When HBO announced A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms there was admittedly a lot of uncertainty among fans over how George R.R. Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas would translate to the small-screen and fit within the broader franchise. This isn’t because the books aren’t incredible – because they most certainly are – but they’re much more grounded with more humor and heart than the other works in the franchise.
While some might have had their doubts about the show at first, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms quickly won viewers over with its first season earning rave reviews. Book fans love how faithfully the show adapted the source material and it’s clear that showrunner Ira Parker and the show’s creative team worked hard to maintain the quality of the source material. The result is a show that has earned critical acclaim with rave reviews and left fans wanting more.
Season 2 is already in the works, and the odds are looking good that a third season will be greenlit. The plan is for each season of the show to adapt the corresponding book in the Dunk and Egg series, but this plan creates a major issue for HBO: there are only three books in the series. With HBO looking to adapt each book as its own season, this would mean there is only enough source material for three seasons of the show. Thankfully, it seems both Martin and Parker already have a plan in place to continue the show beyond a potential third season into uncharted territory.
Now I know what you’re thinking already, there’s no way a Game of Thrones show should carry on beyond its source material. We all know what happened when Game of Thrones reached that point in its run, and we have the rage tweets to prove it. However, this isn’t a Thrones situation.
Although Martin has only published three Dunk and Egg novellas, he’s writing a fourth one and has several outlines for a dozen more Dunk and Egg stories to be told.
“Even though we don’t have the ins and outs of every story, we know canonically the major beats of Dunk and Egg throughout their lives. So we wouldn’t necessarily run into the same trouble as the flagship did. And George has outlined 12 more of these stories that he’s shared with me,” Parker told The Hollywood Reporter in January 2026. “These stories take them all the way through their lives. Some of these are just a paragraph, but they give you a sense of where they’re going to go and the people who come back in and out of the story.”
Well, it seems that Martin not only has openly shared these outlines with Parker in order to read him in on the plans he has in place for the character. As Parker revealed when speaking with Polygon after the season 1 finale, he and Martin have had active conversations about plans for continuing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms beyond season 3. When that day comes, Parker is not planning on going rogue and pushing Martin out. It’s actually the opposite.
Should A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms be lucky enough to make it beyond a third season, Parker’s plan is to work together with Martin to break the seasons together and pull from the ideas he has.
“George and I have talked about very loosely that if it ever came to that, we would just go through and break seasons together, that he has a lot of ideas and we can bounce ideas off of each other,” Parker says. “Obviously, I don't want to take him away too long from his day job, but it's amazing how much can be accomplished in a quick amount of time with him and a couple of his favorite authors in the room. We were pretty good for season 1, so I think we could continue that and come up with some good stuff.”
Honestly, given how well Parker and Martin worked together on season 1, there is absolutely no doubt that the pair could craft more amazing stories together to keep the show going beyond a third season. Whether that comes via adapting some of the outlines Martin already had drafted, or starting from scratch and building something new together, it feels like there’s a real opportunity to continue the story beyond the novellas in a way that pushes the story ahead in a meaningful way.
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