“The Long Night” script sheds light on Arya killing the Night King

Arguably the best moment of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones is where Arya Stark, the little Faceless assassin who could, slides past a group of White Walkers in the Winterfell godswood, leaps at the Night King just as he’s about to kill her brother Bran, and stabs him with a Valyrian steel dagger, ending his hopes of eradicating all human life. Good job, Arya!

Now, none of that means that people haven’t nit-picked the scene, as for example asking how Arya managed to leap high enough into the air that the Night King caught her by the throat on her descent. If you ask me, that detail doesn’t really matter — she’s hardly the first character in TV to make a superhero leap, and it wouldn’t have played out any differently had she had just scurried up and tried to stab him in the small of the back, so what’s the difference? — but far be it for me to stand in the way of pedantry on the internet. Lord knows I indulge in it as much as the next fan.

ANYWAY, we got some insight into this during The Last Watch, HBO’s two-hour documentary about the filming of the final season. During the group table read, writer Bryan Cogman reads aloud the stage directions. When he gets to the part where Arya kills the Night King, he says that she “vaults off a pile of dead wights.”

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Now, the scene is too dark to see if this is actually true, but if it helps settle this matter, I’m all for it.

Speaking of the table read, how fun is it looking at the actors at the very first one…

…compared to the last?

You can read more about The Last Watch here!

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