While doing the promo rounds for his upcoming album =, Ed Sheeran may have just casually dropped a major Game of Thrones revelation. On an episode of Dax Shephard and Monica Padman’s Armchair Expert podcast, Sheeran talked about how excited he was to cameo in the season 7 premiere, where he plays a Lannister soldier who comes across Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), and how all the mean people online sullied the experience for him when the episode finally came out. (Most fans did not take kindly to the scene, which for all intents and purposes, was a splashy celebrity cameo Thrones had never really indulged in.) The cameo was in part meant to be a surprise for Williams, who’s a big fan of Sheeran’s music. But in explaining why producers were so invested in giving Williams this special moment, Sheeran inadvertently revealed that season 7 was meant to be Arya’s last. Which, on this show, sure makes it sound like she was going to die.
“I don’t think they had written the ending yet,” Sheeran told the hosts. “It was meant to be her last season but it wasn’t. And as a surprise for her, [they got] me on. So, she was meant to turn up on set. and I was by the fire.”
Clearly story plans changed, but that Arya’s death was even a possibility that late in the game is, frankly, kind of wild. In season 8 she of course goes on to kill The Night King, arguably one of the most pivotal moments in the series, at least per the mythology they spent eight seasons building up. She then served as the POV character for the destruction Daenerys wrought in King’s Landing as she contemplated risking it all to kill Cersei, before ending the series setting out to explore unknown lands in the finale.
Arya’s story arc in season 7 featured her returning to the Stark family home Winterfell, only to get locked into a tense battle of wits with Sansa (Sophie Turner), with master manipulator Littlefinger playing off of the sisters’ historic dislike of each other to fuel matters. The implication was that Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) would make Sansa distrust and fear Arya—who had become a lethal killer since the two characters last saw each other— enough to have her killed, thus cutting off even more of her family and leaving Littlefinger alone to whisper in her ear. In the end, the sisters figured out the ruse, familial bonds trumped all and they turned the tables on Littlefinger, killing him.
But with Sheeran’s comments, one wonders now if showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss didn’t originally toy with the idea of Littlefinger successfully driving the sisters apart. Which calls into question what his and Sansa’s roles in the series endgame would have been going forward. And if Arya was potentially disposable, what is her role in George R.R. Martin’s ultimate endgame? Remember, by season 6 Benioff and Weiss had run out of source material railroad track and from then on were building their own arcs to get to the finish line. Beyond the finale, all of latter-series Thrones from season six onward is a big point of contention between both book readers and even fans of the show who could feel what was once a measured, deliberately-paced story starting to pick up speed at the expense of nuance. What these fans took comfort in is that if and when Martin ever finishes, his will likely be starkly different. But now the question becomes, which path for Arya, far away a fan favorite, hews closer to what Martin the grand creator intends? Apologies for re-opening the wound and revisiting one of television’s most bemusing endings on a day when we could all be discussing Succession instead.