There Won't Be an Arya Stark Spinoff After 'Game of Thrones'

Photo credit: HBO
Photo credit: HBO

From ELLE

A man ruined the end of Game of Thrones (I'm referring to one in particular, but honestly, take your pick!) And now a man is ruining fans' dreams of an Arya Stark sequel to the hit series.

At the end of the season 8 and series finale, Arya Stark is shown aboard a ship, setting off to find what's west of Westeros. It was a surprising end for the character, played by Maisie Williams; fans had long theorized that she would close out the series by killing Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), who was one of the last people remaining on the Arya's kill list. Williams and Headey themselves thought Arya would have one last face-off with Cersei, but it wasn't to be.

This optimistic ending left viewers wondering what might happen to Arya after the fight for the Iron Throne was done. But HBO programming president Casey Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter that it was unlikely a sequel about the Stark assassin would be made. When asked about potential sequels to the fantasy-action hybrid that has held fans in its grip for eight years, he said:

Nope, nope, nope. No. Part of it is, I do want this show - this Game of Thrones, Dan and David's show - to be its own thing. I don't want to take characters from this world that they did beautifully and put them off into another world with someone else creating it. I want to let it be the artistic piece they've got. That's one of the reasons why I'm not trying to do the same show over. George has a massive, massive world; there are so many ways in. That's why we're trying to do things that feel distinct - and to not try and redo the same show. That's probably one of the reasons why, right now, a sequel or picking up any of the other characters doesn't make sense for us.

Several Game of Thrones spinoffs have been announced, and so far we know that one of them will be a prequel starring Naomi Watts. As for when it will screen on the network, Bloys said: "We're shooting the pilot in June, you can do the math and figure out when it would be on the air. What I'm not doing is working backwards by saying, 'This has to be on the air by this date.' We want to do the best show possible. This is a pilot, so we're doing it the old-fashioned way, which is shooting a pilot. My expectation is it will be great and we'll move forward and it'll move along on a regular TV timetable. I don't want to speculate any dates."

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