Audiences have been comparing the final season of Game of Thrones with the first season of House of the Dragon. The debate about the quality and the ending of GOT is still raging on in forums and fan communities. Maisie Williams, who played the popular Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, recently commented on the final season of the George R.R. Martin show. In a Twitch stream with brother James Williams, the actor candidly revealed that she rewatched the series in which she starred. “You know, I rewatched it all recently,” Williams tells her brother James during the live stream. “It definitely fell off at the end,” Williams admits. The pair laughed at the comment from the actor. “But it started really strong. I was heartbroken when Ned died, and I knew it was coming. For the first time, I could really feel the story,” she adds. The series got a boost from the ending of season 1 when the Lord of Winterfell was executed in front of his daughter, Arya. The series took off after the first season ended as fans raved about the finale. “It kinda popped off,” Williams adds. The GOT actor also revealed that she could not watch the series while filming. “For the longest time… I could never see it from the outside. So I could never, like, say that and actually understand it, you know? Whereas, like, for the first time, it feels good to be proud of it. It was 10 years of my life.” It is not the first time Maise Williams commented about the show’s finale. She has previously expressed her disagreement with how showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss went with the series. In one of her previous interviews, Williams revealed she did not agree with how the show portrayed Arya’s character. “The first time that I was surprised by Arya I guess was probably in the final series where she whips off her clothes and sleeps with Gendry,” Williams tells Teen Vogue. The actor is however happy about how the series ended for Arya Stark. “I was so happy with my ending, and it was just a beautiful end to a decade of my life,” Williams explains to Jimmy Fallon in 2020. This is in contrast to how some of the other actors on the show perceived their endings. Lena Headey, who played Queen Cersei Lannister, wished that her character had a better death. She and Williams both agreed that Arya should have killed off Cersei. The ending of Game of Thrones may have been different had there been source material to base it on. The series overtook the novels that it was based on and the showrunners had to come up with an ending of their own. It was also widely reported that George R.R. Martin was not in charge of writing from the end of Season 5 as the series finished the source material. Martin acted more of a consultant rather that the creator of the show in the later seasons which significantly contributed to its conclusion. Both Benioff and Weiss also wanted to end the series with Season 8. Martin on the other hand thought the show could have gone on for several more seasons. Now that House of the Dragon reached the end of season one, fans will have more topics to debate on. Season 2 for the GOT prequel is expected to arrive in 2024. The show will start filming in early 2023.
