We’re a little less than three weeks out from the premiere of the eighth and final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones on April 14, and the trickle of fresh details about the season is starting to become a small stream.
The latest addition to the growing collection of exciting new tidbits about the show’s final season is a fresh interview with Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), who foreshadows some ominous developments in her comments to Entertainment Weekly, in which she promised this about what we’re in store for: “There’s a lot of death this year.”
In the new interview, Williams goes on to talk about the arc of her character and about rekindling her bond with Sansa Stark across these final six episodes of the series. This season is also about tying up storylines and bringing things to a close, so naturally the actress noted how she was thinking back a lot to earlier seasons.
I wanted Arya to go full circle and try for some kind of normalcy like when she was younger. Basically this year it’s like she has a dual personality — there are so many emotions and memories that come flooding back when you’re with your family and the things that you fight for become very different, yet she’s also remaining on this path to try and kill Cersei and remembering her list and getting closer to that. So there’s this split with Arya between trying to be who she wants to be — getting back to the naïveté and innocence with her family — and unfinished business.
Williams goes on to acknowledge that for an entertainment franchise this massive to end, there’s really no way to bring it to a conclusion in a way that satisfies every viewer. But she thinks, all in all, they stuck the landing. “I think the way we end it is right. And I think it’s time.”
The interview has some other recollections and reminiscences from the actress, who during the final season will be shown participating in her first major battle sequence. That battle is one of the most anticipated elements of the season, breaking records as the most expansive action sequence filmed to date for a TV show or movie.
