A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 1, Episode 5 Review – “In the Name of the Mother”

“In the Name of the Mother”, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘s brutal, poignant penultimate episode, is a distillation of the strongest tenants of Westerosian fiction – only instead of entire houses and alliances fighting over a balance of power with grand militaristic operations, it takes but a few men swinging swords and maces on a foggy, obscure jousting field to explore the dynamics of honor and power in a corrupt, violent world in hauntingly evocative fashion. And though we all knew Dunk’s potential path to victory was a challenging one, A Knight of the Seven Kingdom makes his consequential fight against Aerion Targaryen even more harrowing and devastating than expected, utilizing its unsettling moments of violence as reminders of the cost of nobility, and just how hard it is to persevere in a world that seems built to defeat you.

Surprisingly, “In the Name of the Mother” spends most of its time in a flashback, framed by a concussed Dunk hitting the ground while chaos and violence envelop the Ashford tournament field. In the flashback, we see a young Dunk surviving a day in a life in Flea Bottom, one that begins with him trying to pull the shoes off a horse (that was lying dead on top of a man it had recently crushed, himself in the throes of dying), and ends with him watching his best friend’s throat being slit in front of him. As we learn, Dunk’s life has been defined by bad luck; born to a mother who abandoned him, a first crush who bleeds out in front of him – all precursors to his present situation, fighting to the death while facing charges of treason for simply defending someone from the paranoid wrath of the most powerful house in the seven kingdoms.

Dunk’s tragic, extended memory utilizes one of the most popular tropes of modern prestige television – the flashback episode – as a proper bit of motivation for our hard-headed young hero, and as another perfect distillation of the show’s themes of power, nobility, and survival. It does so through the traditional tenants of Game of Thrones storytelling; finding profundity through brutality, as Dunk learns terrible lessons about the value of life, as he watches his friend get her throat slit over a stolen knife and a few pieces of silver – and nearly losing his own life, only surviving because a sad, shitfaced knight happened to be in Flea Bottom at the time, mourning the loss of his only family member (remember – his previous squire was his nephew) by cutting off the heads of a few scumbags in a back alley.

As the concussed Dunk remembers the man who raised and inspired him (and maybe even loved him), “In the Name of the Mother” snaps back to the present, shifting away from its depiction of Dunk’s survival tactics as a child, to his disheveled, desperate attempts to stay alive in the trial of seven. And as its always been, the road to glory is not a smooth, or peaceful one, for Dunk: he gets maced every time he turns around, and within a few minutes of hand-to-hand combat with Aerion, is stuck like a pig from any number of different holes poked in him by the petulant prince (including a jousting lance through his side, and a blade wound from Aerion sticking his sword inside Dunk’s helmet). “In the Name of the Mother” makes it pretty clear Dunk’s entire plan was doomed from the start; he clearly has no jousting skills, and the flashbacks have shown us the fighting style taught (and employed) by Arlan was one of pure brute force, a knight who found his way to victory through sheer will of power, rather than abundance of skill or application of experience.

But as Dunk’s learned during his short time in Ashford, rules and process mean nothing in the face of the Targaryens – or in the face of pure survival, as he literally kicks, punches, slaps, and slices his way through Aerion’s well-practiced combat skills. There’s really nobody as equipped to fight with everything he has; unlike Aerion, Dunk’s had to use everything he’s had to survive to this point, never knowing the comfort of the family Egg was born into, nor the casual power exercised by Aerion and Targaryens like him over the proletariat of Westeros. And that’s why Dunk ultimately wins; in the face of his own impending death, the broken, injured, bleeding Dunk pulls himself out of unconsciousness onto his feet to raise his blade again – meanwhile, the second Aerion feels he’s lost his advantage and may die at the hands of a commoner, is more than willing to concede – even though the cost of Dunk’s defeat would be death, he allows Aerion to live after he surrenders, a strong little reminder that Arlan’s absentminded, drunken lessons of honor have rooted themselves deep within Dunk, giving the old hedge knight the posthumous legacy he thought was lost upon the death of his nephew.

Of course, nobility and honor come with great cost in Westeros; and though Dunk survives his ordeal, the trial of seven ends up costing the Hand of the King his own life. Though some might view it as a mistake to not show the trial of seven in its full, sword-swinging glory, keeping a singular focus on Dunk throughout the episode not only allows it to maintain its sense of chaos and confusion throughout the climactic fight, but also lets the episode disguise its other big twist, the death of Baelor (which presumably comes at the hands of Maekar, who swings his mace like a demented god throughout the epiosde’s second half). Baelor’s death scene is a great one; he ponders the nature of the state (and how Westeros is desperate for more men like Dunk), reminds everyone of the proper way to remove chainmail embedded in a man’s skin – and then, removes his battle helmet one last time to reveal his caved-in skull, dying in the arms of a guilt-ridden Dunk as the episode cuts to black.

Talk about ending on a strong note; like the best episodes of Game of Thrones, “In the Name of the Mother” uses death as a driving force for both theme and narrative, a reminder that anything good in the world comes at a great cost – and, of course, that any ending to a Targaryen story comes with an unexpected (and often evocative) death, a proper end to one of the best episodes of television we’ll collectively enjoy in 2026.

Grade: A

Other thoughts/observations:

• If anyone needed further confirmation that Brienne of Tarth is a descendant of Dunk, seeing Dunk follow Arlan out of Flea Bottom on the exact same road Brienne and Podrick traveled down as they searched for Sansa Stark is about as big a wink you could get.
  
• Egg does feel a bit lost in this episode, but that’s more the nature of the story than the fault of hte storytelling.
  
• I do hope we see more of Lyonel in future seasons, as his friendship with Aegon becomes an important political piece of Westeros history (and has a role to play in Dunk’s story, as well).