The Surprisingly Sweet Reason Ser Arlan’s Manhood Loomed So Large In ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’

Plotwise, only one thing of import really happened in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’s second episode: Dunk finally finds someone (a Targaryen, no less!) to advocate for him and his dubious knighthood, which allows him to officially participate in the tourney. The episode, titled “Hard Salt Beef,” clocked in at just over half an hour long and was as refreshing in its sharp focus as it was in its brevity. Where Game of Thrones employed an entire map as its title sequence to remind you of the vast scope of the narrative, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms only leaves the bounds of its muddy fair ground for equally grimy flashbacks. And it’s in those flashbacks where the actual most important part of the episode appeared. A great big honking part, in fact.

Yes, I’m talking about Ser Arlan of Pennytree’s full-frontal surprise.

Last week, viewers were taken aback by Dunk’s surprise dump, and this week’s episode opened immediately with Ser Arlan (Danny Webb) stepping out of a rural brothel completely unclothed, then hoisting his, uh, generous member to take a leak. Now, we’ve seen plenty of nudity in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, including full-frontal male nudity, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see it here. Still, the way A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms deploys its nudity in these crass toilet-humor scenarios is making a rather different statement. This isn’t about titillation; it’s a reminder that the show is about the lower classes who live, die, and defecate in a ditch unnoticed by the lords who rule the land.

Or at least, that’s what seeing Ser Arlan’s member should telegraph in the most basic sense, if his member was in any way basic. But it wasn’t. It was gargantuan! It was distracting in all its dimensions. It was so large and so unnecessary that it took me out of the episode entirely for a beat, as I contemplated how, exactly, it was ever put to film. Was it prosthetic? Surely it had to be. If not, then was Mr. Webb hired specifically for his endowment, or was it a lucky coincidence they discovered during filming and wrote into the scene? How does one go about researching the size of an actor’s package, anyway, and would I survive the inevitable search engine algorithmic blowback?

Luckily, Entertainment Weekly was all over the Case of The Knight’s Broadsword, if you will, and spoke with showrunner Ira Parker about it. Though Parker initially played coy about the veracity of the sword in question (“Was that a prosthetic? I forget. I thought he just showed up on set that way, but maybe it was prosthetic.”), he does go on to explain the reasoning behind Ser Arlan’s generous manhood. It was his “one special thing”:

“I felt bad for Ser Arlan at some point,” Parker comments of this episode 2 opener. “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.”

The flashback plays while Dunk visits a variety of lords at the tourney, attempting to remind them of the time they spent with Ser Arlan of Pennytree in the hopes that, by getting someone to acknowledge the man’s existence, they’ll also acknowledge Dunk’s claim to knighthood. It’s true that Ser Arlan looms large in Dunk’s head, for teaching him the duty and honor of being a knight, so perhaps that was embellished in the former squire’s mind as well. But it all turns a bit bittersweet as Dunk confronts the reality that these men, for whom Ser Arlan risked his life, don’t remember him at all. The hedge knight died poor and alone, buried by the side of the road with nobody but his big dumb lunk of a lackey there to do the digging. He’s more likely to be remembered by prostitutes than for his feats of strength or chivalry on the field.

The full-frontal moment was a flourish, nothing more. But as Dunk begins to question whether he can hope for any greater legacy as a hedge knight than his former master earned, at least the audience will certainly never be able to forget Ser Arlan’s Pennytree.