What To Know
- Peter Claffey reveals that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 2 will feature a sadder tone.
- The upcoming season, premiering in 2027, adapts the second book in George R.R. Martin’s Dunk and Egg trilogy and shifts focus away from royal intrigue to more personal struggles.
- Claffey shares what it was like to attend the Emmys with young costar Dexter Sol Ansell.
Prepare for a tonal shift in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 2. Peter Claffey told TV Insider that there’s “a lot more sadness” in the second season of the hit Game of Thrones spinoff, which wrapped filming in August. Season 2, premiering in the first half of 2027, presents “a totally different challenge for Dunk,” the actor said.
TV Insider caught up with Claffey on the red carpet of HBO’s Youth premiere on Thursday, September 17. Youth stars series creator Sharon Horgan, with whom Claffey worked on Bad Sisters an Apple TV before he booked the role that shot him into stardom, Ser Duncan the Tall.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 1 ended with Dunk and Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), a.k.a. Prince Aegon Targaryen, on the road as knight and squire following the life-changing Ashford tournament. Egg’s father, Prince Maekar Targaryen (Sam Spruell), is now heir to the Iron Throne after he accidentally killed his older brother, Baelor (Bertie Carvel), in the infamous Trial of Seven, but he has no idea that Egg snuck away with Dunk. And Dunk has no idea that Egg wasn’t given permission to join him on the road.
Steffan Hill/HBO
“There’s a lot more sadness to this story, I think, and it’s a totally different challenge for Dunk for sure,” Claffey told us. “The people that he’s dealing with are on a much less serious scale. You’re not dealing with your Royal Targaryens and people of King’s Landing, but he tries his hand at diplomacy and finds out how difficult that is to work with.”
One thing is still the same in Season 2, according to Claffey: Dunk “tries his hand and fails at talking to women, multiple times again this season.”
The new episodes are a “totally different task and challenge for him, but it was a lot of fun making it, that’s for sure,” said Claffey.
The Irish star was just at the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards, where A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. “It almost felt like Dunk’s story reflecting my own life of going in and seeing all these amazing people that I’ve looked up to for so long,” he said.
“It was a lot of fun and to get to do it with Dexter,” Claffey said. “I just wish I had his confidence to go up and talk to people.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 2 adapts book two of George R.R. Martin‘s Dunk and Egg novella trilogy, The Sworn Sword.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Season 2 Premiere, 2027, HBO
— Reporting by Meaghan Darwish