Game of Thrones star admits the show ‘fell off’ at the end

The actor said the show’s ending is not as strong as its beginning

Maisie Williams as Arya Stark, Isaac Hempstead Wright as Bran Stark, and Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark in the Game of Thrones finale

One of the main cast members of Game of Thrones got candid about the quality of the show’s final seasons, three years after the hit HBO series concluded its run.

During an appearance on her brother James Williams’ Twitch stream earlier this week, Maisie Williams, who played Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, shared that she recently got the chance to revisit the show’s final seasons. And since it’s been over three years since the show ended, the actress said that she was finally able to watch the series from the perspective of a fan.

When asked what she thinks of the show’s final seasons, Williams admitted that the conclusion of the series is not as great as its beginning. “It definitely fell off at the end,” she said. “But it started really strong. “I was heartbroken when Ned (Sean Bean) died, yet I knew it was coming.”

Maisie Williams as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones
Maisie Williams as Arya Stark

Despite her honest remark about how Game of Thrones wrapped up, Williams made it clear that she’s proud to be part of the show. “For the longest time … I could never see it from the outside,” she said of the series that skyrocketed her to fame. “So I could never say that and actually understand it. [But] for the first time, it feels good to be proud of it. It was 10 years of my life.”

Criticisms about Game of Thrones’ final seasons

Aside from a modern-day coffee cup and plastic water bottles ruining a couple of key scenes in the last season of Game of Thrones, fans were also so disappointed by the seemingly abrupt transformation of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) into the “mad queen”. In fact, a fan even launched a petition to remake the final season of the show with competent writers.

“[Showrunners] David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on,” the author of the petition, who goes by the username Dylan D., wrote in the petition’s description. “This series deserves a final season that makes sense. Subvert my expectations and make it happen, HBO!”

Game of Thrones | Season 8 Episode 5 | Inside the Episode (HBO)

Though some fans have spent the better part of the last three years chastising Game of Thrones for its mediocre final seasons, their harsh criticisms about the franchise as a whole have waned off ever since the show’s prequel series House of the Dragon debuted to positive reviews last August.

Is Arya Stark appearing in the Jon Snow spinoff?

In addition to House of the Dragon, a sequel series focusing on Jon Snow (Kit Harington) is in development at HBO. While it’s too early to tell whether William’s Arya Stark will be part of the upcoming show, Williams previously said that she’s not entirely ruling out the opportunity to return to the franchise.

“I’m not saying it would never happen, but I’m also not saying it in this interview so that everyone goes…’The spinoff! It’s coming!’ Because it’s not,” Williams joked in an interview with Variety last April. “It has to be the right time and the right people … It has to be right in the context of all the other spinoffs and the universe of Game of Thrones. It has to be the right time for me.”

Will there be an Arya Stark spinoff?

The Game of Thrones finale ended with Arya sailing off to the west of Westeros. Since the original show didn’t get to explore that part of its world, several fans think that following the adventure of the Night King’s slayer in this uncharted territory would make a great spinoff. But despite its apparent potential to be the next big thing for HBO, the network previously revealed that it had plans for a sequel that would continue Arya’s story.

“George [R.R. Martin] has a massive, massive world; there are so many ways in,” HBO programming president Casey Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter back in 2019, referring to the author of A Song of Ice and Fire novel series, in which Game of Thrones is based on. “That’s why we’re trying to do things that feel distinct — and to not try and redo the same show. That’s probably one of the reasons why, right now, a sequel or picking up any of the other characters doesn’t make sense for us.”

Source: ComicBook.com