Maisie Williams on the End of Game of Thrones

Last month, HBO confirmed that Season 8 will be the end of Game of Thrones, and now Maisie Williams has chimed in on why it’s the right move by executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

Talking to Variety, the actress said: “It sucks for the audience because they love the episodes, but what we’ll never do on this show is drag it out, and I’m so thrilled about that. Too many shows start out about making a great show, and by Season 6 it’s about making money and all they want to do is write more episodes and make more money. This show makes a lot of money, and it would be easy for HBO to be like ‘we’re gonna do four more seasons and we’re gonna extend them to 12 episodes.’ I really respect David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] for holding their ground and for HBO to be like ‘no… we’re gonna tell this story and we’re gonna end it and that’ll be final.’

“Good things must come to an end or they’re not good anymore. It doesn’t last forever and we’ve done what we came to do, it’s time to wrap this up, and it will have the ending it was always supposed to have, and that’s very special. David and Dan started writing this show knowing the end, not knowing that it might actually come around and we might be allowed to make that many [seasons] — at the beginning we were just willing to make one [season]. They started this with an end in sight, and so it’s exciting to be closing it… I’m just excited to see everyone again – we start a lot later this year because winter has arrived, so that can’t happen in sunny Belfast.”

Season 7 will consist of seven episodes, while Season 8 will be six episodes, for a total of 13 episodes still to go.

Williams also commented on who she’d like to see her character, Arya, interact with in Season 7. “It would be wonderful to work with one of the Starks again, but I just want her to see Melisandre or Cersei and not be dead at the end of it,” she said. “To cross another big name off the list – but then I feel like people might come for me, because although everyone doesn’t like Cersei, we kind of love to hate her and I love to hate her. For the story it would be cool to meet either one of those and put a sword into them.”

Game of Thrones recently received 23 Primetime Emmy nominations, the most of any nominee for the third year in a row. This year’s nominations include Outstanding Drama Series, 2 for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington), 3 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, Maisie Williams), Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Max von Sydow), 2 for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series (Miguel Sapochnik, Jack Bender) and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (David Benioff and D.B. Weiss).

The series is currently preparing to film its seventh season, which will premiere next summer. The executive producers of Game of Thrones are David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Carolyn Strauss, Frank Doelger and Bernadette Caulfield; co-executive producers are Guymon Casady, Vince Gerardis, George R.R. Martin and Bryan Cogman; and producers are Chris Newman, Greg Spence and Lisa McAtackney.