Looks like we'll never know what's west of Westeros.
Looks like we'll never know what's west of Westeros.
Fans came away from Sunday's Game of Thrones finale with all kinds of feelings, but one of the strongest shared opinions was the hope for an Arya Stark spinoff. In the acclaimed HBO fantasy's final episode, Arya (Maisie Williams) told her family that she wouldn't be returning North, instead choosing to venture off on a ship to find out what's "west of Westeros."
"Nobody knows," she wondered. "That's where all the maps stop. That's where I'm going."
The final shots of the younger Stark sister had fans on social media clamoring for a series that following the young warrior on her future journeys, but HBO programming president Casey Bloys shot down those hopes in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Tuesday.
"Nope, nope, nope," he said when asked about a potential spinoff or sequel series. "No. Part of it is, I do want this show — this Game of Thrones, Dan and David's show — to be its own thing. I don't want to take characters from this world that they did beautifully and put them off into another world with someone else creating it. I want to let it be the artistic piece they've got."
There are currently three Game of Thrones prequel projects in the works at HBO, but it seems all will be focusing on characters from other areas of author George R.R. Martin's enormous literary universe.
"That's one of reasons why I'm not trying to do the same show over," Bloys added. "George has massive, massive world; there are so many ways in. That's why we're trying to do things that feel distinct — and to not try and re-do the same show. That's probably one of the reasons why, right now, a sequel or picking up any of the other characters doesn't make sense for us."
Williams spoke to ET ahead of the final episodes, and opened up about saying goodbye to the series, which she began filming when she was just 12 years old.
"It was just really emotional," she told ET's Leanne Aguilera at Game of Thrones' final season press day last month. "You can start to get yourself so down on [everything], being like, 'This is the last time I'm gonna read scripts. This is the last time I'm going to be in this location.' I got to a point where I had to stop doing that, because then I was just going to have a nervous breakdown."
The 22-year-old actress had her share of heroic moments in the final seasons -- most notably, killing the Night King during the Battle of Winterfell -- and told ET that she found herself "putting off" her last scene of the series.
"I watched so many people wrap and cry. I had to like, stay out of that emotion because there was so much to do -- like, some really difficult scenes to do. And then I wrapped and I was emotional," she recalled. "I really did feel numb."
"That's when my numbness came, and then it wasn't until like a week later that I was like -- you know when you’re just doing something and then you drop a spoon? I was like , 'Ahhhhhhh!' like, overreacting entirely and I just felt like an insane person a little bit," she added.
See more on the Game of Thrones finale in the video below.
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