The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones will finally hit the airwaves in a few months, and six episodes will need to wrap up the stories of characters fans have come to know and love/hate/tolerate since the show’s premiere back in 2011. The cast members had to say goodbye to their iconic characters, and Lena Headey, who plays Cersei, shared her reaction to her final scene:
My last day on set was really weirdly tedious because I just had to shoot going up and down these stairs and that was it.
In the grand scheme of Cersei’s journey on Game of Thrones, it would have been fitting if Lena Headey’s final scene had been something like sitting regally on the Iron Throne or staring down her enemies or standing on top of the map of the Seven Kingdoms. Instead, according to Headey’s comments to Variety, her final scene out of eight seasons of Thrones action was going up and down some stairs.
Well, Cersei can’t be blowing up septs, betraying allies, and/or banging her brother in all her scenes! Based on Lena Headey’s statement that her final day was “weirdly tedious,” I think we can rule out a second Walk of Atonement as what had her going up and down those steps. Even though doing anything over and over again would get tedious after a time, I can’t imagine a Walk of Atonement 2.0 qualifying!
Unfortunately -- and unsurprisingly -- Lena Headey didn’t drop any details about what exactly Cersei is doing in the final scene she filmed, or in any of Cersei’s other scenes. Like the rest of the cast, Headey is keeping secrets of the final season, although Sophie Turner openly admits to spoiling the ending for some people. Very little footage from Season 8 has released, and the showrunners have said that they’re not big fans of trailers.
It’s worth noting that TV shows rarely film chronologically, so Lena Headey’s final scene of Game of Thrones probably isn’t Cersei’s final scene. Whether she lives, dies, becomes a wight, and/or finally gets her comeuppance, Cersei will likely get an ending that is anything but tedious. It might be weird, though. She is pregnant with her twin brother’s baby, after all.
Lena Headey isn’t the only Game of Thrones star to share feelings about their final days on set. Peter Dinklage described his last day as “anticlimactic,” although many members of the cast did come to be with him as he wrapped, and he attempted to do the same for them. Maisie Williams described a bit of what to expect in Arya’s last hurrah, and it was “perfect” for her.
Emilia Clarke had a downright unsettling reaction to Dany’s last scene, so the Mother of Dragons’ big goodbye should be an interesting experience. Kit Harington opened up about how many times the final season scripts made him cry, and it sounds like the final table reads of the series were emotional for everybody involved.
We’ll find out after the eighth season of Game of Thrones premieres Sunday, April 14 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. That’s still quite a length of time to wait, so swing by our midseason TV premiere schedule for some small screen option to fill the time before the return to Westeros.
