes the story we're in the tales of Dunk and Egg now it's like your turn the fact that Dunk was kind of weaned on these stories from Arlen including about Baylor right as we know from earlier in the season and now Dunk is that story for other people like like Joe said what happened here at Ashford is codified as myth and legend, this like story that will be shared and passed on is such an incredible like pivot point to think about not only in his life in this relationship, but in the history of the canon and also this fictional universe. I just think it's like a great way to kind of connect it to something beautiful, like old man in actually in season one saying to Bran, like I can tell you about Sir Duncan the Tall, right? But then, you know, you know, one of my favorite lines that George has ever written is an old Nan line. My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The stories are before me and after me before you two. When Thrones gets that right with old Nan or with this in this finale here it is not only a beautiful thing inside of this world but like for me it like this is why i love it getting to like the sort of thesis of what you're yeah and then you had the tyrian thing on the other end of it so i felt like this was a return into something kind of sacred yeah and i just really appreciated uh two things one in that flashback we get like confirmation that doug was never knighted which we never get in the books right yes like they're sitting there the storm is breaking like this is the night he dies you know so like this is it very harper stern of of junk to keep that a secret i don't know if you recall in the final season of game of thrones but um i honestly might not great that is one that has gotten a little bit this is about memory and forgetting yeah danny kind of forgot about the iron fleet in the final season of uh game of rounds george r martin kind of forgot about sweetfoot and they they righted this wrong because like in the book dunk sells sweetfoot as he does and then that's it sure he's like feed her some oats and some apples and he never goes back for her and she never shows up again in in the story and so the fact that they're like she went upstate to an orchard with raymond boss away and she's just gonna eat green apples what kind of apples mallory green apples for the rest of her I love Sweetfoot, so I'm thrilled to know she's in a great home with Raymond and Red, now Rowan. But I pray for the structural integrity of Sweetfoot's gums because green apples are fucking disgusting. What's wrong with green apples? I like them cooked in a pie. Okay. But you could have a Honeycrisp or a Pink Lady or a Sugar Bee and you're going with a Granny Smith. I remember you also listing apples at me. Yeah, there are a lot. I promise you if they're delicious. um here's a question i have for you chris and maybe you could be the arbiter of this if mallory has gone on this green apple rant so many times in her life if if this has been such a key part of our friendship that she has a red apple tattooed on her and i have a green apple tattooed on me yes would you say that she is not allowed to claim raymond fossoe of the green apple fossoe's as as her own i'm not allowed to like the character well i just think he's made a terrible choice and green is my favorite color so i think a green apple's beautiful look at it i think i may side with joe a little bit here you know uh i could suggest then writing into raymond and saying maybe you should change your car because he's still wearing an email address probably yeah you know you know still you know that he's they're camping yeah i know she's pouring out the bedpan she's wearing his shirt we don't have a lot of clothing to go around we're traveling light he's definitely gonna have next time we see him you know he's gonna be in head to toe green that's my favorite color i love green yes yeah why don't we talk a little bit about house of the dragon which is coming up next team green your team your fave uh the trailer uh for the third season dropped this week uh we are now in a world where we only have to wait three months until another game of thrones show comes on that will go for this is two months so it'll take us almost the fall yeah and and then theoretically i think we'll be back with duncan egg i would imagine i don't i don't remember if casey was talking about the the pit in that regard so i imagine if i had to guess we'll get duncan egg in a similar ish time next year that's wonderful um what did this show do to your level of anticipation and also concern about house the dragon as a project and as a returning television so i should say in case people are curious we are going to do like a full full deep like exhaustive deep dive so this is just like sort of a trailer check-in or whatever but we were actually talking to have you done one about mandalorian and grogu we have not okay you're not allowed to um listen to it if we do because you said you're not going to be engaging with that film isn't it you're not going to be engaging with that film so i'm not engaging with the film but i'm talking about it every week you're going to refuse to go you're not going to see that movie i don't know yeah my wife really likes that was my first thought yeah it's like what about phoebe she like doesn't even know it's coming can i tell you that i did write down a grogu note in my in my notes for this episode because you remember when we got in a little bit of a fight when i said grogu wasn't a character he was an accessory yes which i still feel is true and like agon is just such the complete opposite of that like agon is like what if grogu was actually a character do you know what i mean he's a i mean he's a he's a human co-lead of the show. They could have subtitles. The movie's called Mandalorian. The green co-lead of the movie. The movie's called Mandalorian and Grogu. I would say that Grogu has even more expressive eyes than I can bullshit. Anyway. He can teach himself how to talk and then start expressing his interior life. I want him to hold off as long as possible on full sentences from Grogu. Let's have him coo in for as long as he can. We were talking in fantasy about the hot D sort of anticipation last night. And this is something we were talking about, which is like he was he he prefers this show and a lot of people are saying they prefer night of the seven kingdoms to to house of the dragon and i was saying i think it's easier i mean there are many ways in which i think this show is executing on the highest the night of seven kingdoms is really executing on a high level but in terms of like the kind of show to sort of capture your heart the kind of characters that in either seven king like your raymond fossil ways and your dunks um your tan cells your steely pates like these are sort of like men trying to do their best people trying to do their best right going forward yeah we had some of those characters inside of game of thrones like your brand your pods your etc etc house the dragon does not really have that kind of character so it's not even like the courtly intrigue targaryen lens it's just sort of like these are like fucked up twisted people and i think especially since patty constantine left in season one where he was like messed up in a lot of ways but kind of trying to do his best and now I'm not sure we really have those characters, which is not to say I'm not excited about House of the Dragon, but I can kind of see that as a reason why people are less excited I think the answer probably for me would be to add a little bit more like camp or something to House of the Dragon yes, they could all be terrible but could they have a little bit more fun doing it you know what I mean? more like dick jokes theatricality i don't know like it's so grim yeah and it's so like tragic but not in a kind of like it with there's just very little flourishes like and matt smith kind of got relegated to wandering in and out of rooms by himself last season so i'm hoping a lot for a matt smith reintegration into the gen pop uh thing honestly i gotta say after task i was gonna say stop pretending like you weren't just like zooming in like you needed to see anything else other than that i have to admit that got me excited they should open a philadelphia bar called the dragon footprint and christian is there every night yeah i love that chris is like a fellow like lover of british television was the shot of james norton it was exciting well and he's team green just like you ormond hightower is here oh you know you got all those green high tower tents behind a nice close-up shot of tasarian the blue queen dragon who's beautiful and lovely darren the daring is here we talked about darren all last season to you and you're like i don't know who that is and we're like yeah because he's not in the show here it is on the the like tonal distinction point that you guys are making i i definitely think hati is just not for everyone and that's okay and i agree that there's a a just like in a night of the seven kingdoms a show that is very like uh jovial and charm forward and hope centric there was a lot of horrible shit that happened and a lot of despair and a lot of tragedy i think that you're right that there's a way to inject the opposite into hot tea i kind of am like i and my hope what i feel personally but my hope maybe for the masses is that like it's fine if people don't like hot they don't need to be talked into liking it um the fact that these things are so different will actually be part of what's fun about it i you know like the way that when andor came out and it was such a uh i mean just an incredible masterpiece but also like wow this feels really different and then the real risk coming out of andor is that the like false takeaways let me try to make andor instead of let me try to make something that is specific and fully realized on its own yeah so i'm like actually into this idea of an era where these thrones shows feel really specific to their own intention and different from each other i'm also like totally open to different different showrunner creators takes on the world being completely different and and i had some some real highlights of season one it's not like i am completely out on the show and this trailer like gullet battle you see all those fucking ships and all those dragons this is gonna be sick here's my here's my hot take here's my hot take these should be puppets all of them all the dragons should be puppets the dragon puppet in this season of television was very good and i think that you are you should officially float it as a way to just make these seasons quicker you know if they're all puppets um i thought that seeing gullet was electrifying just for for a second here especially exactly especially given that it was not at the conclusion of season two the way it really should have been and was meant to be um but hopefully this is how the healing can actually you know i don't i don't gather there's any healing to be had on house the dragon um can i say one more thing before we go of course this episode ends with 16 tons by tennessee ernie ford yeah the music did take me out pro labor bop like a very straight like i was trying to thematically i mean is it just the point that like dunk is big and he carries a lot of things like i don't like that song is about you know i owe my soul to the company store it's about being like a coal miner like you know is in debt forever to the man like i was having a hard time i'm sure by the time this comes out ira parker will have given an interview or dan roman will have given an interview about why they did it but i was just like i'm not anti it i was just And I'm not anti a modern, more modern needle drop at the end of the season. I was just having a I love that song, but I was having a hard time connecting it. I wouldn't overdo it if I were them. Yeah. Maybe like the end of in the finale of every season. Yeah. There's the wire style. What do you guys think? Amen is listening to as he sits moodily on the iron throne. What are his preferred needle drops? You know, late period in the cave. OK, well, we can wrap it up there. It's been such a pleasure. um i can't wait for the deep dive um curious weather here's how much i'm gonna keep myself in a little terrarium yeah what's your what's your google wiki well i do i do feel like i did too much of it with hotd uh looked at too much stuff you know what i mean and now i'm kind of like well let's just see how this plays out this i just really enjoyed going into this and being like you know swept up in the wonder of it not looking to see like oh what happens to this guy and what happens to this person. Well, and do you feel like you have the luxury of staying patient because you know you're going to be back in the world so soon? Like you're not going to have to wait three years. Doesn't that help? Yes, I can stay patient. Also, I've got a lot of other reading to do, you know, but none by George RR Martin. You know, if he ever starts, if he publishes another book, okay, I'll start reading. Have you read any of his blogs? George, did you hear that? I did. You've read like his Giants and Jets books. You read his Daniel Jones. I find it very funny where he's just like, oh, what a busy one. Do you mean that? Okay. We need to clarify the rules especially after he writes another dunking novella i'm also on the hook for so much stuff right now i'm supposed to be watching miyazaki movies i'm supposed to be like let's you're supposed to be singing some original spring scene let's forget about kiki's delivery service some sentence i've never said in my entire life and let's just say is it a like a dunking novella no it's it's a thrones novel it's winds of winter yeah okay okay george i mean what a george well uh he needs every little bit of motivation he can get i think this is gonna be the thing that pushes him over the edge yeah the cr promise not a kyler murray could work out for the jets blog it has to be something more than that kyler would be an interesting jet um what do you think sean would think i think we should end our season-long discussion of a of a beautiful television show with kyler murray feels right very ring for joanna robinson for mallor rubin i'm chris ryan thank you so much to everybody who's worked on this show uh and helped make it what it is thanks for everybody for watching us on YouTube and on Spotify and commenting. Arjuna, Jomi, Sarah, the whole crew. Thank you so much and we will be back with you I guess in the summer for Jars of the Dragon. I don't know why I said it that way. you