HBO MAX
‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ is delivering for ‘Game of Thrones’ fans, despite facing money issues in its first season.
On Sunday, the show featured one of the best fight scenes in ‘Game of Thrones’ history.
Episode 5 received a 9.9 rating on IMDB, and is now tied for the highest-rated episode in the ‘Game of Thrones’ universe.
‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Episode 5 is now tied as the highest-rated episode in the entire Game of Thrones universe, with a 9.9 on IMDb. pic.twitter.com/x9T6NeMFoR
— A Shot (@ashotmagazine) February 16, 2026
While ‘A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms’ is receiving praise for its visuals, showrunner Ira Parker revealed that his team had to get creative with their epic fight scene due to budget restraints on the show.
Via Polygon.
“It’s funny how not having any money just forces you to find really cool, creative ways of storytelling that maybe you wouldn’t have come to completely if you had just had the ability to spend, spend, spend,” he says.
That creativity also included masking some of the Trial of Seven with heavy fog, which looks dramatic on-screen but also limits how far the audience can see outside of the Ashford Meadow tourney field where the battle takes place. That element was also taken directly from The Hedge Knight.
“We don’t have a lot of money on this show,” Parker says. “We have about a quarter for every dollar for a Westeros minute of previous shows. So we had to be careful how we hid things, and how we made it feel like we weren’t hiding things. [Putting] you in Dunk’s POV, we let you focus on what we want you to be focusing on, rather than [on us] not having 10,000 [people in the] crowd, like you probably would have at a Coachella/Glastonbury type tournament situation here.”
GoT fans are now advocating for Parker and his team to get a bigger budger for season 2.
Take ALL of the money for house of the dragon and give it to these guys pls https://t.co/kbUnfERwG0
— 🖤Lisa Wollstonecraft🖤 (@LisaAnnCraft) February 16, 2026
And this is why we didn’t get to see what the rest were doing during the trial 😭
HBO take all of House of the Dragon budget and give it to Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It deserves it . How I wish that we could have seen the trial battle in its full glory and not just a 1v1 https://t.co/gsxvVqHi6z— alina (@wildflowerabyss) February 16, 2026