Around 60 percent of Game of Thrones fans weren't pleased with the ending—including some of the show’s stars. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly’s James Hibberd, Maisie Williams, who played Arya Stark on Thrones, laid out her vision for her character. And like some fans, she’d have liked Arya to dig out her bag of faces and end Cersei.
"I wanted Arya to kill Cersei even if it means [Arya] dies too," Williams told EW. "Even up to the point when Cersei’s with Jaime I thought [while reading the script], ‘He’s going to whip off his face [and reveal its Arya]’ and they’re both going to die. I thought that’s what Arya’s drive has been."
Instead of that, we got Cersei being taken out by some conveniently placed bricks, and Arya setting off to Columbus whatever lies west of Westeros. But the best part about the actual way things turned out for Arya is that instead of meeting a murderous end in crumbling Red Keep, the fan-favorite character gave up her yen for vengeance and was rewarded by staying alive. Like so much of the Season Eight character development, Arya’s transformation from kill list-toting assassin to seafaring adventurer felt a little rushed, though.
Williams is not alone as a cast member who might have had a different vision for the ending. Tywin Lannister actor Charles Dance may have finished his run in the show during its fourth season, but he’s kept up with the goings on in Westeros and was not too pleased with how things shook out in the end. "I was confused," Dance said of the show’s finale in an interview on Good Morning Britain. "There’s little Arya—she’s going off on a cruise somewhere," he summarized, "poor Jon’s gone back up North beyond the wall and then there’s Tyrion, all the people left alive are sat around the table. ‘What are we going to do now? Shall we have a cup of tea or something?’"
This story originally appeared on Esquire.com.
* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
