The original show might have ended on a whimper and the first spin-off might have disappointed but this lighter, shorter series has been a genuine joy
I
can’t speak for anyone else, but I first entered into A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms extremely gingerly. Game of Thrones (as we all know) all but cratered during its final season, to the point that watching it almost felt like a punishment. House of the Dragon was somehow even worse, for reasons we’ll come to shortly.
And so, presented with an opportunity to dip my toes back into Westeros, I hesitated. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me repeatedly due to a capitalist desire to permanently entrench all existing IP in order to minimise subscriber churn, shame on me.
What’s more, A Knight for the Seven Kingdoms looked terrible. All available clips looked so grimly lighthearted, with all the comedy coming from big heroic moments being undercut with silliness. Want to see a classic Game of Thrones archetype get lost on the way out of an important meeting? Check. Want to see him suffer through explosive diarrhoea behind a tree? Also check. Intentionally or otherwise, the series seemed to market itself as a low-rent spoof of what came before; the Meet the Spartans of Game of Thrones.
