This article contains SPOILERS for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season 1 Episode 5, "In the Name of the Mother."
The penultimate episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has arrived, and true to form for Game of Thrones, it is the most shocking, game-changing episode of the season. "In the Name of the Mother" is split evenly between the brutal trial of seven and an extended flashback taking viewers to Dunk's origins as an orphan of Flea Bottom at the end of the First Blackfyre Rebellion. But it's the episode's final moments which truly seal it as a new franchise high point, up there with the best episodes of Thrones or House of the Dragon.
As we do every week, we're breaking it all down on the latest episode of Winter Is Coming's Take the Black podcast, where co-host Marq Nettles and I get into every gory detail of Dunk's trial of seven, the ways this episode stacks up to George R.R. Martin's novella "The Hedge Knight," scour the subtle worldbuilding of the flashback sequence, and more. Watch below:
"In the Name of the Mother" took some of the boldest swings yet for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Most fans expected the trial of seven, long foreshadowed as the climax of the season. Yet the decision to spend more than half its 37-minute runtime delving deep into Dunk's past was a daring gamble. It's the largest departure the series has yet made from its source material, as well as a hard shift to the episode's pacing. taking viewers from the breakneck clash of battle to the slowest, most substantial flashback of the franchise's history and back again. Does it work?
And how did we feel about the terrible showdown between Dunk and Aerion Targaryen? The tragic and shocking death of the heroic Baelor Targaryen, and the horror of his brother Maekar's accidental kinslaying? There's a lot to talk about this week, and it should come as no surprise that our podcast ran nearly twice the length of the episode itself.
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The season finale of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres Sunday, February 22 at 10:00 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max. It's been quite a journey so far, from the endearing atmosphere of the Ashford tourney to the heroism of true knights and the horrifically bloody consequences of the trial of seven. See you then for the epic conclusion to Dunk and Egg's story!