Spoilers ahead, so don't read if you haven't seen episode three of Game of Thrones's final season.
The only take you need on Arya Stark's big Battle of Winterfell moment is here, and it comes straight from Sophie Turner, who plays Arya's sister Sansa Stark. Turner and Maisie Williams (who plays Arya) are best friends in real life. Turner posted her own Instagram Story hyping Williams after Arya killed the Night King. "Arya really is that bitch," she started. "Yes, you are, bitch!" she proclaimed, snapping after each word.
That was passionate, but it doesn't even compare with the message she sent Williams herself. Williams posted on her own Instagram Story the voice note that Williams texted her about episode. It is pure pride: "You really motherf*cking are that bitch," Turner said. "You are that bitch. She did that. She did that. That’s right, hunty. That is right, hunty. Check out episode 3 because that bitch did that."
This is not the first time that Turner has hyped up Arya Stark on this season of Game of Thrones. Last week, when Arya had her first sex scene ever on the show with Gendry, Turner had some NSFW commentary on her Instagram Story.
"In honor of Easter, I guess Game of Thrones wanted the story line to have a little Easter bunny hop-hop-hoppin' into that pussayyyyy...and that's the tea," Turner quipped.
While Turner was the most excited about Arya being the Stark to kill the Night King, Williams admitted to Entertainment Weekly that she was hesitant at first about the twist.
“It was so unbelievably exciting,” Williams said of initially learning Arya would kill the Night King. “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.’ You gotta make it cool."
But after Williams shot her scene with Melisandre earlier in the episode, she truly believed in the showrunners' choice. “When we did the whole bit with Melisandre, I realized the whole scene with [the Red Woman] brings it back to everything I’ve been working for over these past 6 seasons —4 if you think about it since [Arya] got to the House of Black and White,” she explained. “It all comes down to this one very moment. It’s also unexpected and that’s what this show does. So then I was like, ‘F*ck you Jon [Snow], I get it.’”
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
