Winter is here, and Maisie Williams is ready for things to get colder — and shorter — for the final season of Game of Thrones.

Williams received her first Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Arya Stark on the hit HBO drama, and she sat down with Variety to discuss some of the memorable scenes that helped her earn her nomination. In their interview, she revealed the biggest challenges she dealt with last season (“The contact lenses, for sure”) and why the GoT crew thought that Arya slitting Walder Frey’s throat made for “the best kill of any kill ever.”

She also looked to the future, and discussed two developments regarding Season 7. She pondered how Arya’s relationship to her former half-brother/now cousin Jon Snow would change (“... they would still very much be close. I feel like Jon would find it difficult to accept Arya for who she is now”), who she wants to encounter before the final episode (“It would be wonderful to work with one of the Starks again, but I just want her to see Melisandre or Cersei and not be dead at the end of it”), and why it’s a good idea for GoT to wrap things up in fewer episodes than the last six seasons.

“It sucks for the audience because they love the episodes, but what we’ll never do on this show is drag it out, and I’m so thrilled about that,” she told Variety. “Too many shows start out about making a great show, and by Season 6 it’s about making money and all they want to do is write more episodes and make more money. This show makes a lot of money, and it would be easy for HBO to be like, ‘We’re gonna do four more seasons and we’re gonna extend them to 12 episodes.’ I really respect David [Benioff, GoT’s cocreator and show-runner] and Dan [Weiss, screenwriter, executive producer, and occasional director] for holding their ground and for HBO to be like, ‘No … we’re gonna tell this story and we’re gonna end it and that’ll be final.’”

Though the time to say goodbye is drawing nigh, Williams is stoked to see her castmates and go out on a high note. “Good things must come to an end or they’re not good anymore,” she continued. “It doesn’t last forever and we’ve done what we came to do, it’s time to wrap this up, and it will have the ending it was always supposed to have, and that’s very special.”