Season 3 Opener & A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Greetings fellow acolytes. Welcome to another episode of The Westerosi Primer. My name is Liz. If you’re new to this podcast, welcome! I hope you enjoy this journey of all things Westeros. And in this episode, I’ll be talking about the new season of this podcast and how I met George and the cast of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

It’s been a few months since I did an episode of this podcast and it has been a good break for me. I’ve been able to do some other activities and I even traveled! I went to England in early September. It’s pretty neat checking out places that possibly inspired Westeros.

I hope that all of you will stick around to the end of the episode. I have a couple of important announcements to share with all of you about this podcast. If you’re new to this podcast, I recommend you check out the past two seasons since I’m going to be making references to content I had discussed in previous seasons. As you can see, the overarching topic for this season is about the upcoming TV spin-off and the novellas it’s based on. But I’ll discuss this further at the end of the episode so stay tuned.

With that said, here’s what you’re probably really here to listen to. Just for context I’ve been going to New York Comic Con every year since 2014. It’s the big local con for me. I’ve actually met a few actors from Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon at the convention. I’ve started posting some pictures on Instagram so if you’re interested in seeing some of the con pictures from the various years, head over to Instagram and search for The Westerosi Primer. Instagram.com/thewesterosiprimer.

 I’ve been coughing up money for the last 3 New York Comic Cons to get the VIP badge. It’s not cheap, but I do feel like I get some decent benefits out of it. And one of them includes getting the best seats in the big rooms where they have the biggest panels of the convention. It was pretty cool to get a seat in the third row so I was pretty close to the stage. In fact if you’re not on Instagram you can head over to the Instagram account where I posted some pictures from the con this year. Some are of course Westeros related, but there are others not related. On a side note, I have taken pictures and gotten autographs from quite a few people. In fact just last year, I took pictures with Matt Smith and Fabian Frankel. I got both of their autographs along with Tom Glynn-Carney. And yes pictures of that are on Instagram.

The panel was basically a bunch of interview questions about the process, what was it like filming, how did the actors get cast, etc.  Pretty standard questions over all. I’ll just talk about a few interesting bits from the panel, at least to me. The panel was pretty fun listening to George talk a bit about the writing process. He also talked about how he was pretty proud of his work with the novellas, which we’re talking about in the next three episodes. He was also pleased with how the adaptation for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has turned out.

Actually, based on the things said in the panel, it sounds like there’s potentially 3 seasons. He tried not to spoil, but I personally thought it was a bit of a spoiler when George mentioned episode 5 would include pretty big event from the first novella, The Hedge Knight. And this even happens towards the end of that novella. With there being only 6 episodes, it’s a pretty logical conclusion what we’re seeing in January is meant to be one of three seasons, with each season covering each novella.

Though if they are going to eventually do the other two novellas, they’re going to have to film them very soon. It was revealed in the panel that Dexter, who is playing Egg, was 9 when he was cast and he’s currently 11 years old. Puberty is just a handful of years away. With the type of schedules HBO has been doing with House of the Dragon, they’ll run the risk of Dexter being too old to stay playing book accurate Egg. I believe only 3 years elapsed between the first and third novellas. Egg was born in AC 200, so he would have been 12 when the third novella takes place. They’ll just have to hope Dexter’s voice doesn’t start changing too soon!

Peter Claffey is really tall. He said he’s 6 foot 6, which I guess is about 1.96 meters? So he’s really tall and makes sense he’d be considered for the role aside from his acting ability of course. You can’t really play a character called Duncan the Tall if you’re under 6 feet. That wouldn’t make any sense. The trailer I think shows he’s done a good job playing Dunk.

Peter and Dexter apparently spent a lot of time together on and off the set, which is a great idea. It helps them get used to each other, which really builds the on screen chemistry for the show. Like with a lot of actors on Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, this show could really blow these two up as they are the lead characters. I hope that especially for Dexter he gets to have fun with acting and he doesn’t end up like a lot of child actors who quit because of problems in the business. He’s a delight and I think he’s adorable.

Unfortunately I didn’t bother to getting up early enough to do the special VIP exclusive autograph signing they did along with George. Apparently the last person to get the limited number of wristbands for the totally free signing got to the convention center and lined up at 7AM. It would have been nice to chit chat with them. I did however get an autograph with George with his special author autograph session. Picture of that is on the ‘gram. But that just about covers the panel.

Before I close out of this episode, there are a couple of very important announcements related to the podcast that you guys need to know. If you had listened to the previous episode, I had explained that this season I’ll be focusing on the Dunk and Egg stories and the upcoming spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

My original assumption was that it would be airing this year. And then HBO made the decision to push it into early 2026. Rather than have you listeners go the rest of 2025 without any further content, I decided to copy Netflix’s playbook and split this season into 2 parts. The first 4 episodes, including this one will be released in October and November. And then I’ll go into another hiatus where the rest of this podcast season will be my reaction and commentary on the upcoming TV show. By this point you all probably have seen the official trailer and you’re well aware that the show will begin airing on January 18.

Second item of business is that I have plenty of things you can do while we all wait for the new TV show to air. I still have that poll I created about the Targaryen kings from last season! It’s not a poll that will ever expire. You can all participate and vote on who do you think was the best and the worst king in the dynasty. If you’re not familiar with all the kings in the dynasty, I spent time discussing them in Season 2. So feel free to listen to the past season if you haven’t already.

Despite the fact I know I have literally hundreds of people listening to this podcast, only 3 people voted. All 3 said Jaehaerys I was the best king. It was interesting to see that 2 said the worst was the Mad King and 1 person selected “other” and wrote in Viserys I. If you are listening and you have different opinions or the same ones, definitely join in. If I get any new votes in the poll, I’ll be sure to update you all in future episodes! There are no right or wrong answers. Let’s just see what you listeners think and have some fun.

Finally, I have also released a very important survey and I’d appreciate it if hundreds of you, if not everyone, listening to this podcast fill it out. Why? It’s a survey for what should be the next season theme! As I record this, House of the Dragon recently finished principal photography. Based on the schedule from the first two seasons, it’s probably anywhere from 6-9 months until it airs. So there is a possibility of the show airing mid-to-late 2026. But that’s not a guarantee. I’ve labeled the survey as the theme for Season 4/5 because we don’t know when the House of the Dragon will air.

You have 5 choices to choose from and the survey is live as you are listening to this episode. The links are available in the show notes and also on the website. Your choices are as follows: A re-watch and commentary of Game of Thrones Season 1. Let’s revisit the show that started the worldwide obsession! Option 2 is me discussing and explaining the various fan theories that book readers have been talking about for ages that you tv watchers don’t know anything about. If this one wins the vote, I’ll probably make the season relatively short. It would probably be 10 episodes or less because there’s just so many theories I can talk about.

Option 3 is me doing a Westeros 201. If you listened to Season 1 of this podcast, I did some basic explanations about the regions in this fictional universe and discussed some of the notable houses. However due to time constraints I didn’t cover everything there is to know. So how about I go back and expand on more lore not previously discussed?

Option 4 is me doing character essays and discussions about characters from the 5 novels that George completed. If you select this choice, you’ll be prompted to answer another question where you can select which characters I should talk about. I organized them by house and then the “other” option allows you to write in the names of characters that aren’t members of the houses I list.

The final option is a write-in. If you want me to do a season about something not mentioned so far, you can throw in a suggestion. Every week when I do my weekly reactions to A Knight of the Seven kingdoms, I’ll be including an update of the survey results. This so those of you who didn’t do the survey can see what others have decided. If you disagree with the latest results, do the survey!

This survey will be active and running until February 22 when the finale episode airs. After that, the survey will be closed and I’ll announce the final results in the reaction episode on February 25. In the event there’s a tie vote, I will be the deciding vote and pick which one I’d prefer to do. This is why it’s critical that as many of you listeners as possible participate in the survey. If there’s something you really want me to talk about next, you need to make it known.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this podcast, head over to thewesterosiprimer.com. You can find links to different social media accounts I set up for this podcast. Feel free to join the newsletter. I don’t post things frequently so you don’t have to worry about me spamming your inbox. I’ll only e-mail about things related to the show and all things Westeros.

And that just about covers my experiences at this year’s New York Comic Con. Thank you for listening and tune in to the next episode where I’ll talk about the first of the three published novellas about Dunk and Egg titled The Hedge Knight. Valar Morgulis!