because hes…ah the hell with it.
The lack of Needle, that is the clue I was missing. It seems super strange that Arya would be walking around, obvious as hell, tossing bags of money where people can see them, unarmed.
This really does sort of scream mindfuckery on some level.
Yeah, people are being absolutely ridiculous about this face business.
It was exactly as it seemed, there’s no grand trick, but we know Arya’s gonna be perfectly fine thanks to plot armor.
Well, my idea on the blood packets came to me literally as I was typing up my reply. So if you guys wanna pick apart this very intricate, multi-layered theory, be my guest.
But I will say that I think it’s still more likely than the theory that Arya is the waif and the waif is Arya. Most people have already pointed out that the Arya’s not going to be lulled into attacking “herself” for no real reason when there’s a better option of just running the hell away. Additionally, if the Waif really were disguised as Arya as a form of a trap, she’s gotta be really really stupid to have been caught unawares like that.
But the biggest reason why that theory doesn’t work is that that’s not how the magic works. It’s been established that the faceless men get their faces from donations to the Many Faced God. We’ve seen the dead bodies with the faces being cut off. We’ve seen the hall of faces where the magic is drawn from.
Arya isn’t yet dead. She has not donated her face. The Waif can’t turn into her.
Not true. After Arya killed Meryn Trant and the Jaqen clone drank the poison, she pulls faces off the corpse until the last one is revealed to be her own. Yet Arya is still alive; how did her face get on the Jaqen clone if only faces of the dead can be worn?
But we’ve also seen the use of someone’s face even when that person is still alive! Just before Arya’s sight is taken away she pulls faces off of the dead “Jaqen”, eventually revealing her own.
Edit: Dangit, beaten to the punch!
OK, new theory then.
Arya actually died at the beginning of season 5 and we’ve been following a completely random acolyte for a year.
Ha! I’ll up you one. Arya’s whole story arc has been a dream by Nymeria.
Then why did this Arya clone kill Meryn Trant? He wasn’t marked for death by the Faceless Men.
They are not consistent about this at all, the guy who drank poison last season did turn into her.
Of course he’d react that way; I imagine most Westerosi pederasts are firmly in the closet.
Tommen is very young, deeply in love with Margaery, and has no sexual experience other than with her (or his hands). Unlike Margaery he’s actually fallen under the High Sparrows spell, and we know the Faith frowns on fornication, even the heterosexual variety. Plus only his wife can provide him with an heir, courtesans cannot. And since he’s not Joffrey it’s safe to say he’s not going to rape Margaery out of frustration.
Could be. But I still maintain that the entire universe is contained inside Tommy Westphall’s snowglobe
My take on this is that the faces she was pulling off the corpse were a hallucination related to the poison effect of wearing a face while someone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljFljgf2USk
but they are very inconsistent so its really hard to pin down. I chalk it up to “A man does not talk about fight club” and leave it at that.
There’s no evidence he’s a pedophile beyond the verbal jab of a guy that’s obviously antagonistic. Sure, a pedophile would probably deny it, but so would an innocent man. Plus, that’s not even the guy you accused of it in the first place.
Nonsense. The whole series is just a fever dream Bran has been having on his deathbed after being pushed off the tower.
He’s got a filthy mind, that one 
A different kind of X-Men: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b1/7f/1a/b17f1a3ef5d12c34473e9a3118440d76.jpg
Yes. Arya clearly somehow used a physical face (that of the sick girl she persuaded to drink from the pool by lying to her that it would cure her) from the Hall to disguise herself, since she is seen returning it to its place. Yet the Jaqen who takes poison, and the Jaqen that the Waif seemingly transforms into, have Jaqen’s face at the exact same time, so this can’t be a single physical face.
I think the most likely explanation is the obvious one. But it is also (if true) a very disappointing one, and one that would not have happened in the earlier seasons that hewed closer to the books. There has been a worrying tendency this season for people to do out of character stupid things when demanded by the plot… crossing my fingers that this is not such a situation.
Which tbh is an attitude I never quite got—I mean, not only is at least some measure of the supernatural present in this world (witness the dragon skulls), but more importantly, nobody builts a goddamn 100m wall of ice without having a bloody good reason for it. Even knowing nothing about that world, you come to that wall, you’ll probably think that there’s something not very nice on the other side of it (and something more dangerous than roving bands hald-starves wildlings).
Although I threw the switcheroo theory out there earlier, I too think the Arya situation is most likely just as it was presented to us. The reason why speculation is so rampant, I believe, is because the last we saw of Arya in the last episode, she’d run away from the temple, recovered Needle and, appearing to be fully aware of the danger she was now in, found a quiet little hidey hole in which to nervously plan what she was going to do. Then, when we see her this episode, she’s boldly striding through Braavos throwing big bags of coins at ships captains. It almost feels like we’re missing something in between. Plus, those scenes did seem to be filmed in such a way to suggest something was not quite as it seemed (but that could just be misdirection).
I still think there’s a 10% chance the first scene of the next episode will be Arya’s lifeless corpse lying in the temple while Jaquen, gently washing the body, says something about a death being required. This will likely be followed by a scene of Dany travelling through the desert (again) while her Dothraki get restless (again). She’ll show them her boobies (again) or her dragon (again) and they’ll all bow down to her (again). Then we’ll be back with Jaquen, who removes the face of the corpse he’s been preparing to reveal it’s not Arya at all. There’s a twinkle in his eye and subtle smirk on his face as the scene fades to black.
:o
OB
Ooh, I forgot to add - my favourite scene of the episode was the lingering shot of the woman from the Hound’s religious community chopping potatoes. Surely that was a deliberate reference to the potato controversy from an earlier season… I guffawed anyway.
OB
