Warning: spoilers are ahead for Episode 2 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms in the 2026 TV schedule, called “Hard Salt Beef” and available streaming now with an HBO Max subscription.
The world of Westeros has delivered all manner of nude scenes going back to the very first episode of Game of Thrones, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms opened its second episode by showing a whole new side of Ser Arlan. To be specific, his fully frontal side. Showrunner Ira Parker, who previously explained the appeal of “fart jokes” for this series, opened up about why Ser Arlan was the center of a nude scene so early in the episode.
Unlike the nudity of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ sequence was clearly played for laughs in showing vs. telling. Dunk’s flashbacks to his past with Ser Arlan continue to be less than glamorous, while he speaks glowingly of his mentor in the present.
In this particular flashback, Arlan stumbled out of a brothel without a stitch of clothing, no sign of any self-consciousness, and no creative filming tricks to avoid showing everything he has to offer. Speaking with EW, Ira Parker explained the origin of the fully nude scene, and the explanation is pretty fitting for the unfortunate Ser Arlan. He shared:
I felt bad for Ser Arlan at some point. He was the only person who's ever looked out for Dunk and really stuck with Dunk. And he died on a muddy road in the middle of nowhere, was buried without ceremony, and now Dunk is going around trying to find somebody who just even remembers him — people that he served for, people that he bled for, these knights and these lords. They can't even remember his name. I felt the need to give him his one special thing, to channel a little Boogie Nights, I suppose.
I can’t say that I thought of one of the best movies of the 1990s or even its great opening scene to set the tone when I watched this episode of AKOTSK, but this show is much more fitting to a Boogie Nights homage than Game of Thrones and/or House of the Dragon have ever been. It’s also easy to feel bad for Ser Arlan from the perspective of what he was for Dunk for so many years, other than the clouts to the ear.
This didn’t feel like a troll quite like the gag of the Game of Thrones opening theme, and I can’t help but wonder what George R.R. Martin thinks of it based on his involvement in the series. The showrunner couldn’t confirm whether or not “a prosthetic” was used for actor Danny Webb in Ser Arlan’s showcase, but he did go on to say this about the scene overall:
I can't say it zips past you at 100 miles per hour because, you know, it's out there, but it's not the story that we're telling. It is just a flourish of the story that we're telling. It changes nothing else. In order to survive to be an Old Man Hedge Knight, you had to be made of solid fucking iron. Those were tough days for anyone, let alone a fighting warrior who lives under trees in the 14th century. So, you know, he's a small guy and he's slim. I figured he's got something that helps him get through those really intense battles. He's got a certain energy about him, if you will.
Alas for Ser Arlan, that “certain energy” wasn’t enough to sustain him into the main story of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and we'll presumably only see him via flashback. Then again, the man seemed to have been determined to hold off on knighting Dunk until the very end of his life, so perhaps the main story couldn’t have taken off at all without his demise. I can’t help but think that Ser Arlan wouldn’t be as fun to watch opposite the – to quote actor Daniel Ings – ”chaos” of Lyonel Baratheon, at the very least.
Suffice it to say that Ira Parker’s series hasn’t just been using the freedom of HBO for gratuitous sex scenes galore, which wasn’t always the case for Game of Thrones or its first spinoff. Find out if that approach continues with new episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET, or stream via a subscription to HBO Max.
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