‘Game Of Thrones’ Spoilers: Why Is Arya The Hero Instead Of Jon?

“Game of Thrones” brought a moment that fans have been waiting to see for years (spoilers ahead!), but some weren’t expecting the hero to be Ayra Stark. Many assumed Jon Snow would be the one to take down the Night King—and that’s exactly why he didn’t.

“We hope to kind of avoid the expected,” executive producer David Benioff explained in HBO’s “Inside the Episode” segment. “Jon Snow has always been the hero, the one to be the savior, but it didn’t seem right to us for this moment. We knew it had to be Valyrian steel, to the exact spot where the child of the forest put the dragonglass blade to create the Night King, and he is uncreated by the Valyrian steel.”

Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners, explained that they actually made the decision about who would kill the Night King several years ago. Still, they didn’t tell the actors playing Arya and Jon, Maisie Williams and Kit Harington.

“It was so unbelievably exciting,” Williams told Entertainment Weekly. “But I immediately thought that everybody would hate it; that Arya doesn’t deserve it. The hardest thing is in any series is when you build up a villain that’s so impossible to defeat and then you defeat them.”

Once she filmed Arya’s scenes with Melisandre, she realized that this turn makes quite a bit of sense. Harington had a similar reaction.

“I was surprised, I thought it was gonna be me!” Harington told EW. “But I like it. It gives Arya’s training a purpose to have an end goal. It’s much better how she does it the way she does it. I think it will frustrate some in the audience that Jon’s hunting the Night King and you’re expecting this epic fight and it never happens — that’s kind of Thrones. But it’s the right thing for the characters. There’s also something about it not being the person you expect. The young lady sticks it to the man.”

“Game of Thrones” Season 8 airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO.