HBORemember the heady days of a few years ago, when Ned Stark was still alive and the direwolves were just young pups?
Ah, good times. Things were simpler then – Cersei and Jaime Lannister’s incestuous relationship was (more or less) still secret, Bran was just a little kid yet to enter his dark emo phase, and Arya Stark just had the one face.
So, as we gear up for the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, Arya Stark – aka Maisie Williams – has suggested that we revisit the first season ahead of the finale.
Of course, there’ll probably be some hardcore fans out there revisiting every season, timing it perfectly so they finish all 67-ish hours of GoT just in time for season eight.
According to Williams though, if you’re going to watch any season before the final one, you really should revisit the first.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Maisie said:
I feel very satisfied with the ending of the entire show. Every story arc came to a really good close.
After I read Season Eight, I watched Season One — there’s a lot of similarities.
Well, we’ve already had the Lannister’s relationship briefly mirrored in Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen’s fling, so there’s one parallel at least.
Though, of course, the real parallels will all emerge once the eighth season starts next month, and we can all obsess over the little seeds planted in season one that have now blossomed into major plot points. Maybe.
Elsewhere in the interview, Maisie spoke about her character’s development, saying Arya ‘reconnects with her humanity’ in the upcoming episodes – which will be a relief after the intense Arya/many faces/no faces that we’ve seen in the past few seasons.
She also spoke about the newfound emotional side of Arya, which has been lacking up to now:
It was really amazing, perfect timing because Arya’s just starting to feel again for the first time. So it was actually kinda beautiful the way it was working.
Because usually I’m trying to play Arya with no emotion, whilst feeling everything. And this time I was feeling nothing while I was trying to feel something, and it worked . . . I think.
Though she didn’t give any clues to the actual ending of the show, in the same interview showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss did mention endings to other shows that they particularly admire – which may hold clues as to how they’re going to end GoT.
They said:
Breaking Bad stuck the landing. We always talk about the Sopranos ending — as controversial as it may have been at the time, it’s hard to imagine a better ending for that show, or any show.
So perhaps we’ll see Jon Snow face a White Walker before a quick cut to black? Fingers crossed.
Season 8 of Game of Thrones will air in the US on HBO on April 14, and Sky Atlantic early morning April 15 in the UK.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.