Thought it obvious that it was from her running by him at full sprint.

I mean in hindsight this seems fairly matter of fact given she was trained in stealth and deception, has already snuck up on Jon in the exact same place, and silently evaded an entire library of wights who can hear the sound of a drop of blood falling on the floor. The girl is quiet af when she wants to be.

She probably just jumped off one of the pile of the dead bodies Theon had wracked up in front of himself and Bran.

Also at this point once Theon is dead - the whole WW crew and the NK think all threats have been wiped out or are being done so by all the undead and its pure victory...hence his Hype Williams slo-mo like stroll up to Bran and the other WW and wights just chilling and watching their boy about to erase all history.

Also seems pretty dumb for people to argue about how different the end of the books that will never be finished by GMM will be -- Martin explained to the showrunners how he planned to end the story as he gave him a rough outline on how it concludes.

The "main ending", by which I mean Jon and Dany and who rules Westeros, plus whatever the third "holy ****" moment is, will be the same. Probably everything else will be different.

Somewhat agreed that it's pointless to discuss considering the book ending is never actually happening.

Good review of the ep on Slate.

ya they've kinda really gone off the deep end with bizarre low-brow cornball **** like the Night King smirking for whatever reason

like, "let's make them have personalities", i guess?
but yet still never talk, or convey what they want, or anything ...

just gonna merk y'all then ride my skateboard to King's Landing yo

Great read, thanks for sharing. I especially liked the two paragraphs following

Just did my first rewatch, I liked it more than I thought I would.

I did notice that Lyanna Mormont charges the giant with an axe, and stabs him in the eye with a sword. Continuity problems like there are fairly abundant.

However, I think the episode just works better if you think of it as a standalone piece of art related to the GoT universe that has very little to do with the relationships and intrigue built around the human heroes and villains.

Or it's a B version of "The Two Towers."

Seems some people have forgotten "Winter is coming".

Definately why one reason the teleport kill of the NK had such an impact is for a split second when the NK caught Arya by the throat, I was yeeeeees GOT is back, super surprise twist imminent/lol your plot armour.......then nope, GOT is definitely gone forever, now 100% confirmed.

Plenty of people have commented on how the writing of the show has degraded since book seperation, for me and it seems several others, that moment is the crystallisation of that moment. Sure its manifest tons of times before, frequently, but this moment leveraged by all the ridiculous plot armour shown upto then via single handed defeats of zombie hordes, just seemed to make the passing of the old GOT absolute and final.

Pretty sure if EP3 had cut to black and ended the moment the NK strangled Arya, the internet would have broken and we would be looking at some hot drama's coming up in ep4

Nails it.

wouldnt most fighters have a knife or dagger sheathed or something?

This is another thing that I think people keep ****ing up. That motto is about the seasons, which are ****ed up in Westeros. If you have variable length Summers that can last years followed by variable length Winters that can last years - it’s really important to keep reminding people in the good times to prepare for the bad times.

Yes, it also worked for the army of the dead. But it’s still winter now and they still have no idea how long it will last. And the whole motto still makes sense.

Thats not the point though, it was the motif of the show, do you really think they used that motif to imply that there was simply some harsh weather ahead?

Not one second of the show has been spent on Game of preparing for a long period of harsh weather, plenty has been spent on existential threat linked to darkness, for which winter was an obvious metaphor.

Cmon, they were not marketing the show on the premise of bad weather.

Also since you are here, has anyone itt made this argument, I cant recall anyone doing so:

I have zero problems with Arya killing the NK the way she did. She was the obvious candidate to do it and they've been setting it up for years.

Where has it ever been set up for years?

It's been set up for her to kill the people on her list lol. If there's one person it's not been set up for, it's Arya....and that's why they wrote it that way. "We chose arya because nobody was thinking about her". It's ****ing dumb.

Rian Johnson's subversion of expectations was so well received, D&D must have wanted to try it out as well.

Arya is taught to move silently and to study cats by Syrio Forel in season 1.

Melisandre tells her she'll "shut green, brown and blue eyes forever" in season 3.

She did the knife swap in her duel with Brienne in season 7.

Move silently like cats because she's going to be an assassin to kill people on her list, not the night king.

Maybe thats true about eyes, but that means she killing cersie if it's true....which would be even more redic OP bull****.

Other members have been set up to kill the NK way more

She only needed disguises,not stealth, to kill Trant and Frey.

Green eyes can also refer to Targaryens.

NK gets roasted with Dragonfire

Ice javelin doesn't melt

The more general slogan means tough times are coming. LOL if you think that hasn't applied to literally every single person, place, race, and family on this show. I literally can't imagine what crazy-ass position you've come up with where you argue "Winter is Coming" isn't a good slogan for what's happened in GoT.


Um, yes we've seen them preparing for the actual Winter. And, as mentioned, it's a metaphor for lots of aspects of the show.

Lol, you've basically made it with your many comments that seemed clueless to how the NK (and his army) was always going to be dealt with and in comments like your "stabby stabby" on how Arya managed to kill him.

If the NK was the real threat, Jon should have killed him. He's the only person south of the wall who's taken the dead seriously for more than 3 episodes. It's the only thing he's talked about for 4 years. It's guided every decision he's made. He died because of how strongly he felt about uniting the living. He's already fought them multiple times, had staredowns with the NK. The writers have been going with the corny storylines for 3 years and botched the only one they were supposed to keep. Sometime the obvious choice is necessitated by the exposition (like if anyone besides Jamie or Tyrion kills Cersei, it will be a joke).
And if NK was the real threat, there should have been some greater reveal, more Bran involvement, and this episode should have been at the end.

If NK wasnt the real threat, and this story is truly about the 'Game', the writers abandoned that long ago when politics stopped really meaning anything. The throne is going to be won by dragons and people who have been bailed out of all their mistakes the last 3 years, not by politics. The only 'good' guy (since writers made the decision to turn every character into clearly good and bad) who cares about the throne is Dany. And that was based on her feudal claim, as shes reminded every single person she's met over the last 8 years--except she just learned that her claim isn't valid. There's no reason to believe any of the other 'good guys' care about the throne at this point.
And if the throne is what matters, Dany could have taken it in 10 minutes at the end of season 7 when she pulled up to the meeting on her dragon. Cersei and everyone who truly supports her (about 3 people) were all right there and she could have executed them. I can't imagine there would be any backlash as every major house has good reason to hate Cersei, she doesn't seem to have any support from the people in Kings Landing, her own family is either dead or has stopped supporting her.

A super quick search of "Arya" from this thread before the episode gives me at least 4 people that predicted she kills the NK and/or talks about her ninja skills. I'm sure if I looked at more posts I'd find more too.

This wasn't a crazy surprise.

Fwiw my prediction was she'd bring the dragon down, fight the NK, lose, and Jon would finish the job... so about 25% right!

However Arya v NK was fairly predictable - It was obviously either her and/or Jon that would face off against him, and if people are arguing to the contrary, they really haven't been paying attention...

Ok so you have moved on from winter is coming referring to the literal ****ty weather in Westeros.

Unfortunately you are now arguing that winter is coming applies as much to someone having tough times in a desert surrounded by horse lords as it does to a death lord literally coming from a frozen snowy waste.

They should have gone with general universal suffering is coming.