Maisie Williams’ Role in “Worst Marvel Movie Ever Made” Makes a Strong Case for Her Casting in Marvel’s X-Men Reboot
- Maisie Williams is most widely known for her long run as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones.
- The Marvel movie she starred in did not do too well, but she certainly has the right chops to play a superhero.
- She is not opposed to reprising her character as Arya if the timing is right and she is ready.
Most people would recognize Maisie Williams as Arya Stark from the fantasy TV series, Game of Thrones, which aired for 8 seasons from 2011 to 2019. The show is known to have one of the largest ensemble casts on TV, and becoming a part of that at the mere age of 12 is no easy feat, especially for someone with no prior professional acting experience.
In addition to two Emmy award nominations, Williams’ performance earned her a legion of fans and the recognition she needed to land on the radar of big studios and executives. Since then, she has starred in a variety of projects including a failed Marvel movie by the 20th Century Fox. Now that Disney owns the characters that once belonged to Fox, maybe Williams could get the chance to star in the X-Men reboot.
Maisie Williams’ role in a forgotten Marvel movie proves that she deserves a chance to star in the X-Men reboot
Maisie Williams embodied the fierce and rebellious young daughter of the House of Stark in Game of Thrones. It was not an easy role to play, especially because Arya Stark was a tomboyish character, and the actress portrayed her throughout her formative years, which must have influenced her exploration of girlhood. Regardless, it is one of the most memorable characters from the show.
While working on the HBO series, Williams also starred in other projects like the sci-fi TV series Doctor Who, the BAFTA-nominated docudrama TV film Cyberbully, and the romantic comedy-drama, Then Came You. In 2020, she starred as Rahne Sinclair aka Wolfsbane in the superhero horror movie, The New Mutants.
The movie turned out to be a box-office bomb with only $49.1 million worldwide gross against a budget that might have been in the $67-80 million range (via Deadline, Forbes). Williams, however, insisted to GQ that she had nothing but nice and “extremely fulfilling” memories of that project. She even said:
We were all these young starlets who’d had a taste of that world. I can’t remember what publication it was, but someone said it was the worst Marvel movie ever made. I still feel kinda proud of that!
The movie was shot in Boston in the summer of 2017 and also stars Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga) and Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things) among others. It has poor ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, but Williams believes the movie’s success might have been affected because it was released during the pandemic. Even so, the Mary Shelley star deserves to put on the superhero suit one more time for Marvel’s X-Men reboot film.
Would Maisie Williams like to return to the screen as Arya Stark?
Playing the same role for a long time can make actors resent their character and even deter them from reprising it. Williams too resented Arya, but at the same time, she resented herself for not matching her character’s requirements. She told GQ:
I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming. And then I also resented my body, because it wasn’t aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated.
Does that mean she hates Game of Thrones now? No. She had the best time working on the series, and she would do it again when the time was right.
I’m not saying it would never happen, but I’m also not saying it in this interview so that everyone goes… ‘The spin-off! It’s coming!’ Because it’s not. It has to be the right time and the right people. It has to be right in the context of all the other spin-offs and the universe of Game of Thrones. It has to be the right time for me.
It has been almost 5 years since the show went off air and over 2 years since Williams admitted that she would return to Westeros when she feels comfortable. Last year, George R. R. Martin took to his blog post and teased a new project with the actress. So, fans might finally get a new spin-off starring Arya in the lead role or something just as exciting.
