Maisie Williams has opened up about her biggest disappointment about her character Arya Stark’s part in the Game of Thrones finale.
The 22-year-old star, who made her acting debut on the HBO show back in 2011, revealed that she had hoped Arya would be the one to kill Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey).
“I just wanted to be on set with Lena again, she’s good fun. And I wanted Arya to kill Cersei even if it means [Arya] dies too,” the actress told Entertainment Weekly.
“Even up to the point when Cersei’s with Jaime I thought [while reading], ‘He’s going to whip off his face [and reveal it’s Arya] and they’re both going to die.’ I thought that’s what Arya’s drive has been.
“It was a shock for me because that wasn’t how I envisioned her arc going this year.”
She went on to reveal that she eventually embraced Arya’s storyline as it provided her with an unexpected “happy ending”.
“It gave me a place to take Arya that I never thought I’d go with her again,” she said.
Headey, who has also appeared in all eight seasons of the fantasy hit, said that she had also believed Arya would be the one to eventually finish off her character.
“I lived that fantasy until I read the script,” she said. “There were chunky scenes and it was nothing that I had dreamt about.
“It was a bit of a comedown 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.”
The finale episode saw Arya stay true to her adventuring spirit, deciding to journey “west of Westeros” in a ship bearing the Stark banner.
Though show star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau joined fans in raising the possibility of an Arya-centric spin-off, HBO programming president Casey Bloys dashed any hopes of a sequel.
“Part of it is, I do want this show - this Game of Thrones, Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff]’s show - to be its own thing,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“I don’t want to take characters from this world that they did beautifully and put them into another world with someone else creating it. I want to let it be the artistic piece they’ve got.”
He added that “a sequel or picking up any of the other characters doesn’t make sense” as HBO did not want to “redo” the same show.
Game of Thrones is available to stream via NOW TV and Sky Go
