Maisie Williams on Arya’s blindness and a new clip from Game of Thrones Season 6
By Ani Bundel
Good morning! Another night has passed, and another round of interviews from the cast members of Game of Thrones on latenight TV has gone up in its wake. Maisie Williams stopped by Late Night with Seth Meyers and talked about how irritating it is that everyone keeps asking her about the dead-or-alive status of everyone’s favorite Schrödinger’s Crow, Jon Snow.
But first, let’s watch a brand new clip from Season 6, featuring an Arya struggling with her newfound blindness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JnAyka8p-8
We’ve been seeing images in the trailers of the Waif basically beating up on Arya, but this is the first time we’ve seen it in context, and in context it does feel more like a merciless training session than the Waif actually out to get Arya. (Though both could easily be true.)
In the interview that followed, Williams discusses the difficulty of functioning with those blind contacts in, and how irritated she was that everyone wanted to know about Jon Snow—but no one ever asked her about Arya.
Interesting that now that the show has gone “off book” completely, Williams feels that her story flows better on screen. I wonder if most of the actors feel that way? I wonder if we as an audience will notice? I feel like that’s a thing I will watch for on this season now.
Seth Meyers wasn’t Williams’ only interview yesterday. She also spoke to IGN about the upcoming season, and though she didn’t give away any spoilers, she did put to rest a rather far-fetched but popular fan theory: that Syrio Forel and Jaqen H’ghar are the same person. Syrio, as you all remember, was Arya’s Essos-born “dancing” instructor from Season 1 who taught her what to say to the god of death. (“Not today.”) This is not that far off from Essos-born Jaqen, who teaches her “There is only one God, and his name is Death.” Fans like to think Syrio was really a Faceless Man in disguise, and Arya’s training has been going on longer than she realizes.
Williams admits that she personally *loves* this idea. Sadly though, it’s just not true. When she put it to the showrunners, they were absolutely unequivocal. “No, he (Syrio) is dead.”
I was like, ‘Oh, OK,” she said with a big laugh. “So that put that to bed really quickly, but I guess we can all still dream.
As IGN points out, that’s only for the TV show. After all, as George R.R. Martin continues his novels and makes choices that Benioff and Weiss have locked themselves out of, anything could be true.
