WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Game of Thrones.
While former cast member Jason Momoa apparently wasn’t too happy about the Game of Thrones series finale, most of the show’s performers, past and present, seemed to be quite content about how it all turned out. That includes Maisie Williams, who was more than happy to troll her followers about “The Iron Throne.” Considering what the fame the show brought her has done, of course, these teases were well-deserved. Even so, the actress who played Arya Stark admitted that she initially had one big regret about the final season.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Williams revealed that, when she first learned of her character’s arc throughout the eighth season, she was bummed out for one particular reason:
“I just wanted to be on set with Lena [Headey] again, she’s good fun,” Williams explained. “And I wanted Arya to kill Cersei [Lannister] even if it means [Arya] dies too. Even up to the point when Cersei’s with Jaime I thought [while reading the script], ‘He’s going to whip off his face [and reveal its Arya]’ and they’re both going to die. I thought that’s what Arya’s drive has been.”
Heady, it turns out, shared in Williams’ disappointment:
“I lived that fantasy until I read the script,” Headey said. “There were chunky scenes and it was nothing that I had dreamt about. It was a bit of come down and you have to accept that it wasn’t to be. There is something poetic about the way it all happens in the end with her and Jaime.”
Despite the fact that Arya and Cersei never faced off with each other in “The Iron Throne,” Williams argued that “it’s not a Game of Thrones ending for Arya, it’s a happy ending… It gave me a place to take Arya that I never thought I’d go with her again.” The actress also credited The Hound’s (Rory McCann) cautionary lines to her (“You want to be like me? You want to live your life like me?”) with helping her come to terms with the more positive, redemptive arc the writers had planned for Arya.
“It was a shock for me because that wasn’t how I envisioned her arc going this year,” said Williams. “Then I realized there were other things I could play, bringing Arya back to being a 16-year-old again.”
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
