Ellie Kendrick (Meera Reed) still doesn’t know if she’s returning for season 8

Another day, another rash of Game of Thrones cast member sightings in Belfast. Filming on the eighth and final season is underway, after all, and there’s no place these folks would rather be. Who’s in town?

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Kit Harington, naturally, is in the area. Apparently that’s Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane) talking to him, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth), and Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) not far away.

Missandei or House Missandei is here to party, too:

One person we haven’t seen in Belfast yet is Ellie Kendrick, who played the stout-hearted Meera Reed in seasons 3, 4, 6 and 7. When we last saw Meera, she was parting ways with Bran in “The Spoils of War,” despondent that the boy she spent so much energy protecting had changed to the point where he couldn’t even manage a “thank you” for all her help. Will she be returning for season 8?

The outlook doesn’t look great. Speaking to Metro, Kendrick revealed that she hasn’t yet gotten a call to appear in the show’s final six episodes. “I wait for the phone to ring and then I find out, but it hasn’t rung so I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll find out whether I am or not at some point, but for now I haven’t been notified so I’m yet to discover.”

Keep in mind that a critical mass of cast members, including relatively small-time players like Ben Crompton (Dolorous Edd), gathered a few weeks back to read through the entire season together. If Kendrick wasn’t present for that…again, the outlook doesn’t look great. But then again, Game of Thrones has been known to surprise us.

If Meera does sit the final season out, her story will have ended on a bittersweet note, which is sad but not unheard of on a show like this. “It was really sad on a personal level, because we had a little gang which dwindled further and further as the seasons went on,” Kendrick said, recalling Meera’s journey. “It was a sad day to say farewell to young Isaac – not so young now and also very tall, which means he was so difficult to put on the sled, which I actually did, although he’s a lot taller than me.”

"So while I was sad to say farewell, I was also slightly relieved for my spine because I no longer have to be dragging him across any wintered land. I genuinely did drag him. Not all the time, because in really wide shots there was a dummy version of him. But I did a lot of dragging. No dragon, just a lot of dragging. I got a very strong back by the end of it."

How’s that for a silver lining?

And if Kendrick doesn’t know if she’s coming back for season 8, it goes without saying that she doesn’t know how the series will end, but that didn’t stop Metro from asking. “Absolutely no idea what’s going to happen,” Kendrick said. “All I can hope for is Meera is going to come back on a dragon and be the new queen. That’d be pretty sweet for me. But somehow, not quite sure that’s how it’s going to turn out.”

Next: Video: The Game of Thrones crew tests a trebuchet on the set of season 8

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