I went into "The Morrow" expecting a victory lap. Six episodes of dust, hedge knights, puppet shows, and Aerion Brightflame's slow-burn cruelty had built to the Trial of Seven, and the trial itself paid off in episode five with everything I wanted: Dunk standing, Aerion broken, the accusation withdrawn. Surely the finale would be sunshine and a horse ride.
It is not. "The Morrow" runs a brisk 31 minutes - the shortest episode of the season, tied with "The Squire" - and it spends almost none of that time celebrating. It spends it grieving.
Because the cost of clearing Ser Duncan the Tall's name was Prince Baelor Targaryen, Hand of the King, heir to the Iron Throne, and the single most decent man in Westeros. He fought on Dunk's side. He took a blow from his own brother during the chaos of the melee. And by the time the dust settled at Ashford Meadow, he was dead.
Everything in the finale flows from that. The bittersweet mourning. The cold stares as Dunk walks back through the village. Valarr Targaryen asking out loud the question half the realm is thinking - *why did the prince die for a hedge knight?* And then, against the weight of all of it, Egg choosing Dunk anyway, slipping away from his father's procession in commoner's clothes for the second time in six episodes.
This is an explainer for the choices "The Morrow" makes - who Baelor was, why his death is a hinge point George R. R. Martin himself has called one of the most important in Westerosi history, what Egg being revealed as the future King Aegon V Targaryen actually changes, and what that hilarious, slightly devastating Maekar stinger is telling us about Season 2.
The Trial of Seven, Recapped
Before "The Morrow" can land its emotional punch, you have to remember who was actually on that field at the end of episode five. The finale assumes you do. Here is the lineup.
- Ser Duncan the Tall, the accused
- Prince Baelor Targaryen, Hand of the King and Aerion's own uncle
- Ser Lyonel Baratheon, the Laughing Storm, recruited by Egg himself
- Ser Raymun Fossoway, knighted by Lyonel on the morning of the trial
- Ser Humfrey Hardyng
- Ser Humfrey Beesbury
- Ser Robyn Rhysling
- Prince Aerion Targaryen, Brightflame, the accuser
- Prince Maekar Targaryen, his father
- Prince Daeron Targaryen, his elder brother, who promised Dunk he would fall off his horse and largely did
- Ser Donnel of Duskendale
- Ser Roland Crakehall, Kingsguard
- Ser Willem Wylde, Kingsguard
- Ser Steffon Fossoway, Raymun's cousin and the man whose betrayal forced Raymun's knighting
By the time Aerion withdrew his accusation and Dunk was declared innocent, the meadow had taken a toll on both sides. Ser Humfrey Beesbury died on the field, cut down by Donnel of Duskendale. Ser Humfrey Hardyng would die of his wounds. And in the heart of the melee, when Maekar swung at the giant he assumed was Dunk, his mace came down instead on the helm of his own brother.
That is the blow "The Morrow" opens in the shadow of. The trial was won. The trial was also a disaster.
Prince Baelor's Death
The reason Baelor's death hits so hard is that the show has been quietly building him into the future for five episodes. He is the calm one. The fair one. The Targaryen who doesn't burn things. When he steps onto Dunk's side of the field, the message is unmistakable: the best of House Targaryen has chosen the hedge knight over the prince accusing him, and the realm is watching.
He dies by accident, and that is the point. Maekar, swinging in the press of bodies, mistakes his brother for the seven-foot Dunk and strikes him on the helm. Baelor finishes the trial standing. He lingers. He dies after, off the field, of a wound nobody can see from the outside - exactly the kind of quiet, undramatic death the show has been training us to take seriously.
The finale lets the weight of it land slowly:
- Valarr Targaryen, Baelor's son, meets Dunk and tells him plainly his father would have been a great king - and then asks why Baelor died while Dunk lived.
- Maekar spends the episode hollowed out, oscillating between rage at Aerion (whose stupidity caused all of this), grief for the brother he killed with his own hand, and a half-formed sense that something about Dunk needs to stay close to his family.
- The smallfolk of Ashford, who cheered Dunk at the Trial, now look at him like a man who killed their prince by proxy.
George R. R. Martin has called Baelor's death one of the great hinge points of Westerosi history, and the show earns that framing. With Baelor gone:
- Maekar's branch of the family moves closer to the throne. The gentle, lawful Targaryen strain that Baelor represented dies on a tournament field in the Reach.
- The succession that will eventually put Aegon V - Egg - on the Iron Throne is set in motion. Without Baelor's death, Egg never becomes king. Full stop.
- The realm loses the Targaryen most likely to have prevented the Blackfyre wars that follow.
"The Morrow" never says any of this out loud. It doesn't have to. It just lets Maekar stare at his brother's body and lets Dunk stand outside the tent and not be invited in.
Egg Is Aegon V Targaryen
The "Egg is a Targaryen" reveal landed earlier in the season, but "The Morrow" is where the show finally puts a name on him: Aegon, fourth son of Prince Maekar Targaryen, and - though no one in the finale knows it yet - the future King Aegon V, the Unlikely.
The Unlikely is the operative word. As of "The Morrow," Egg is fourth in line in his own immediate family. Ahead of him:
- Daeron the Drunken, his eldest brother, who spent the Trial of Seven praying his horse would throw him.
- Aerion Brightflame, the brother whose cruelty started this whole disaster and who finishes the finale exiled to Lys.
- Aemon, his elder brother, who is being measured for a maester's chain.
Egg should never be king. The whole point of his name is that he becomes one anyway, and the finale spells out exactly how Dunk gets him there.
Maekar, gutted and looking for any handle on his last unspoiled son, offers Dunk a sinecure at Summerhall: come live with us, train Egg in comfort, teach him what Aerion and Daeron clearly never learned. Dunk hears the offer, takes a breath, and counters with the version that actually matters: *Egg stays as my squire, but he travels with me as a hedge knight. He eats what I eat. He sleeps where I sleep. He sees the realm the way the smallfolk see it.*
When Maekar refuses, Dunk delivers the cleanest line of the night - that the royal upbringing Maekar is so proud of produced a drunk and a monster, and maybe the prince should consider a different curriculum for the son he has left.
Maekar still says no. The whole arc of Aegon V - the king who tried to give the smallfolk laws and rights, the king who died at Summerhall chasing dragons - is a man shaped by the years he is about to spend on the road with Dunk. The finale's thesis is that Dunk is the reason Aegon V becomes the king he becomes, and that the shaping starts the second Egg walks back into frame in commoner's clothes.
The Maekar Stinger
And then the finale pulls its single best joke.
After the Ashford procession forms up, after Dunk has resigned himself to riding off alone, Egg appears at the edge of the road in a rough tunic with his bald head bare, announces that his father has changed his mind and sent him to serve, and falls in beside Dunk. They ride. The title card comes up. The episode appears to be over.
Then we cut back to the road. Maekar is at the head of his column, scanning faces, counting children. He counts again. He turns to the nearest household knight. The card on screen reads "A Knight of the Nine Kingdoms" for a beat - a cheeky riff on the show's own title - and Maekar bellows the line that closes Season 1:
> *"Where the f- is he?"*
It plays for a laugh, and it gets one. But the joke is doing real work:
- Egg lied. Maekar never gave permission. The boy who will one day try to remake the realm with new laws starts his arc by running away from his father for the second time in six episodes.
- Dunk doesn't know. As far as Ser Duncan the Tall understands, he is squired to a prince with the king's blessing. He is, in fact, harboring a runaway royal whose father is about to find out.
- Season 2 has its engine. Whatever the next round of stories looks like - and the show has been pretty open about Sworn Sword being on deck - it starts with Maekar's men on the road behind them.
It is also, structurally, the inverse of the cold open of episode one, where Dunk buried his own master. The finale closes with him gaining a new one - except this time the boy is the prince and the knight is the teacher, and neither of them is supposed to be doing this.
What's Next: Sworn Sword and Season 2
HBO renewed the show ahead of the finale, with Season 2 targeted for 2027, and "The Morrow" pretty clearly points at the second Dunk and Egg novella, *The Sworn Sword*. A few specific threads to watch:
Dunk and Egg as fugitives, briefly. Maekar's "where the f- is he" lands as comedy, but a prince of the realm traveling unannounced as a hedge knight's squire is a political problem. Expect Season 2 to open with messengers on horseback and Dunk realizing what he's been handed.
Valarr Targaryen's grudge. Baelor's son ends the finale openly resenting Dunk. He is the kind of loose end this show - and Martin - tends to pull on later.
Aerion in Lys. Brightflame's exile is not the last we'll see of him. He has a son being born back in King's Landing (Maegor, who dies in the cradle) and a long path back toward dragons and fire that the books eventually pay off. The show is laying track.
Maekar's path to the throne. With Baelor dead, Maekar is now second in line behind his nephew Aerys (the future Aerys I, the bookish one). The succession is quietly tightening around the family Dunk just walked away from.
Summerhall, eventually. This is the long game. Every Targaryen who matters in this story is being aimed, very slowly, at the same doomed castle. Aegon V will build it. Aegon V will die there. The finale puts the boy who will do both on a horse next to a hedge knight, and lets them ride south.
"The Morrow" is short. It is sad. It is, frankly, one of the most efficient finales HBO has aired in years - a half hour that buries a prince, names a future king, fires a brother into exile, and lands a joke clean enough to carry the credits. I came in expecting a victory lap. I left thinking about Maekar counting heads on a road in the Reach, realizing his last good son had chosen a giant over a crown.