Actress Carice van Houtens crimson-covered Melisandre first caught our eye on Game of Thrones in Season 2, when she held a ceremony on a beach to burn effigies of the seven gods widely worshipped in Westeros.

Back then, she was serving one of the Baratheon brothers, and she wasnt too popular.

Fast forward to the eighth and final season past a poisoned maester, a demon shadow baby, a bastard bloodletting, a man resurrected and a child made to burn at the stake and shes still not exactly being named prom queen. As one of the series most complicated characters, Melisandre has nonetheless been present, and sometimes responsible for, numerous key plot twists.

But in The Long Night, Episode 3 of the season, after spending hundreds of years trying to save humanity from utter devastation, Mel finally kicked it.

We may never find out exactly where she came from, what she did before the story began, or exactly how old she is, but at least we know why she took off her magic, life-preserving choker to let herself die when she did after the battle between the living and the dead had been won.

Whether conscious or unconscious, van Houten told HuffPost, that was always the thing she was working towards. That is, ensuring the living survived before she herself joined the ranks of the dead.

Below, we talk about that final moment and why it was so tough to play the lady in red.