Game of Thrones ‘ eighth season is NOT messing around. The long awaited Battle of Winterfell in Episode 3 left a lot of us shaking — and it wasn’t just fans that were surprised.
WARNING: Spoilers for Season 8, Episode 3 of Game of Thrones , “The Long Night” ahead!
Even Arya Stark herself had no idea what was in store for her at the end of the episode.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, actress Maisie Williams talked about her own shock at the episode’s finish.
Much like the White Walkers, ‘The Long Night’ took no prisoners.
As expected, Westeros lost a lot of good men out there on the battlefield against the wights. So much happened that there was barely time to mourn the ones we lost.
People were prepared to mourn anyway.
The Dothraki, The Unsullied, Theon, Beric, Lyanna, Jorah, Melisandre — beloved and not-so-beloved characters alike met their fates when the age-old fire vs. ice strategy didn’t quite work out the way they expected.
And, as many fans predicted, the crypts were not as safe as once thought.
Who could’ve imagined that tunnels full of dead people might not be the best place to keep safe from an enemy who raises armies of dead people?
Things didn’t look so, ahem, hot for Jon and Dany when they learned the Night King cannot be burned.
Why exactly that is has yet to be revealed, but it raises some big questions, especially for Dany, who’s title of The Unburnt will now have to be shared.
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Luckily for everyone, Arya was there to save the day.
Just when it looked like the Night King was going to win his face-off against Bran, Arya jumped on him like a spider monkey.
Things looked pretty dire there for a second.
It looked like the Night King was about to choke out the young assassin, but Arya had some slight-of-hand tricks up her sleeve and took out the Night King in one fell… stab.
The actress who plays Arya, Maisie Williams, had no idea that it would be HER to bring down the big baddie.
“I was like, ‘Are we fighting the wights? Does The Night King die? So who kills him? What happens?’ And no one would say anything. Why is no one saying it? This is crazy,” Maisie told Entertainment Weekly about the secrecy surrounding this episode’s script.
“It’s the right thing for the characters.” Kit continued.
Maisie came to understand why Arya was the one to land the killing blow after reading the script for her scene with Melisandre.
“I immediately thought that everybody would hate it; that Arya doesn’t deserve it.”
Maisie said she thought it would be Jon Snow who ended up taking down the Night King.
So did the man himself, Kit Harington, who told Entertainment Weekly, “I was surprised, I thought it was gonna be me!”
This has actually been a long time coming for Arya and for Maisie.
“I realized the whole scene with [the Red Woman] brings it back to everything I’ve been working for over these past 6 seasons — 4 if you think about it since [Arya] got to the House of Black and White,” Williams told EW.
“You try and you train but nothing can prepare you for how physically draining it is.”
“It’s night after night and again and again and it just doesn’t stop,” Maisie said about how hard it was to train for big fight scenes like last night’s episode.
It’s definitely worth it, though.
“One of those really tough days, you know it’s going to be part of something so iconic and it will look amazing,” Maisie said.
Iconic and amazing, indeed!
Even though it was a surprise, it was definitely a welcome one.
Kit Harington said when the cast’s table read got to the scene where Arya kills the Night King, “It got a huge [expletive] cheer.”
It got a huge cheer from tons of fans watching the show too.
Do you think Arya deserved her big moment? Did you catch all the foreshadowing for this episode? Were you as shocked as Maisie was?
