Warning: major spoilers for season 8, episode 2 of ‘Game of Thrones’ — “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” — will follow.
During the second episode of the final season of Game of Thrones, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss gave fans one of the most highly-anticipated hook-ups in the history of the show: Arya and Gendry.
And while the moment was easily one of the highlights of the episode and the final season so far, fans naturally began asking the obvious question: just how old is Arya anyway? In fact, the search term “Arya Stark age” has seen a 510% increase in the last day.
Much to the relief of Game of Thrones fans, Arya is canonically 18-years-old during her intense pre-battle-with-death love scene with Gendry, as the show established back in Season One that Arya was 11-years-old, which makes her 18-years-old by the time Season Eight begins.
How Old Is Arya In Game of Thrones?: 18-Years-Old
When Game of Thrones began with Season One back in 2011, it is clarified at some point that Arya is 11-years-old.
Similar to the time elapsed in real life, 7 years have passed in the Game of Thrones universe since the first episode, which makes Arya 18-years-old.
As for Maisie Williams, the real-life actress who has played Arya Stark since the show first began, she turned 22-years-old the day after season 8 premiered, which would make her about 20 or 21-years-old when the scene was filmed.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about filming the scene, Williams said that everyone on the Game of Thrones set was “really respectful.”
Given how long the characters of Arya and Gendry have been into each other (they’ve more or less been flirting since the end of the first season), Twitter naturally melted down once the big moment finally took place.
The eighth and final season of HBO’s epic Emmy Award-winning fantasy drama Game of Thrones — which first debuted back in 2011 — began airing on HBO on Sunday, April 14. The medium-changing series will then air its series finale on Sunday, May 19.