Not today, Jon Snow! Maisie Williams on taking Game of Thrones' biggest kill from Kit Harington

Many Game of Thrones fans were stunned when it was Maisie Williams' Arya Stark, not Kit Harington's Jon Snow, who ultimately slayed the Night King in the Season 8 episode “The Long Night.” In fact, the way Williams tells it, no one was more shocked about this twist than Harington himself, who had been told years prior that he’d be the one to defeat the leader of the White Walkers. Hey, to be fair, it was his archnemesis.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Williams revealed that Harington had expected to be the one to plunge the dagger into the Night King’s gut, right up until he read the actual script for the episode.

“He expected it to go that way, too, and he even said, ‘It was going to go that way. Someone told me in season three that I was going to kill The Night King,’” Williams relayed to the media outlet. “And then, he read the script, and it was Arya the whole time.”

The actress joked that although she had never teased Harington over “Arya’s big dagger moment” (as THR puts it), perhaps the time may be nigh to begin. 

“We do tease Kit, but it’s usually about other things, which I probably can’t say,” she said, laughing. “But I don’t tease him about the dagger moment at all, but maybe I should. That’s a new weapon that I can use.”

Ultimately, despite the Night King being Jon Snow’s enemy, Williams admitted that it was for the best.

“Yeah, I think it would’ve been too obvious,” she said. “I’m glad that it was Arya, honestly. I think I had the best storyline of the final season.”

Since Game of Thrones aired its final season in April of last year, Williams has stated that she’s ready to move on from playing Arya Stark and eager to take on the challenge of new roles. And move on she has. She can currently be seen in the long-delayed X-Men spinoff film The New Mutants, as well as in the home invasion horror film The Owners, which opens in theaters, On Demand, and Digital today, Sept. 4.