GRRM has previously informed us that the role of Gendry—the young, stubborn blacksmith with a heritage he’s unaware of—is among those being cast. Thanks to a tip from Screenterrier, we’ve gotten a bit more detail about the part due to the fact that an “urgent” casting call has gone out for the part, suggesting that the production has yet to find the perfect actor for the role. The desired age of actor is between 16 and 20, and they describe the character as broad-shouldered, muscular, and working class.
The most notable detail for us? They want him for two episodes this season. Some spoilers below the cut as we discuss what that means.
In A Game of Thrones, Gendry appears just once when Eddard Stark visits the armorer, Tobho Mott (another role that’s been cast for), to learn why Stannis Baratheon and Jon Arryn had visited his establishment. There, Eddard meets Gendry—an apprentice to Mott—and realizes that he is King Robert’s illegitimate son. After that, we no longer see Gendry. So, why an extra episode? Our immediate thought is that the cliffhanger ending for Arya in the book, which depends on the text making it difficult to realize that her apparent abductor is someone we’ve met before, is going to be downplayed and instead the last we’ll see of her will be more along the lines of her first chapter in A Clash of Kings: her departure from King’s Landing with a group consisting of a number of others, including Gendry.