We've watched Maisie Williams grow up on screen these past ten years through Game Of Thrones, but there was perhaps no bigger reminder of how much time has passed than the fact that the 22-year-old just had her first nude scene. On Sunday night's episode of the HBO show, Arya (Williams) and Gendry (Joe Dempsie) — who reunited in the show's season premiere — had the sex scene that I'll just say I personally had been hoping for for some time.
With the White Walkers approaching, no one knows who will survive the battle. With that in mind, Arya propositions Gendry, who happily obliges. Arya, an independent queen, takes off her clothes herself, leaving her briefly nude which, while normal for Game Of Thrones, was a first for the actress, who seems to have declined using a body double.
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“David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] were like: 'You can show as much or as little as you want,’” she told Entertainment Weekly. "So I kept myself pretty private. I don’t think it’s important for Arya to flash. This beat isn’t really about that. And everybody else has already done it on the show, so…"
Romance is somewhat out of character for Arya, whose storyline has mostly been about adventure and escaping death. As Williams pointed out, however, Arya is accepting death for the first time ahead of the White Walker battle, which means brand new feelings are coming to the surface.
"It’s interesting to see Arya be a bit more human, speak more normally about things people are scared of," she said.
She now joins BFF Sophie Turner in having done a nude sex scene on the show, but Turner had to portray the much more complicated dynamic of sexual assault.
"The more we talk about sexual assault the better, and screw the people who are saying we shouldn't be putting this on TV and screw the people who are saying they're going to boycott the show because of it," Turner told The Times back in 2017 regarding backlash to her upsetting sex scenes. "This sort of thing used to happen and it continues to happen now, and if we treat it as such a taboo and precious subject, then how are people going to have the strength to come out and feel comfortable saying that this has happened to them?"