Dan: Any situation where people are fighting, Arya needs to play a central role because she's one of the best at it, and she's one of the most fun to watch doing it
David: Even for Arya, she can't take on a whole horde of wights by herself especially when her head gets smacked, she's no longer at 100%. It's just about survival at that point.
Dan: Otherwise she's completely unstoppable, and she never loses her cool. It's amazing, and it's a lot of fun to watch, but it's also, it's one note. So we almost decided rewinding the clock on who Arya Stark really is to back before she came a sort of magical figure she's become would really be interesting. It would also give us a chance to change up the nature of the story we were telling.
David: For, God, I think it's probably 3 years now or something, we've known that it was going to be Arya who delivers that fatal blow.
Dan: She seemed like the best candidate provided we weren't thinking about her in that moment. One of the great things about having this many people you care about in a sequence together is you can kind of pull people's attention and focus to people they care about a lot like Jon and like Dany, Theon and Bran, not to mention Tyrion and Sansa in the crypts. So you're going all over the place with people who you're desperately worried for and hopefully you forget about the fact that Arya Stark ran out of the castle with the battle drums playing and going towards some purpose, and we don't know what until it happens.
David: We hope to kind of avoid the expected, and Jon Snow has always been the one to be the hero, the one who's been the savior, but it just didn't seem right to us for this moment. We knew it had to be Valyrian Steel to the exact spot where the Child of the Forest put the dragonglass blade to create the Night King, and he is un-created by the Valyerian Steel. At the end of it it's still, it's a victory for the living but at great cost because some of our favorite characters fall along the way.