Last month, when HBO first announced that some of the cast and crew of Game of Thrones would attend San Diego Comic-Con after a divisive final season, the network promised a stacked roster of talent, including creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss—along with Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm), John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth), Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei), Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont), Conleth Hill (Varys), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark), and executive producer and frequent director Miguel Sapochnik. But after an ugly online movement to heckle the panel started gaining steam, Weiss, Benioff, Emmanuel, Glen, and Sapochnik all dropped out—most citing scheduling conflicts.

The remaining cast members who braved the crowd in San Diego’s Hall H on Friday were a somewhat defensive bunch. (Who can blame them?) The panel kicked off with an unprecedented call for civility from Comic-Con director of programming Eddie Ibrahim. Mostly answering softball “what if” questions from their moderator, the cast did manage to clear up one or two lingering mysteries from the controversial season eight.

Williams provided the most valuable moment of clarity when she debunked, without hesitation, the notion that Arya Stark had any help whatsoever in defeating the Night King in episode three. A flimsy (and frankly rather misogynistic) theory—based, I suppose, on the fandom’s expectation that Jon Snow might do something more useful in that battle beyond screaming at an undead dragon—proposed that Arya’s cousin had intentionally distracted Viserion in order to let Arya by. “NO,” Williams said. We can, of course, consider the Battle of Winterfell a team effort; after all, Melisandre did a hard night’s work. But the ultimate kill, here, goes to Arya and Arya alone.

Meanwhile, Conleth Hill confirmed what many fans had suspected: Lord Varys was trying to poison Daenerys there at the end. (That’s why, if you recall, he asked a little serving girl at Dragonstone if the queen was eating, and said that they would “try again” later.) Hill went on to call Daenerys “cray-cray,” which won’t earn him any points with remaining Targaryen loyalists. The actor also took a curious and somewhat Trumpian stance on the outcry surrounding the final season, claiming that the “hate” it drew was led by the media, and that the loyal fans at SDCC proved that was the case.

Entertainment Weekly’s James Hibberd, who was moderating the panel, echoed this sentiment when he claimed that an interview he conducted with Hill, which painted the actor as dissatisfied with his character’s end, was blown out of proportion by other outlets.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, on the other hand, had a more sanguine attitude about the fandom’s relationship with the show’s ending. While he spoke out months ago against a very silly fan-generated petition that lobbied HBO to remake season eight, he also said that it was fine to dislike the show’s ending—just as long as the complaints about the show didn’t turn into personal attacks on its creators. Case in point: When the actor said that he thought Jaime’s death in the arms of his sister-lover, Cersei, was “perfect,” someone in the crowd shouted out “liar!” Coster-Waldau’s eyebrows shot up in response. The end of a show you love, he pointed out to the Hall H crowd, will always piss you off.

To keep things as gentle as possible for the cast, the moderator mostly fed the actors “what if” questions during the hour-long panel. Would Arya and Gendry ever get together in the future? Williams said no; Arya is a “lone wolf” and would never be with a partner. What’s Grey Worm up to? Anderson said he’s building a Wakandan-esque society on Naath. (Watch out for the butterflies.) Would Brienne have taken Jaime back if he had survived and Cersei didn’t? Coster-Waldau said no, Jaime had too much baggage.