Peter Claffey makes enjoying Dunk’s easy, ethical energy seem so easy that it nearly does the true high quality of his efficiency a disservice. Making the concept of goodness — a great character, a great man — really feel compelling onscreen is one thing our popular culture has lengthy struggled with, and that goes double in a fictional universe the place dragons, betrayals, and conflict crimes are commonplace. It might probably usually appear a lot extra fascinating to depict a personality like Aerion Targaryen, who embraces his worst self with out disgrace, or to code morally minded characters as weak or lesser ultimately. (Significantly in such an aggressively cynical and self-serving world.)
However Claffey quietly turns Dunk’s goodness right into a superpower. Positive, he’s not the neatest and even the strongest man in Westeros. However, as we’ve seen repeatedly this season, these issues don’t essentially make you a great particular person. They’re not imagined to. Goodness, in any case, isn’t a factor you might be. It’s a factor you do. It, like love, like perception, like religion, is an energetic verb, a factor that requires you to decide on it repeatedly. There’s effort concerned. That Dunk’s decisions all through this episode are simply that, decisions he makes and reaffirms, paths he intentionally decides to stroll down. He doesn’t need to serve in Summerhall, however he additionally rejects Lyonel’s supply of bro-ing out in Storm’s Finish. He ends the season by nailing a penny to a tree as his mentor as soon as did and carving his personal path, one alongside a younger boy who’s determined to do the very same factor.
It’s not an accident that this episode can also be the primary through which we’ve spent any important time with Maekar Targaryen. Positive, a part of that’s as a result of Baelor’s youthful brother didn’t have a lot of a goal in Dunk’s story till the trial. However the different cause is that this second marks a turning for him too—a alternative, of kinds. Who will he be in a world with out Baelor? How will he be modified by what he (nevertheless inadvertently) did? He’s transport Aerion off to the Free Cities within the hopes he’ll discover ways to turn out to be a greater particular person. (Narrator voice: He won’t.) He’s prepared to convey Dunk on to coach Aegon, regardless of not likely wanting to take action. There’s progress right here, albeit of a tough and rough-edged form, however possibly that’s the one approach a person like Maekar ever learns. (He’s not Baelor, by any stretch, however Maekar is just not a nasty man.) In George R.R. Martin’s unique novella, Maekar agrees to let Egg go together with Dunk. Right here, within the present, he sneaks out, leaving his father to find his absence solely as soon as it’s already too late. I form of favor the unique, if solely as a result of it permits Maekar to purposefully put Aegon’s wants first in a approach that it doesn’t appear he usually has beforehand.
The season ends because it in all probability all the time needed to, with Dunk and Egg on the street collectively, wanting towards journey unknown. (Dunk even will get Sweetfoot again! Earlier than giving her as much as Raymun.) A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms might, in idea, finish right here, on this second of humor and hope, with the world unfold in entrance of them and every part nonetheless doable and just one useless prince as an alternative of the handfuls we’re frequently served on Home of the Dragon or Recreation of Thrones itself. A hedge knight and a Targaryen inheritor, offbeat weirdos in their very own methods, off to Dorne or another of the seven (9) kingdoms, is among the most hopeful photos this franchise has ever given us, and there’s a lot risk in that.
I ponder what the morrow will convey.
