After just six short weeks, the latest installment in HBO’s Game of Thrones franchise came to an end. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is by far the shortest, funniest, and least political within the world of Westeros of the saga so far, and quickly became a big hit among viewers in the 2026 TV schedule. Fortunately, Season 2 was already in production by the time the Season 1 finale aired with some big decisions for Dunk (and a fun post-credits scene). On the flip side, however, Season 1 also only ended with two characters guaranteed to return: Dunk and Egg.
Despite thinking I’d pretty much had my fill of Targaryen brutality after two seasons of House of the Dragon (available streaming now with an HBO Max subscription), I found myself getting attached to Prince Aerion, a.k.a. Aerion Brightflame, played by Finn Bennett. Game of Thrones was at its best when there were really great villains to be struck down, and Aerion was a great villain for the smaller scale of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Like Jack Gleeson as Joffrey and Iwan Rheon as Ramsay Bolton before him, Finn Bennett was really good at being really insufferable in his performance.
Season 1 ended without determining whether Bennett will reprise his role for the second season, but I flashed back to what he told CinemaBlend and other outlets was “super fun” and “hugely important” about his time on the show. Plus, if we first look at some comments from people involved with the show and George R.R. Martin himself, we can connect some dots that suggest Aerion probably will be MIA come Season 2. First things first!
Will Aerion Be Back For Season 2?
Aerion took a pretty brutal beating during the Trial of the Seven, with Dunk using his sheer size and strength to withstand injuries long enough to force the prince to yield. Maekar stepped in to stop Egg from killing his brother in his sleep, and Aerion was alive and alert – albeit battered and bruised – when last seen leaving Ashford with the Targaryen contingent in the finale. There were no signs of what was in store for him once the family got back to King’s Landing… if their destination won’t be altered by Egg running off again, that is.
While nobody from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has definitively said that Aerion will be gone by the time Season 2 picks up, Finn Bennett’s comments to Man About Town indicate that the role of the fiery Targaryen prince is behind him. He said:
I won’t really miss Aerion. I’ll miss the wig. I’ll miss all of my friends on set.
That sounds to me like an actor reflecting on his time as a character with no active plans of reprising the role. The cast doesn’t seem to have been told to keep their roles (or lack thereof) in Season 2 a secret, given what Sam Spruell told THR. The actor, who played Prince Maekar Targaryen, revealed:
I’m not going to be in season two… Well, we’ll see. Never say never, but I’m pretty sure that there will be other stories to tell.
If any Targaryen other than Egg seemed primed to appear in Season 2 after that post-credits sequence, I would have bet on Maekar. If the prince who had every reason to want his son back won't actually appear on screen to retrieve Egg, I doubt that Aerion would have reason to appear. As more fuel to the idea that Aerion Brightflame won’t be back, showrunner Ira Parker said this to Variety regarding whether Season 1 characters will return for Season 2:
The one thing about this show, the nobles, the kings and queens are all terribly interesting. So many times you want to go and write for them, but the truth is that’s not what this show is. There are a lot of shows, within this world and other worlds, that definitely cover that part. And we’re not that. We are bottom-up. We are in Dunk’s POV. Even minor lords and ladies, we don’t allow ourselves to go behind the scenes in their POVs. For better or for worse, that is the storytelling lens that we have set up for this show. Whether or not somebody will come in and out of Dunk’s world again, I would say probably.
Ira Parker didn’t commit one way or the other to Aerion’s role in the series moving forward, but his comments strike me as going as far as possible to debunk the idea of his return without actually spoiling the plot so far ahead of time. Season 2 is expected to premiere in 2027, following House of the Dragon Season 3 later this year. (Based on the violence of the Season 3 trailer, the Trial of the Seven may pale in comparison.)
But AKOTSK is renowned for being faithful to the source material, with star Peter Claffey saying that George R.R. Martin seemed “super happy” during his set visit, which is more than can be said about GRRM and House of the Dragon. So, if Season 2 sticks with the books, let’s look at what Martin says about Aerion.
What George R.R. Martin Tells Us
Unlike Game of Thrones being based on a still unfinished series of novels and House of the Dragon taking liberties with Fire & Blood as a fictional Targaryen history book, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on a trio of novellas penned by Martin. The first is called The Hedge Knight and provided the story for Season 1. Toward the end of the story, Prince Maekar reveals this to Dunk:
I have sent Aerion to Lys. A few years in the Free Cities may change him for the better.
With Dunk and Egg heading towards Dorne at the end of Season 1, Aerion appearing in Season 2 seems extremely unlikely if Ira Parker continues to follow the events of the novellas. Dunk certainly seems unlikely to make any overtures, as his inner monologue reads:
He was pleased that Aerion was gone from the Seven Kingdoms, and hoped he never came back, but that was not a thing you told a father of his son.
I won’t go any further into spoiling what’s ahead for Aerion based on George R.R. Martin’s lore, but the evidence is piling up that we’ve seen the last of Maekar’s middle son for the foreseeable future. So, I’m glad to have heard straight from Finn Bennett himself what was particularly enjoyable to him during his time as the Targaryen prince.
What Was ‘Super Fun’ For Finn Bennett
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set several generations after the events of House of the Dragon, and there were no dragons for Finn Bennett to ride like what House of the Dragon’s Targaryen actors have experienced. That doesn’t mean these Targaryens have less of a flair for the dramatic than their forebears, however, and Finn Bennett said this when asked about playing into the theatricality of Aerion as a Targaryen:
It's really fun. I guess people ask, 'Is it fun to play a villain?' Because I think it can feel good to work anger out of yourself. It's also super fun to wear a fun wig, really, and put on cool armor.
I’m glad that the wig seems to be one of the things that really stuck with Finn Bennett, because I think that his was one of the most believable in all of HBO’s Game of Thrones franchise. If you’d told me that Bennett bleached his hair for the role and didn’t wear a hairpiece at all, I likely would have believed it.
Plus, for all that Aerion caused nothing but trouble for the heroes of the story, he does have some of the coolest armor of the world of Westeros. When I asked how Aerion’s relationship with his family informed his decisions in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Bennett opened up about what was especially important:
I think there's an overbearing pressure on Aerion that kind of makes him act the way he does, and I think a lot of his action is to do with trying to impress people, trying to impress his father. So he obviously goes about it in quite a funny way. I think family is hugely important to him, and he doesn't like feeling like his family's not feared and respected.
Well, if AKOTSK follows the events of the novellas, hopefully Aerion will be able to deal with any perceived slights against his family from across the Narrow Sea in Lys! I can’t help but wonder what Aerion would be like if he did have a dragon of his own. Would he be similar to Daemon, with strong control over his dragon to go with his brutal streak? Or more like Aemond, who doesn’t have the discipline to control Vhagar?
Given that Game of Thrones established more than a decade ago that Dany’s dragons were the first to hatch in many years, there’s presumably no need to worry about Aerion ever actually getting one of his, whether or not he ever shows his face again on the newest spinoff.
For now, fans of HBO’s world of Westeros are back to waiting for new content. House of the Dragon Season 3 is expected to arrive in June, with no premiere window yet confirmed for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 2 next year. You can relive every episode set in the Seven Kingdoms – or nine, according to Egg – streaming on HBO Max.
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