Warning: Spoilers from the third episode of Game of Thrones season 8 are ahead.
If you've even glanced at Twitter in the last few days, you've probably noticed that there's a heated debate raging about Arya Stark killing the Night King and whether or not it's a Mary Sue moment — meaning there are some fans who missed the other seven seasons of the show in what Arya devoted her entire being to learning how to fight, sneak, and be a stone cold assassin ahead of her taking down the Big Bad. As it turns out though, Drake isn't one of those people. At the 2019 Billboard Awards, during his acceptance speech, Drake gave Arya Stark a shoutout that her haters probably need to hear one more time: "Shoutout to Arya Stark for putting in that work last week."
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Putting in that work, indeed.
The concern, for the folks on the anti-Arya side of the story is that the young Stark "suddenly" became powerful enough to kill someone as great as the Night King. While it would be frustrating if Arya suddenly magically killed a seemingly undefeatable foe without any prior training, that's 1000 percent not what happened on Thrones.
Arya has spent her entire time on the series training — she was even sneaking her way into the yard to do so in the pilot. She trained with a master swordsman. She survived escaping King's Landing and fending for herself on the road. Later, she shadowed Tywin Lannister. Even later than that, she went to Braavos to become a Faceless Man and survived what should have been a death sentence at the hands of the Waif. She got revenge on Walder Frey for killing her mother and brother by serving him his own family in a pie before killing him. Arya has absolutely earned her place as the one to kill the Night King.
Or, as Drake put it, she put in the damn work.
Of course, it's possible that Drake was just trying to avoid accidentally dropping Game of Thrones spoilers on national TV and offered up the phrase "putting in that work" in place of shouting "killing the most formidable villain to fall on Game of Thrones to date." But considering all the undue hate that's been levied at Arya after she proved she was a hundred percent that bitch, we're just going to take Drake's support as a victory, thankyouverymuch.