HBO Reveals The Next ‘Game Of Thrones’ Spinoff And It’s The Most Exciting One Yet

HBO dropped a number of big announcements Wednesday, including the bizarre decision to change the name of HBO Max to just Max despite the HBO brand being well-respected and confirmation that a Harry Potter series with J.K. Rowling producing is indeed being made.

But the best news is that another Game Of Thrones spinoff is moving forward. HBO has placed a series order for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, the much-anticipated new prequel series set in Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms.

The Hedge Knight takes place about 90 years prior to the events of Game Of Thrones, so pretty much directly in-between House Of The Dragon and the original show. The series will be based off of George R.R. Martin’s Dunk & Egg novellas about Ser Duncan the Tall and his bald little squire, Egg, who I always picture looking a lot like Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The novellas have already been adapted into some incredible graphic novels (see the image above) and are wonderful in both formats. I actually enjoy them more than Game Of Thrones in many ways, since they’re focused much more on knights and tourneys and jousting and all things chivalric. Dunk and Egg are both terrific characters, too, as is the story of civil war, betrayal and unrest they find themselves unwittingly thrust into.

Here’s the official synopsis:

A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros… a young, naive, but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.

George R.R. Martin is writing and executive-producing the show alongside Ira Parker, a producer on House Of The Dragon. That show’s showrunner, Ryan Condal, will also executive produce as will Vince Gerardis, an EP on both GoT and HotD.

This is the third series set in Martin’s Game Of Thrones universe that’s been given an actual greenlight, but there are many others in the offing, vying—like petty nobles eager for power—to be granted an order. These include a Jon Snow sequel series, a Sea Snake prequel series and, most recently, another Targaryen drama about Aegon’s conquest of the Seven Kingdoms. None of these are as exciting to me as the Dunk & Egg novellas coming to life.

In fact, when I first started this blog over a decade ago I called it ‘The Hedged Knight’ which was basically a blend of these stories with the concept of ‘hedging’ in finance, which was just me trying to be clever since I write about all this nerdy stuff at Forbes.

In any case, there’s no word on when this will actually release, but it’s something we can all look forward to while we wait for Season 2 of House Of The Dragon. I am a little concerned about that show, which has seen its 10-episode second season cut down to just 8 episodes. But maybe that’s just because they’re so filled to the brim with battle and dragons that ten would be too expensive. Shorter isn’t always worse.

I’ll be honest, a part of me wishes we just had more of these stories even more than I want Martin to finish A Song Of Ice And Fire. At least these are less cumbersome and, I suspect, easier to actually write.

Are you a fan of the Dunk & Egg stories? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.