‘Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Is Utilizing the ‘Sport of Thrones’ Theme Higher Than ‘Home of the Dragon’ Ever Did

Ramin Djawadi’s Game of Thrones theme is among the most iconic TV scores of the 2010s. There’s maybe a cause, then, that when Home of the Dragon started, Djawadi returned to Westeros and sort of threw his hands in the air, letting the prequel present merely reuse it for its personal opening titles. How does one enhance on a TV icon?

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms managed to take action, even when it meant taking a detour with an impromptu poop joke.

When the newest Sport of Thrones spinoff kicked off a number of weeks in the past, there was plenty of chatter concerning the present’s use of Djawadi’s iconic theme track, its build-up of strings accompanying what appeared like a burgeoning heroic second for our new protagonist, Ser Duncan the Tall—just for it to be comically minimize off as Dunk discovered his insides betraying him, changing Sport of Thrones as we knew it with a smash-cut to a graphic behind-a-tree bathroom break. It was shorthand to inform us that this wasn’t the Sport of Thrones we knew; some took umbrage that it might be seen as disrespecting the franchise and Djawadi’s work, virtually fairly actually shitting on it.

Since that second, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has given us a really totally different soundtrack compared. Composed by Dan Romer, it’s much less sweeping strings and orchestral epics and extra folksy, whimsical music with a western bent, all plucking guitars and quiet whistles that soften away on the planet as precise in-universe songs take over, from bawdy, boozy ballads sung within the Baratheon tents to younger Egg’s personal playfully innuendo-driven rhyme concerning the Blackfyre Rebellions. Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a smaller-scoped present, and so its rating matched that vibe.

Till the climax of final week’s good fourth episode, “Seven,” that’s. Issues have taken a reasonably dire flip for the more serious for poor Dunk in the previous couple of episodes, after his courageous resolution to come back to assistance from Tanselle the puppeteer—and to briefly beat the snot out of Aerion Targaryen within the course of—meant he discovered himself going through an ancient trial by combat to show his innocence. Knight of the Seven Kingdoms returns to butt jokes once more, as Dunk’s enchantment to the gathered crowds to seek out yet another noble warrior to affix his facet is interrupted by a dude standing as much as rip a large fart in response.

So it’s solely becoming that the present makes use of that chance to deliver again the Sport of Thrones theme too, when Dunk finds the ultimate slot on his group of seven for the trial stuffed by none apart from Baelor Targaryen, Aerion’s uncle and the present inheritor to the throne. The episode ends on a shocked Dunk and the onlookers at Baelor’s act of the Aristocracy, and, in fact, with these sweeping strings from Djawadi’s rating coming again into the image—fading into its closing titles with a model of the Sport of Thrones theme that blends into an orchestral rendition of Romer’s theme for Dunk, now not whistled and folksy, however that orchestral epic tone the present had largely averted up thus far.

And it’s nice, as a result of it’s completely earned. If a lot of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms up thus far has been concerning the smallfolk (not literal, in Dunk’s case), on this second it briefly turns into concerning the heightened fantasy of what knightly, courtly conduct needs to be to them: a noble prince using to battle on the facet of the downtrodden, even when it means siding in opposition to his circle of relatives, and a name to arms and higher judgment heeded by certainly one of Westeros’ most beloved figures of the time. It makes the usage of the Sport of Thrones theme for us, the precise viewers, turn out to be virtually diegetic, this theme that we affiliate with a grander narrative now woven into this smaller, private one.

It wouldn’t have labored half as nicely if the present hadn’t already performed with our expectations and touched on it jokingly within the first episode. However for a short second, Sport of Thrones turns into Dunk’s hype theme, or relatively, it elevates his personal leitmotif to its stage. That’s a way more potent use of that specific piece of music than its easy attachment to Home of the Dragon out of a way of expectation.

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