*kills the waif, gets the jump on jaqen* (easily could have killed him)
"now a girl is truly no one"
*merks House Frey*
*duels on par with Brienne*


i think we're supposed to take it that her training was damn pretty complete and that she's a legit force

Vids for eps 1 and 2 not as good but still a few laughs

I have not mentioned the OPness of other characters but before shating out this complete brain fart of a post you could have spent a second comparing and contrasting how well the NK faired against Dany and the Dragons e.g. thanks for the ride, compared to against Arya e.g. thanks for stabby stabby.

Bran is going to replace a man who sat a tree for thousands of years, the NK would have got him, but Bran used Danys dragons to stop him....oh wait.

But yes in a show that was predicated on its relative realism compared to other similar types of fantasy such as LOTR, the guys left in the north have only one real option which is to pack a back pack for Arya and send her off to KL.

If your happy with the writers having set up a situation whereby there is a really obvious solution to one of remaining plot issues, because they spent no time establishing limits or definitions of Arya's powers ( yes you can apply that criticism to several other dudes) then fine, but stop bitching about the writing everywhere else but weirdly going deep into bat on this one aspect of it.

The writing has got to a point where I am not sure they will even give us a reason why Arya is not immediately sent of to KL, assuming that is not what happens, but I guess there is some chance they will write in a reason why her confrontation with the NK put her on the bench for Cersie bowl.

Varys could tell Arya about all the back passages in the Red Keep and RIP everyone.

dude, Bran could just warg the Mountain (bc he's a dumb half-zombie or whatever), turn around, stab Cersei, war over

or the dragons could fly in and torch the Red Keep to ashes in 2 minutes

or Jon could charge like Theon all the way from Winterfell bc he can't die

Arya could do it yeah, but any of those would probably be easier
(it obv won't happen, but now i'm really hoping that they do just let her kill everyone to make these donks furious)

****, fat sam might as well go do it, not like he can die either

I personally would not mind if they now let Arya off on a killing spree, at least it would be consistent. Another one to add your massive list of whiffs.

If you could actually parse arguments properly and not just work off of lazy assumptions of what you think people are arguing, then you would see that if anything its that Arya will be now (probably)be lazily constrained from said killing spree that in your deeply mature parlance is " getting me furios"

My favourite outcome would be if they spent all of EP4 building a massive tower at WF so she could leap all the way to KL.

In seriousness.

Bran wont do it because it looks like he is detached from caring that much about such political issues.

Dany and the Dragons collateral damage from such an attack has been discussed in lenght in the show, maybe she has finally lost patience with Tyrion dont be the wheel and will let rip, so that could happen. Its the most predictable and obvious thing, so yea probably.

John wont charge all the way from WF.

Arya going on a killing spree is no more maddening now than DandD letting rip. In fact its the most refreshing option.

cersei is not actually cersei, it's ned stark who is a faceless man
so ned is pregant from jamie, ned is birthing the child, named joffrey baratheon who travels back in time via brans help to kill the man wearing ned stark's face, who is actually cersei.
so cersei is killed by joffrey and ned is on the iron throne

Enjoy this brief silent brightened Battle the Dragons clip

Arya repeatedly got her ass kicked before somehow killing the Waif (offscreen, if I remember rightly). Then Ja'qen went "now a girl is truly no-one" which is probably the most nonsensical line uttered in the entire show. Like it's just "WELL THIS ARC IS OBVIOUSLY NOW CONCLUDED, AUDIENCE" when it manifestly isn't. It's like having a 4 year old try to lie to you about something that happened.

Then after that, Arya was a superhero. We're apparently supposed to assume that she became a total badass at the House of Black and White, but we were never actually shown that happening. She managed to beat the Waif by hiding in the dark, then next time we see her swordfight she's more than holding her own in broad daylight with one of the best fighters in Westeros. I'm not inclined to make tenuous arguments that maaaaaaayyyyyybe that makes sense if you stare at it for long enough just to justify blatantly obvious fan service.

lol, k

Once again, even if Arya is a super powerhouse in city/castle settings, I don't really see that as transferring to a snow filled wood -- the NK's domain basically.

I agree with 27off that the writing for other characters has been bad as well, and because of that anyway that the NK was killed would have been a DEM. That doesn't mean that this wasn't also a DEM though.

As far as endings go, I think Arya killing the NK was acceptable, which unfortunately shows how poor the writing for the show has gotten.

pretty sure someone already said this, but for a lot of reasons it was actually perfect that arya did it with her skillset

dragon fire couldn't do it
jon's "hey let's go 1v1" strat couldn't do it
whatever bran can do couldn't do it
tyrion & sansa were self-admittedly useless
jamie has 1 hand
etc, etc, etc

the job kinda required a highly-skilled & athletic assassin to say **** it and YOLO

i can see this being unsatisfying for some
but, anything else probably would have been worse (given where the show put itself)

Hot take: Night King not all that powerful. Avoided JSnow whenever possible because Valyrian steel. Only hand to hand kill was Theon. He's basically non-crippled 1000 year old Bran.

NK was 1 for 3 with the spear
Raised dead and brought winter.
Not affected by Dragon fire.

'Nut makes good points

It's not my opinion that they write Arya as fan service btw, Weiss said in this interview that this is what he considers Arya's character to be:

Arya was not ever "cool and badass", that's wholly an invention of D&D. She was stubborn and brave and had a keen sense of justice, but not badass. She was a scared little girl who became enmeshed in violence, horror and revenge fantasies.

All of the Starks have stories which invert traditional fairytale arcs. Ned holds fast to truth and honor and gets his head cut off. Robb commences a coming-of-age arc to revenge his father and gets slaughtered. Catelyn tries to be a protective mother, but dies alongside her son and (in the books) rises again as a vengeful spirit. Sansa is going to be a lady and a queen, and instead ends up as the pawn of political interests. Bran wants to be a knight in gleaming armor, and instead ends up a dark tree magician. And Arya, this puts it well:

Because D&D are such dullards, they instantly switched the arc back to the traditional fairytale one. Arya watches her family die, is driven into a life of desperation, initiated into committing horrific violence and finally ends up in the grips of a death cult, who... [D&D take over]... train her up to be a total badass with a sword! And now she's serving up Frey Pies! YAAAAAS QUEEN!

The series is deeply skeptical of violence. It's not super awesome and cool that a young girl got trained up as a ****ing assassin of a death cult lol.

Another way to look at it is that the Faceless Men were offering her what she dreams of: power, agency, revenge. The ability to work violence against her enemies. The cost they demand is her identity. The choice is between being Arya Stark (because Arya also constantly dreams of having a family again) and committing herself to death and violence.

Then D&D take over and she just gets both, lol. Jaqen just goes "u r noone now!" and she's like "Actually I'm Arya, tyvm for the training" and waltzes out of there to go work violence against her enemies. Once again, just no hard choices for our characters, no consequences (Faceless Men are just like yeah cool, you go do you), no downsides to violence, immediately just a charmed life for Arya where she gets to have her cake and eat it too.

Exactly. Arya badass might upset the bookreaders, but it's exactly the arc she has been on since Ep1 of the TV series.

It's arguable the clearest character arc in showing kid who is talented at combat become a warrior over 8 seasons.

I don't really care for the Arya character, or Masie's portrayal, or the way she killed the NK, but nearly ever scene she has appeared in during the previous 8.5 seasons led to the point where she developed the skills to kill the NK.

I get that people don't like it, but I don't think you can pick holes in it.

Lindsay Wagner was awesome.

No, that's my point. She hasn't been on that arc any more than Robb was on a coming of age arc where he was going to ride south and revenge his father.

If D&D took over in S1, we'd have had Ned continue as the hero of the story. If they took over in S2 or S3, we'd have had Robb win in the south and probably become king. Since they took over in S5 it's instead Arya's subversion arc which suffered an immediate conversion back to cliche.

Edit: Like I don't disagree that she has been on an arc where she learns to be a warrior. What I disagree with is that we're supposed to think that is a good thing or that she is able to do it without great personal cost.

Sansa's direwolf was called Lady, that signified what her dream was. Arya's was called Nymeria, who in the books is a legendary warrior queen, the founder of House Martell and the kingdom of Dorne. That's Arya's dream, to be a fearsome warrior queen. But just like Sansa, her arc is not supposed to be "achieve my dreams with little in the way of personal cost. yay!".

One of the things ASOIAF - and I mean both show and books - does repeatedly is present something as cool and badass while gently nudging the audience that this stuff is actually really awful. It's not cool and badass that Arya has a list of people to murder and was in the grips of a death cult. It's playing into fantasy tropes but you're supposed to notice that in reality it's really ****ed up.

That's my point - it's a TV show based on books. I can understand bookreaders being irked when things deviate from the way they expected, but that doesn't make Arya's journey inconsistent.

If they changed the story, sure, but the S1 through beginning of S5 story of Arya is almost identical to the books in plot and tone. Her interaction with Tywin is a show invention (a really good idea from them, actually) but doesn't substantially change the story.

It's not like Arya's arc really sucks or anything - like I said, it's a very standard fantasy arc - but it doesn't fit within the series. The series is fascinated by questions of identity, with secret identities abounding, magicians who can literally wear other people's faces, characters going by assumed names, people like Theon and Jaime having to cope with challenges to their identity, etc etc. This dilemma of Arya between being Arya Stark, who has a family and an identity, and a violent warrior queen assassin who spends her days hiding alone in shadows, is supposed to be a serious one, it fits in thematically with the series as a whole. And it immediately got brushed aside and dismissed as irrelevant.

And yeah, the show can do that. Nothing stopping them. You can cook a steak until thoroughly dry and put ketchup on it if you want too. I just think it sucks.