Review: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, "The Squire" | Season 1, Episode 3

“I think I could be quite happy in a place like this.”

When HBO sent the full season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms out to critics, they wanted us to protect the reveal that comes at the end of the third episode.

I understand this impulse, but it’s a bit of a strange circumstance. As someone who has never read the novellas, I was still aware of what they were referring to, because it’s been a part of the general discussion around George R.R. Martin’s work as a whole. This isn’t a climactic spoiler, like Ned Stark’s fate in Game of Thrones’ first season. This is a foundational dynamic of this story, hidden from the reader/viewer diegetically but ultimately a pretty common fact about the novellas that a casual observer of the franchise may have been aware of.

Watching it play out in “The Squire,” though, I was reminded that the reality of Game of Thrones’ success is that the majority of viewers of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms likely have no recollection of the scene in that show that effectively spoiled this reveal. It was but an easter egg, pun very much intended, designed to signal a connection that viewers could choose to follow to the novellas if they wished. For most fans, they have no reason to believe that this small-scale story of a knight and his orphan squire has any resonance with the epic power struggle for Westeros that brought them to this universe, despite the fact the answer has always been an errant Google search away (which is how my boyfriend robbed me of a chance for a firsthand experience with the reveal, just ten minutes before it came).