If Game of Thrones fans fire up their Netflix account today and start watching the new sci-fi series 3 Body Problem, they might feel a bit of deja vu. It’s not just that 3 Body Problem marks GoT showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss‘s return to the small screen — they co-created the Liu Cixin adaptation with Alexander Woo — but that the show’s tragic cold open is eerily reminiscent of the iconic moment Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) watched on in horror as her beloved father, Ned Stark (Sean Bean), was murdered by psychotic teen despot Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleason) in Game of Thrones Season 1 Episode 9 “Baelor.” That’s because 3 Body Problem opens, as the original novel does, with young Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) watching her scholar father Ye Zhetai’s (Perry Yung) own assassination in front of an unhinged crowd of extremist Reds in 1960s Beijing.

Ned Stark’s sudden, unjust death not only helped propel Game of Thrones to must-see-TV status, but it also hardened Arya Stark’s heart for the trials ahead. She would go on to train as a Faceless Man, a league of stone cold assassins, and eventually use her gifts to take her revenge on her family’s nemeses. 3 Body Problem‘s Ye Wenjie undergoes a similar, parallel journey. Her disillusionment with humanity steadily calcifies in her heart until she makes a decision that will have disastrous effects on the future of the world.

However, according to 3 Body Problem star Zine Tseng, that’s sort of where the parallels between Arya Stark and young Ye Wenjie start and end. At least for her. They both watch their fathers die, but Arya’s position in society means she can expect “immediate justice because they are noble.”

“The Starks are with justice,” Tseng explained, “As where as Ye, she is literally the bottom of the society at the moment.”

Co-star Rosalind Chao, who plays the older Ye Wenjie, pointed out that before the Cultural Revolution in China, Ye “was among the intellectual elites.”

“Intellectuals are the bottom,” Tseng said, further highlighting the sheer desperation her character felt in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.

Ye Wenjie’s experiences do indeed become all the more horrifying as 3 Body Problem rolls on. Her ever-dimming view of humanity do a lot to explain why she does what she does. Indeed, Ye Wenjie might not end up slitting throats or stabbing White Walkers, but she does eventually do something that is just as bleak, if not more, than what Arya Stark does in Game of Thrones.