[This post contains spoilers for the final season of Game Of Thrones.]
Last month, Lena Headey and Maisie Williams found a bit of common ground in wishing the latter had slayed the former during Game Of Thrones’ final season. Now, the woman behind complex schemer and would-be sommelier Cersei Lannister is again reflecting on her character’s demise, this time to The Guardian.
Saying that she’s yet to sit down “drunkly” with creators and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss yet, she notes that she has “a few of my own gripes.” One of them? “I will say I wanted a better death.” It’s safe to say that many of the show’s fans would agree.
Cersei’s death, lest you forget, came as Daenerys Targaryen was laying waste to King’s Landing as the despicable queen watched on worryingly. While everyone expected some kind of one-on-one confrontation, be it between Dany and Cersei or Arya and Cersei, it was instead her brother and baby daddy Jaime with whom she shared her final moments. Poetic? Sorta? If you were still invested in their incestual, wildly unhealthy relationship? Anyways, they smooshed beneath mounds of rubble as the castle collapsed around them, leaving Arya fans twiddling their Needles.
“Obviously you dream of your death. You could go in any way on that show,” she said, no doubt recalling the gory, impactful demises of Catelyn Stark, Oberyn Martell, or any of the major characters she herself consumed in green wildfire. “So I was kind of gutted. But I just think they couldn’t have pleased everyone. No matter what they did, I think there was going to be some big comedown from the climb.”
Thankfully, she’s still in touch with her Game Of Thrones crew on “a giant WhatsApp group which is a daily pile-on,” one, we imagine, where everyone gets to dream up alternate fates for themselves. (There, we like to imagine, Isaac Hempstead-Wright gets to elaborate on his desire to have seen Bran’s head explode.)
“It’s hilarious,” she added. “You can tell who’s been drinking on that one.”
Sophie Turner, we’re looking at you.