George R.R. Martin’s Criticism of Shocking Game of Thrones Spinoff Scene Makes No Sense

George R.R. Martin has responded to the most surprising scene in Game of Thrones‘ new spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The show is very different from Thrones and HBO’s other Westeros series, House of the Dragon. This is much less epic, there are no dragons, and the fate of the entire realm isn’t at stake. It’s smaller, lighter, and lower budget, though no less interesting or entertaining for that.

The series sets out its stall very early on, with a scene involving Ser Duncan the Tall defecating right as the Game of Thrones theme song begins to swell. It’s a moment that highlights just how much more humor this has than its predecessors, quite literally s**tting all over them, and establishing early on this isn’t exactly the same as what we’re used to. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Martin gave his take on the scene, including his surprise at its inclusion and that he wasn’t entirely for it, but deferred to showrunner Ira Parker on the matter:

“Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise. Not to say that my characters don’t take s**ts, but I normally don’t write about them at any length. When I saw the rough cut, I wrote, ‘What is this? Where did this come from? I don’t know if we really need the s**t.’ But [showrunner Ira Parker] liked it for whatever reason.”

A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms’ Poop Scene Was Important (& GRRM Forgets The Books)

On the surface, Martin’s comments are understandable, as it is fair to question whether such a scene is really needed. But they make less sense when considering the author’s previous work as, despite what he says, characters s**tting has played its part in some very memorable moments from the A Song of Ice and Fire books. And not only that but, when it happens, Martin is usually pretty descriptive about it. Even leaving aside from Tywin Lannister being killed on the toilet, let’s take this scene with Strong Belwas from A Storm of Swords, for instance:

“The defenders on the walls began firing their crossbows at Belwas, but the bolts fell short or skittered harmlessly along the ground. The eunuch turned his back on the steel-tipped rain, lowered his trousers, squatted, and shat in the direction of the city. He wiped himself with Oznak’s striped cloak, and paused long enough to loot the hero’s corpse and put the dying horse out of his agony before trudging back to the olive grove.”

Belwas was cut from Game of Thrones, so viewers were actually denied that iconic moment on-screen, and the same is true of an even bigger one. An entire plot line in A Dance with Dragons revolves around dysentery – known as the pale mare – spreading in Meereen, and even Daenerys Targaryen isn’t immune. Her very last chapter of the book, which is to say, the last Daenerys chapter we’ve ever been able to read, includes this delightful passage:

“Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was s**tting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again.”

Again, we were spared that graphic sequence in the show, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was obviously not content with this tradition being wiped from the franchise’s on-screen history.

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There is some importance to it, because it’s used as an effective means of establishing this as a different kind of show, and a different kind of hero. This isn’t the Westeros we’re used to and, where House of the Dragon stuck with the Game of Thrones theme song for its own intro, the Dunk scene actually perfectly highlights that. This was Parker’s intention and why he kept it in, despite Martin’s reservations, saying to THR:

“So in the script it reads, ‘Duncan hears the hero theme in his head’ — which wasn’t necessarily going to be the Thrones theme at that moment. He was going to hear that call to greatness that we all hear that when we decide we’re going to do something really difficult that we’ve never done before. It’s a little scary and you feel like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna be the guy. I’m gonna do it!’ He picks up the sword. He’s thinking about it.

“But then the reality of doing this, how difficult it is, how scary it is — that turns his guts to water. Because he’s not a hero yet, you know? All we’re trying to say here is that Dunk is not a hero yet. He’s just a nervy kid with a nervous stomach — just like me. And as badly as you want to do something great, as soon as you actually have to go off and do it, it becomes trickier. And that’s what the whole season is for him.”

New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms release Sundays at 10pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.

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