Maisie Williams has opened up about her character’s role in this week’s Game of Thrones, revealing that even her boyfriend was caught off guard.
Warning! Spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3 lie ahead!
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The Night King led his White Walkers and his Army of the Dead to Winterfell on Sunday night for an epic showdown between the living and the dead. However, it seems this battle will be the last, as Arya Stark (Williams) plunged a Valyrian steel dagger into the Night King’s chest, taking him down and his entire army with him.
Fans were shocked that the main villain of the series was taken down in just the third episode of the season, and by the small assassin girl as well. In a post-episode interview, Williams told Entertainment Weekly that she was surprised as well. The actress even said that her own boyfriend, wondered aloud whether Arya should really be the one to take the Night King down.
“It was so unbelievably exciting,” the 22-year-old actress said. “”But I immediately thought that everybody would hate it; that Arya doesn’t deserve it. The hardest thing is in any series is when you build up a villain that’s so impossible to defeat and then you defeat them.”
“It has to be intelligently done,” she continued, “because otherwise people are like, ‘Well, [the villain] couldn’t have been that bad when some 100-pound girl comes in and stabs him.’ You gotta make it cool. And then I told my boyfriend and he was like, ‘Mmm, should be Jon [Snow] though really, shouldn’t it?’”
[my loudest โDUMP HIIIIIIIIMMMMโ ever] pic.twitter.com/B2vY9pjnsS
โ how i longed to see these things; (@alyssakeiko) April 29, 2019
Some fans agreed with Williams’ boyfriend’s take, while others were outraged on her behalf. Online, many argued that Arya has been away from Westeros for years, and didn’t even know about the Night King until recently. Still, as Williams pointed out, her contributions were foreshadowed a long time ago, before she became Faceless.
“When we did the whole bit with Melisandre, I realized the whole scene with [the Red Woman] brings it back to everything I’ve been working for over these past 6 seasons โ 4 if you think about it since [Arya] got to the House of Black and White,” she explained. “It all comes down to this one very moment. It’s also unexpected and that’s what this show does. So then I was like, ‘Fโ you Jon, I get it.’”
Harington himself told the outlet that he was surprised, saying: “I thought it was gonna be me!” Still, as thrilling as the episode was, many fans are not ready to believe that the Night King is down for the count just yet. With three episodes left, some expect to see the threat to the north rise again before it is all over.
Game of Thrones airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
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