This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3, “The Long Night.”

It turns out droves of fans were not the only ones shocked by Game of Thrones’ “The Long Night,” which ended with Arya Stark being the one to vanquish the Night King. Even Maisie Williams hadn’t seen that coming; she, like her co-star Kit Harington and many fans, had expected the honor to fall to Jon Snow. When both she and Harington showed up for a table read without having read the episode’s entire script, they were in for a huge surprise.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Williams told E.W. she noticed everyone at that first read-through was behaving . . . a bit strangely around her. Even director Miguel Sapochnik would not tell her what happened in the episode. When the group finally got to the big moment when Arya stabs the Night King, however, “it got a huge fucking cheer,” said Harington.

“It was so unbelievably exciting,” Williams agreed. “But I immediately thought that everybody would hate it; that Arya doesn’t deserve it. The hardest thing is in any series is when you build up a villain that’s so impossible to defeat and then you defeat them. It has to be intelligently done because otherwise people are like, ‘Well, [the villain] couldn’t have been that bad when some 100-pound girl comes in and stabs him.’”

Williams added that even her boyfriend, upon hearing it would be her character to kill the Night King, was skeptical. “He was like, ‘Mmm, should be Jon though really, shouldn’t it?’” Williams said. If the flood of memes that directly followed Arya’s staggering kill are any indication, the show picked the right character.

Sunday night saw several major deaths—perhaps not nearly as many as some fans expected, though one in particular was pretty brutal. If the episode left you wondering what on earth is about to come next on Thrones, V.F.’s Joanna Robinson has you covered here.

Although Harington, like Williams, also thought his character would be the one to kill the Night King, he actually liked the twist as well. “It gives Arya’s training a purpose to have an end goal,” Harington told E.W. “It’s much better how she does it the way she does it. . . . There’s also something about it not being the person you expect. The young lady sticks it to the man.”

Williams, too, quickly came around to the idea—especially after her reunion scene with Carice van Houten’s Melisandre. As some fans with good memories noted, the Red Woman seemed to hint at her destiny all the way back in Season 3, when she predicted that Arya would shut many eyes—“brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes”—forever. Their reunion scene, Williams told E.W., reminded her of everything Arya has gone through and worked toward, and made her realize that this moment of triumph was the culmination of that journey. “It all comes down to this one very moment,” Williams said. “It’s also unexpected and that’s what this show does. So then I was like, ‘Fuck you Jon, I get it!’”

And with that, the Night King fell—along with all of his icy and zombified henchmen. And Melisandre, having fulfilled her purpose, wandered off into the snow, withering and collapsing. Guess it’s all up to the non-magic folk now.

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