The most memorable scene from last night’s Game of Thrones season premiere was probably the first, where Arya Stark disguised herself as Walder Frey and murdered a room full of Walder’s male descendants. Like, dozens of them. Entertainment Weekly caught up with actor Maisie Williams to get her opinion on Arya’s dark new turn.
“It’s so f—ed up!” Williams said, kind of stating the obvious. “Even Arya is surprised she has so much power. In that last moment she’s staring out at all those men dying, she’s turned into a bit more of a monster than she’s ever realized. I don’t think she’s sad about that but she’s got it on her mind.”
Even for Arya, killing an entire extended family’s worth of children, grandchildren, and possibly even great-grandchildren did seem a bit excessive. After all, can she be sure that every single person in there participated in the Red Wedding? Surely someone was out visiting in-laws at the time. I like to think that the other Arya scene in “Dragonstone” — the one where she sat down to eat with a group of friendly Lannister soldiers — was supposed to make us wonder about the justice of her massacre, since it reinforced that just because someone is on the opposite side of a war doesn’t mean they’re evil.
We’ll have to wait and see if Arya starts thinking along those lines. For now, considers the scene the fulfillment of an idea she’s had for a long time. “When I heard first heard about the Faceless Men, I always thought it would be really cool if she switched faces with a leading character rather than an unknown person’s face,” she said. “I really hope [viewers] don’t guess it’s her straight away.”
If the viewers had even a dim recollection of what happened in “The Winds of Winter,” I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t catch on pretty quickly, but you never know.
Anyway, Williams’ one dream for her character came true. How about her second?
I’ve always had this fantasy in the back of my head — I don’t think it’s a good ending and fans might not like it — but that somebody would sit on the Iron Throne at the end and then they whip their face off and it’s Arya instead. I’ve always had that dream.
Well, we’ve still got 12 episodes to go (*sob*), so it could still happen.
The question now is if Arya continues down the path of the mass-murdering serial killer in “Stormborn,” which airs this Sunday. We’ll see soon enough.
