Game of Thrones’ Lena Headey Also Wanted to See This Abandoned Plot Point Show Up in the Final Season

Kimberly Roots

If you ever lamented that Game of Thrones‘ final season did nothing with Arya’s hard-won ability to make herself look like anyone she chose, be comforted by the fact that Westeros’ queen regent herself was right there with you.

In a new interview, Thrones alum Lena Headey says she would have liked to have seen Ned Stark’s youngest daughter use her Faceless Man mojo in Season 8 — especially if those tricks were employed during a scene with Headey’s Cersei.

More from TVLine

Headey and Maisie Williams, who played Arya, “would fantasize about a Cersei-and-Arya showdown; that she would come back as Jaime,” Headey tells The Hollywood Reporter. (For the uninitiated: Jaime Lannister was Cersei’s twin brother/longtime lover — yeah, we know — who rushed back to King’s Landing in the show’s final episodes and wound up dying alongside his sister when they were crushed as the Red Keep crumbled around them.)

Headey seems to be hinting at a never-to-be storyline in which Arya, who learned how to manipulate her appearance when she trained at the House of Black and White seasons before, donned Jaime’s face to gain access to the notoriously guarded and paranoid Cersei.

“That was our dream,” she adds. “But they made different choices.”

If Arya had pulled off her deadly party trick, it would have been the only time it showed up in the HBO fantasy saga’s swan song. The last time viewers saw the Faceless Man bit in action was in the Season 7 premiere, when Arya pretended to be Walder Frey (whom she also killed) in order to murder everyone involved in the Red Wedding, aka the massacre that ended the lives of her mother, Catelyn, and brother, Robb. (Relive the moment here.)

HBO Best Characters
HBO Best Characters

HBO’s 50 Best Characters Ever, Ranked

View List

Arya’s bag of faces made an appearance later in the season, when her sister, Sansa, found the collection. But among the fandom’s many complaints about Thrones final episodes was that Arya never employed her (very cool and probably pretty useful during wartime!) talents ever again.

Headey has previously spoken about wanting “a better death” for her character. “Obviously you dream of your death. You could go in any way on that show. So I was kind of gutted,” she said in 2019. “But I just think they couldn’t have pleased everyone. No matter what they did, I think there was going to be some big comedown from the climb.”

Would you have liked to see a Cersei-and-Arya-as-Jaime showdown? Hit the comments and let us know!

Best of TVLine

Get more from TVLine.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter

Click here to read the full article.

Advertisement