Remember back in 2022 when you settled in to watch House of the Dragon‘s first episode? Here was a fresh start after Game of Thrones‘ disappointing final season. A clean slate, a new cast, a new (earlier) era of Westeros. But… the exact same Ramin Djawadi theme song?
It made sense on some level—it’s an awfully catchy bit of music—but it also felt a little bit repetitive. Good news for people hoping A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will try something different: HBO’s latest journey to Westeros will not only not use that same opening theme, it won’t even have a theme at all.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Ira Parker explained why that choice was made. It’s a way right from the start to let viewers know that this series is far more scaled down than Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. Rather than the massive canvas both of those shows occupy, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms keeps a tight focus on Dunk and Egg, the characters who star in the George R.R. Martin stories it’s adapted from.
“All decisions came down to Dunk, trying to channel the type of person he is into every aspect of this show, even the title sequence,” Parker said. “The title sequences on the original [Game of Thrones] and House of Dragon are big and epic and incredible. Ramin Djawadi’s score is orchestral and large and beautiful. That’s not really Dunk’s MO. He’s plain and he’s simple and he’s to-the-point. He doesn’t have a lot of flash to him.”
Parker also said that unlike those other Westeros-set shows, which revolve around all the drama associated with fighting over who will get to claim the Iron Throne, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms—which is set 50 years after House of the Dragon, making it a later prequel to Game of Thrones—will keep its perspective pointed away from the upper classes. “To find a totally different version of this world that everybody seems to know so well was very, very appealing,” he said.
There aren’t any dragons left by the time A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms rolls around. (Obviously, it takes place some time prior to the emergence of a certain Mother of Dragons.) “The fact that we live in this world, though, where magic once existed is very interesting to me,” Parker said. “This is the ground and the grass that has seen dragons and dragon fire before. So everything is just like how the world is, but a little stranger, a little different.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is having a New York Comic Con panel later this week, so presumably we’ll be learning a lot more—like its exact arrival date in 2026, for starters.
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