Yesterday, it was announced during HBO's Upfronts presentation that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, its next Game of Thrones prequel series, won't premiere until 2026. According to Entertainment Weekly, the show is now targeting a winter release date early next year.
Obviously, we're very bummed about this news. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on George R.R. Martin's Tales of Dunk & Egg novellas, which follow the honorable knight Ser Duncan the Tall and his diminutive squire Egg on various adventures around the Seven Kingdoms. It's a lighter, more fun sort of story than Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, and since HBO previously teased that it was coming sometime in 2025, I've been really looking forward to watching it.
Because of the scheduling change, there will be no Game of Thrones show airing this year on HBO. Ever since A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was announced, I'd been figuring that HBO was trying to release a new season of a Game of Thrones show every year, alternating between A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and its other Thrones prequel show, House of the Dragon. The timing seemed to be lined up for that, back when we thought A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was releasing in 2025. House of the Dragon only started filming its third season a few months back, so presumably it won't premiere until 2026 or, gods forbid, 2027.
There are a lot of reasons I don't like this change, but perhaps the most galling is that this doesn't feel motivated by what's best for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms whatsoever; in fact, I'd argue it may even be to its detriment. Instead, this feels like a top-down business decision to bank content so that HBO and its streaming service don't run dry next year.
Why is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms being delayed?
Sometimes when shows get delayed, it's because they need more time in post-production before they're a shiny, finished product that's ready to be premiered for the public. With A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, we pretty much know for a fact this is not the case.
The series wrapped filming in September 2024, and only consists of six episodes total. George R.R. Martin wrote in his blog back in January that he had seen all six episodes, and only the final two were "rough cuts," meaning they had incomplete VFX or editing. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a much smaller and more budget-friendly show than either of its sister series; there are no dragons, no armies, and no massive castle sets. The first season is adapting Martin's book "The Hedge Knight," which takes place almost entirely at a tournament in the Reach. Yes, there are some spectacular battles and I expect the tourney to be grand, but it still won't be even remotely close to the scale of Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon.
All that means that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms obviously does not need another seven-plus months of editing. Last year, Warner Bros. Discovery global streaming chief JB Perrette said at a conference that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was eyeing a late summer 2025 release date. Variety's own sources claimed late 2025. The writing on the wall seemed clear: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms would be in a finished enough state to air in 2025. And it undoubtedly is.
Here's where we get to the rub. Along with this delay announcement, it was also revealed that HBO's streaming service, Max, is being renamed...back to HBO Max. Yes, the same name it had before Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav got the genius idea to combine the service with the failing Discovery+ app, which is filled mostly with reality TV shows. This was despite the fact that HBO Max was one of the few streaming services to actually win a loyal audience during the streaming wars. Who could have seen this reversal coming?
“This evolution has been influenced by changing consumer needs, and the fact that no consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content," read HBO's statement (via The Hollywood Reporter). "With other services filling the more basic needs with volume, WBD has clearly distinguished itself through its quality and distinct stories, and no brand has done that better and more consistently over 50-plus years than HBO.”
Love the bit of shade thrown at Netflix and Prime, who are "filling the more basic needs with volume."
The general thrust is that it seems like things are in a state of mild disarray at HBO's parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, and it is now trying to course correct after realizing its streaming strategy hurt the HBO Max brand. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms may or may not be part of that solution, but it seems very likely to me that this delay is being done to fill a void in HBO's programming schedule for early next year. After all, it doesn't really have any other big hitters in the genre television space coming that soon. The Last of Us reportedly won't even start filming season 3 until 2026, and House of the Dragon season 3 is still far too early in production to make any solid predictions about when it might premiere. Before this, I would have said that House of the Dragon at least was coming next year...but now? Who knows.
The one upside to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms being delayed
If we're going to put a positive spin on this, the one way the delay may work out in A Knight of the Seven Kingdom's favor is if it results in less of a wait between seasons. While HBO hasn't formally renewed the show yet for season 2, Martin confirmed in March that work is already happening on it. If HBO wants to quietly front-load A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms so that we get one season a year, it may actually end up being a boon for the series.
Aren't we all tired of waiting two years between seasons of television? Well, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is the perfect sort of show to break that trend. The books it's based on are fairly compact novellas; if seasons 2 and 3 have the same amount of episodes as season 1, there's absolutely no reason the studio couldn't get them out yearly, so long as they're planning far enough ahead.
Ultimately, it'll be a little while before the full ramifications of this delay become clear. For now, I'll nurse my disappointment, and be glad that at least we have other good genre shows like Murderbot on Apple TV+ coming down the pike. And hey, at least we got a look at the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms little tree logo, right?
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