HBO’s successful series Game of Thrones director revealed that the pivotal fight scene between Arya Stark and Night King originally panned out differently but he and his team weren’t bothered by the finer details.
Fans who anxiously awaited the Battle of Winterfell criticised the big scene for its improbable logic because many of them believed Arya came out of nowhere to protect her brother Bran Stark.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, director Miguel Sapochnik shared why he took certain directorial decisions and how his team struggled to pull off the fight scene for the final episode The Long Knight.
“I questioned everything and we worked long and hard to find the right balance of credibility versus wish fulfillment,” he said of the scene, which showed Arya leaping through the air to attack Night King.
“Then we shot it and reshot it and found that what was really important was rhythm,” he continued. “At one point there was an elaborate plan to have her fight her way into the Weirwood forest, but as we progressed we realized she’d already done that earlier in the episode, so it felt like a repeat.”
But he said, in the end, the team wasn’t bothered about how Arya got there “In the end, we felt it didn’t matter how she got there—what mattered was setting up that moment when the Night King catches her mid-leap and we think she’s done for, then she pulls her knife switch and takes him out.”
Arya Stark, played by Maisie Williams, defeated Night King and killed the biggest villain by stabbing him.
The HBO acclaimed show has a large fan base and spanned over eight seasons. Nearly 2 million fans signed a petition to have HBO redo the final season entirely for various reasons.
