I’m going to bump this because I’m right there with you. I really don’t understand the whole Arya arch, and this just made it more confusing. I wish they would either kill her off, or get her story moving again. It’s like she’s in Limbo.
Maybe next season will open with Cersei waking up up in her royal bedchamber and the big reveal is that Season 5 was all a dream!! 
That was my thought at first, but then the Dothraki rode around and around her in a big circle. So, if I was a tracker and if I noticed the tracks of an army on horseback circling around a certain spot, I might look pretty closely at that spot.
I think at least part of the lesson is that a Faceless Man truly has no identity. Arya thinks that there is a person called “Jaqen H’ghar” who has s certain appearance and personality and physical existence and that person is her friend and teacher.
What that little exercise showed her, in part, was that, no, Jaqen H’ghar doesn’t exist as an individual person. He is just a face that can be worn my multiple Faceless Men.
One wearing that face might take poison and die, but that doesn’t mean that Jaqen H’ghar took poison and died, because that Faceless Man wasn’t Jaqen H’ghar. No one is. It’s just a face.
That’s what Arya has to become. A person with no identity of her own. Just someone who can put on many faces.
The second thing is hinted at but not made entirely clear. It’s that Faceless Men are not allowed to kill just anyone they want to kill.
There’s some way of knowing when a killing is needed. What that way of knowing is isn’t explicitly told to us.
What seems clear to me is that Faceless Men do not have a right to kill for personal reasons. They don’t have their own personalities, so they can’t have personal reasons.
All that seems to me to be the implication of the statement “You are still someone.” Arya has to give up being Arya, including her own allegiance to her past, her loyalties, her resentments, her vendettas.
Those are all things that “someone” has and to become a Faceless Man, Arya has to become “no one.”
My own suspicion is that ultimately Arya will fail to become a Faceless Man.
I think you’re taking it too literally. Brienne isn’t referring to any principled statement derived from the law of succession. Renly was the king she lived and she was loyal to so she considers him rightful.
Who is going to commit genocide? The Night’s Watch is tiny. It doesn’t have the strength to be committing genocide.
Right, the first ranger guy could have not opened the gate. There were others in the Night Watch who thought that Jon Snow was crazy, and would be okay with him and the Free Folk not being let in.
I agree on wanting to know what happened to Loras and Margaery. I have expected that when Cersei got back home, Queen Margaery would be waiting for her, that somehow she got out sooner.
Does Cersei still have a trial to go through? The walk was her atonement, but the Sparrow said that she needed to go through a trial, and it would prove if she was lying about the other charges she still plead innocent to.
Yeah, that was a big army. Is the north all really that fully behind the Boltons? Sansa is married to Ramsay, but she’s somewhat being held prisoner, I would think some of the other northerners would be able to see that.
I guess we might be done with The Wall if Jon is truly dead. But I’m pretty sure the Wildlings killing the Night’s Watch is more likely than the reverse. They have the numbers, and if they hear that Jon was killed they might know that they can’t trust the NW and take the initiative.
I guess Sam will become a more important character, since he’s the only one left who takes the white walkers and their threat seriously and knows multiple ways to kill them.
Yeah, I’m curious how this plays out. I don’t think she’s fully broken, but I think it did a number on her to see and hear how the people truly feel about her. I don’t know the strength of numbers, it might very well backfire if she sends out guards to try to kill all the Sparrows, but I don’t know if she has wise counsel right now that will prevent her from doing that.
Yeah, I liked that. It was a good idea for Tyrion to be in charge with Grey Worm and Missandei, that should be fun to see.
Oh my god that would be hilariously tragic if Sansa got to the Wall to find out Jon was dead. The poor girl can’t catch a break. Her going to the Wall is possible, or there might be some surrounding North towns she can hide out in.
The High Sparrow seems like a true believer, but I could see him maybe making political deals.
There’s a good chance he’s not coming back, but I’m keeping hope open. I did see rumors that he’s back in Belfast filming for the next season, but it’s supposed to be under the radar. Someone on Reddit posted a picture of him, but no telling on how recent it was.
Jon seems very likely to be dead, but I would be flabbergasted if Sansa and Theon were. That would be the most anticlimactic thing, for them to die off camera. Or for them to just appear as corpses in a part of an episode next season. I could see one of them being seriously injured, and so they have trouble running and hiding from Ramsay. Or maybe Theon dies and Sansa has to make it on her own. Also it’s possible after killing Stannis, Brienne sees the light and then goes looking for Sansa.
I would very much bet against this happening. Stannis was severely injured, and could die even if an ambulance picked him up to take him to a modern hospital; I don’t see how picking him up and putting him on a horse to take him anywhere would do him any good.
I bet Brienne gets her revenge, sees the candle from Sansa, endlessly berates herself that she neglected her duty to the Starks, and spends a few episodes looking for Sansa.
It was Ser Alliser Thorne, the first guy who stabbed Jon who was the one who opened the gate. I don’t think he’s had a sudden change of heart since then.
Yeah, I’m unclear on what was going on with Arya at the end. I think she sinned since she when she was killing that guy, she specifically said her name, instead of being No One like she should have been. Though I don’t know how anyone else would have known that.
But I was unclear on what was happening with the dead person wearing like 10 masks, then looking like Arya, then the real and alive Arya going blind.
My reading is that enough of the Watch was loyal to their oaths and to Jon that Alliser visibly and openly betraying his oaths in front of all of them was untenable.
A conspiracy of 15 like-minded guys can be presented to the rest of The Watch either as fait accompli, or they can just lie and claim it was wildlings or something.
I’m not sure that it’s so clear that they were betraying their oaths. They executed Jon as a traitor “for the Watch.” If someone like Olly agrees that Jon had betrayed his oath by risking the lives of Brothers for the sake of Wildlings, then it might not be so hard to persuade the majority of the Watch that this is the case.
That is, if a lot of persuasion is even needed. It’s not like there are a lot of informed, thoughtful, moral, earnest members of the Night Watch left.
Leaving Jon on the wrong side of the wall might have been trickier because there would still have been a Jon standing there to plead his case and a Samwell to argue on his behalf.
Waiting for Sam to leave and then presenting an already executed traitor as a fait accompli might be a much more smooth way of doing things for Thorne.
ETA: re-reading it looks like we are saying very similar things after all.
I didn’t think the Bolton army - cavalry - was that big. Last week I believe Stannis was down to 7,000. This week he lost half overnight, and then more marching to, and as the Bolton’s approached. Maybe he had 2,000 left.
Plus the Bolton’s were on horseback.
The part that seemed contrived to me was Stannis getting to the woods (having been surrounded) and the big blonde turning up to finish him off. Meanwhile Psycho Bolton is elsewhere sticking his sword in peoples back. Nah.
I usually get the allegory/metaphor stuff but I’m finding this tough.
I can see the white walkers representing global warming or something like that, but this many-faced thing … (a) I’m not that into but (b) might be capitalism or possibly religion itself.
Was just thinking of this question. Mainly cause there were a number of shots of the troops running around winterfell wearing a really big flayed man insignia, the size that can be seen by an F16 doing an attack run. Anyways, I have an inkling that these might be the Knights of the Vale, that littlefinger promised.
Declan
I don’t think that everything is an allegory.
As to an explanation of what’s happening in that scene, I offered my views in Post No. 143 — http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18439876&postcount=143
Did anyone else think that Dany had flown all the way to Westeros before the Dothraki showed up? Based on the location, I was half expecting her to find the Hound’s dead body.
I hope her Season 6 storyline is not just “The Hunt for Dany.” It’s time for her to make a move on Westeros.
I have read suggestions that she dropped it so the Dothraki would not know she had remarried.
I thought the Night Watch was down to less than a hundred men, after the battle with the wildlings.
I think several of us are trying to make this point. The Night’s Watch is lucky to be alive. It’s a tiny force of miscreants and convicts. They’re not going to be wiping anyone out, certainly not the Wildlings, who have been fighters as a matter of their lifestyle.
it is pretty obvious it was a cgi/body double scene.
check this nsfw
http://nudesman.com/topic/it-was-lena-headey-naked-or-body-double-in-game-of-thrones-s05e10/
Not everything. But writers who want to be respected sure build in that level.
GoT is full of allegories, symbolism, metaphors, imagery, etc. and for some that’s more interesting than the escapist fantasy.
I did for a moment. It did look a lot like Northern Westoros.
I thought she may have dropped it because it identified her as a khalessi. Given the power struggle back when Khal Drogo died, whoever came out on top might want to simply kill her rather than let her exist as a potential rival or something.
Until we get a close-up of the ring, it could be either reason, or it could have been meant as a clue for Daario and Jorah, as previously mentioned. It wouldn’t be that dissimilar to LotR when Merry and Pippin dropped their elven broaches to help guide Aragorn et al.
Before this season started, *Entertainment Weekly *had an article that talked about her having a nude scene this season but using a body double.
Is it really even an issue? No star is going to walk naked through hundreds and hundreds of extras basically all day long and up close.
Cersei definitely has a trial coming, and I’m sure it’s not going to go well for her. That, or the looming threat of the trial pushes her to attempt violent action against the Sparrows. But I don’t see her commanding much power anymore. Qyburn seems to be the last person around who cares about her, and with Kevan as Hand, he won’t let her indulge her pettiness with public resources.
I think that she’ll sink even lower once she hears of Myrcella’s death, and Tommen may not be long for the world either. She’ll keep fighting as long as her children live, but once both are dead, I think she’ll break completely and probably commit suicide.
On a side note: the witch’s prophecy said “gold shall be their crowns, and gold their shrouds.” People have been interpreting this to mean that each of her children will have a crown, and then die (but also that Cersei will be alive to see it). The latter doesn’t necessarily follow, but does the former (crown, then die) mean that Myrcella may yet survive? She hadn’t married Trystane yet, so she doesn’t have a crown yet, does she?