"The Morrow" opens in the kind of quiet that only follows a disaster. We are back at Ashford Meadow the morning after the Trial of Seven, and instead of cheering crowds or trumpets, we get two men under a great oak tree on the edge of the field - Dunk and Ser Lyonel Baratheon.
Lyonel is, against all reason, in a good mood. He survived the first trial of seven in a century. He fought beside a hedge knight, knighted a Fossoway with his own sword, and watched a Brightflame Targaryen withdraw his accusation in front of half the Reach. He's pouring ale and grinning.
Dunk is not. He nurses the cup, says almost nothing, and stares out across the empty lists. The camera lingers on the field where it all happened the day before. The pavilions are still up. Banners still hanging. Somewhere across the meadow, behind a curtain we don't see yet, Prince Baelor Targaryen's body is being prepared for the procession back to King's Landing.
The episode doesn't say his name yet. It doesn't have to. Lyonel's last toast - half a joke, half a eulogy - is to "the best of them," and Dunk drinks to it without looking up. That is the cold open. A hedge knight, a Storm Lord, a tree, and the silence where a prince used to be.
It is the quietest opening of any episode this season, and it tells you immediately what kind of finale you are about to watch. This is not a celebration. This is a wake.
The Trial Begins (In Flashback)
Before "The Morrow" pushes forward, it gives us a short, brutal flashback to the Trial itself - partly so the finale stands on its own as an episode, partly because the show wants us to see Baelor's death again with fresh eyes.
The two sevens line up across the field. For Dunk: Ser Duncan the Tall, Prince Baelor Targaryen in his rainbow-striped armor, the Laughing Storm Ser Lyonel Baratheon, the freshly-knighted Ser Raymun Fossoway, the two Humfreys - Beesbury and Hardyng - and Ser Robyn Rhysling. For Aerion: Prince Aerion Brightflame himself, his father Prince Maekar with his spiked mace, his brother Daeron looking like he'd rather be anywhere else, the Kingsguard knights Ser Roland Crakehall and Ser Willem Wylde, Ser Donnel of Duskendale, and the turncoat Ser Steffon Fossoway facing his own cousin across the line.
The flashback hits the beats fast:
- Daeron throws himself off his horse on the first pass, as promised, taking himself out of the fight without taking a swing.
- Donnel of Duskendale cuts down Ser Humfrey Beesbury in the early skirmish - the first of the day's dead.
- Raymun Fossoway and his cousin Steffon end up locked together in single combat, the Fossoway-on-Fossoway grudge match that has been building all season.
- Ser Humfrey Hardyng takes the wound that will kill him later, his horse coming down on his leg in the press.
And in the middle of it all, the camera finds Dunk and Aerion and stays there. The melee tightens. Bodies close in. And just as the flashback dissolves back to the present, we see what the show held back from us in episode five - Maekar swinging high with his spiked mace, missing the giant he meant to hit, and bringing the weapon down on a striped helm.
We don't see the helm come off. We don't need to.
Baelor Falls
Back in the present, the episode shifts to Baelor's tent, where the Hand of the King has been laid out for the realm to mourn. The show takes its time here. No score. No dialogue for almost a full minute. Just Maekar standing over his brother's body with the same mace still on his belt.
When Maekar finally speaks, it is to no one in particular: he struck the blow. He says it out loud. He says it twice. The Kingsguard standing at the tent flap pretends not to hear.
The scene that follows is the heart of the finale:
- Valarr Targaryen, Baelor's son and now the new Prince of Dragonstone in everything but title, comes to the tent. He looks at his father, then at Dunk, who has been summoned to pay respects.
- Valarr tells Dunk plainly: his father would have been a great king. He does not raise his voice. He asks, almost gently, why Baelor died and Dunk did not.
- Dunk has no answer. The show does not give him one.
Then Dunk walks back through the village, and the recap of the day's politics happens in glances. Smallfolk who cheered him hours ago now step out of his path. A woman pulls her child away. A merchant turns his back. The hedge knight whose name was cleared at Ashford has, in the eyes of the realm, killed a beloved prince to do it.
The episode names what happened to Aerion in the same breath. Brightflame is to be exiled across the Narrow Sea, sent to Lys until further notice - a punishment from Maekar that everyone, including Aerion, understands is also banishment from any path back to the throne. Aerion goes quietly. He looks, for the first time all season, afraid.
Ashford Aftermath: Two Offers and a Refusal
The middle stretch of "The Morrow" is the negotiation the whole season has been pointing at, and the show plays it small - two tents, three conversations, no music swelling.
Offer One: Lyonel Baratheon. The Laughing Storm finds Dunk by the horses and offers him a place at Storm's End. A roof. A title, eventually. A friend. Dunk thanks him and says no, mostly with his eyes. Lyonel doesn't push. He claps Dunk on the shoulder, makes a joke about hedge knights never knowing what's good for them, and rides out. We will see him again. Probably soon.
Offer Two: Prince Maekar. This is the one that matters. Maekar, hollow-eyed and still wearing yesterday's grief, summons Dunk to his tent and offers him Summerhall - a position as Egg's sworn shield and trainer, room and board, the boy growing up in a castle instead of a saddle. It is, by any normal measure, the offer of a lifetime for a hedge knight.
Dunk refuses, and counters. He tells Maekar, plainly, that Egg should keep squiring for him - but on the road, as a hedge knight's boy, not a prince. When Maekar bristles, Dunk delivers the line of the episode: the prince's other sons turned out the way they did because of how they were raised. *Daeron is a drunk. Aerion is a monster.* Maybe the boy Maekar has left should learn a different lesson.
Maekar's face does about six things at once. He says no. He says it twice. Dunk bows, walks out, and starts saddling Thunder to leave alone.
In the next tent over, Egg is listening. We don't see him at first. We just see the back of a bald head against the canvas, and we know.
Post-Credits: Egg Runs Off Again
The closing sequence is the cleanest piece of filmmaking the show has done.
Dunk rides out alone. Thunder ambles. The road stretches. The score, finally, comes in - a soft variation on the hedge-knight theme from the pilot. We are watching, very deliberately, the same shape as the opening of episode one: a tall man on a tired horse, leaving a meadow behind him.
And then a small figure steps into the road ahead.
Egg is in rough commoner's clothes again. Bald head bare. No retinue. A rolled blanket over one shoulder. He tells Dunk, with a perfectly straight face, that his father changed his mind and sent him to serve. Dunk looks at him for a long beat. The audience knows. Dunk, maybe, suspects. Neither of them says it out loud. Egg falls in beside Thunder and they ride.
The card comes up: A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS. The music swells. The credits roll.
Stay through the credits. Or rather - the show doesn't make you. The stinger lands almost immediately, after a quick title-card gag that reads "A Knight of the Nine Kingdoms" for a beat before cutting back to Ashford.
Maekar is at the head of his royal procession. He is counting. He counts his household knights. He counts his Kingsguard. He counts his sons. He counts his sons again. He turns in the saddle, looks down the line, and bellows the line that closes Season 1:
> *"Where the f- is he?"*
Hard cut to black. Final card.
So here is what "The Morrow" actually ends on: Egg lied. Maekar didn't send him. The future Aegon V Targaryen began his reign as the king who would try to give the smallfolk laws and rights by running away from his father, in a borrowed tunic, to chase a hedge knight down a road in the Reach.
Season 2 starts with Maekar's men on that road behind them. I cannot wait.