Game of Thrones: Maisie Williams reveals original Night King plan

The final season of Game of Thrones gets a lot of flak, but it did provide one unambiguously great moment: When Arya jumped on screen, stabbed the Night King and shattered him into a thousand shards of extremely evil ice. But according to Maisie Williams, who played the young Stark, that moment was originally planned for Jon Snow. 

“He expected to [kill the Night King,]” Williams said of Jon Snow actor Kit Harrington in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “He even said, ‘It was going to go that way. Someone told me in seasons three that I was going to kill The Night King.’ And then he read the script, and it was Arya the whole time.”

“I’m glad it was Arya. I think I had the best storyline of the final season.” True that, Maisie. True. That. 

So either the show’s producers mislead Harrington in season three or, more likely, plans changed over the course of six years. It could be a harbinger of what’s to come in the remaining A Song of Fire and Ice books. Author George RR Martin has previously said that what happened in the show is not necessarily what will happen in the upcoming Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring books. 

“How will it all end?” Martin wrote on his site, Not A Blog, of the final books in the series. “The same ending as the show? Different? Well … yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes.” 

Williams was speaking to the Hollywood Reporter as part of a promotional tour for The New Mutants, a superhero horror flick in the X-Men universe. The film, which received a mixed response from critics, hit US cinemas on Aug. 28.