someone please talk to me about the touring troop - what was the freaking point?
Agreed. She and Davos are two of the most honorable characters in the entire series, although not always serving honorable causes.
If we can talk about something other than the survivability of abdominal wounds for a minute…notice that Brienne failed yet again on a quest? Other than sword fighting, she’s not very good at her job. 
I’m really glad The Hound is back.
I agree with SenorBeef. There have been big arguments in GoT threads before (potatoes, whether Targaryens are part dragon), and even entire subplots that everyone hated (the sand snakes), but I don’t believe there’s ever been a plot development involving one of the main characters that was as controversial and generally hated and scorned as this Arya storyline.
And condescendingly clucking “it’s not Shakespeare” doesn’t help. It’s a show that we all love, or we wouldn’t be here, so it pains us when it dips in quality, and we are left hoping that it’s only temporary.
Jaqen specifically picked that assignment for Arya because it was a meatier test of her “no one”-hood. The play was a harsh reminder of Arya’s identity as a Stark. She learned about Sansa’s forced marriage to Tyrion, was reminded of Ned’s execution, and saw how Ned was being portrayed as a treasonous buffoon. It gave her many reasons to abandon her training and resume her life as Arya Stark.
Plus, it was a fun little aside to see the play. I expect the production team had fun with it, and it was fun to watch.
So, I just remembered the secret conversation between Varys and an unknown party way back in series one—the one overheard by Arya, when she was chasing cats and finding dragon skulls instead.
Did we ever learn who the unknown guy was? If not, could it have been Euron, whom Varys is also now out to meet?
It was Illyrio, which was the businessman in Pentos that Varys took Tyrion to when they escaped King’s Landing. They stayed at his mansion - I don’t think he made an appearance at that point. Also the guy who supported Viserys and helped to broker Danerys to Khal Drogo.
Thanks! I really need to make some sort of spread sheet to keep track of all the characters and their interactions…
Yeah, she’ll join the Sand Snakes Grrrl-Power Team (who incidentally are the only one who have proved themselves even more incompetent at carrying out an assassination than the Waif).
Why do you think Varys is meeting Euron?
Right. As far as people saying that the Waif stabbed Arya in the gut in order to inflict suffering, fine. But her main mission was to kill Arya, and she would potentially be killed herself if she didn’t carry it out successfully. She could have inflicted suffering by giving her a wound that she definitely knew would be fatal. She didn’t do so. She was a fuck-up.
Neither Arya nor the Waif looked like they had much training as assassins or in self-defense in that interaction. Both were acting out of the character they had previously established, for no reason than to make the attack more dramatic.
If GRRM were still writing: the waif killed Arya in the dark, gave both herself and Arya a face-ectomy, and the person talking to Jaqen in the final scene is the waif wearing Arya’s face.
This has the GRRM-like quality of killing a beloved character who behaved foolishly and did not have the skills or resources to continue living - Arya should die. And the entire faceless man shifting-identity plotline is no longer a complete waste of time. A girl (looking like Arya) returns to Westeros to murder-genie everyone that Arya hated and restore the cosmic death balance (for some reason).
Since the same actress continues to play FM-Arya, everything looks just the same, so the Arya story does not die. We get a reveal much later that FM-Arya is really the waif.
because hes on a mission to get ships.
More likely he’s meeting Yara and Theon, since they are already in Volantis. He could be meeting with Illyrio for some reason, but going to Pentos would require him to bypass a large fleet of ships that is coming to ally themselves with Danaerys.
This brings up an interesting point. If Volantis was preparing a huge fleet to invade Mereen, they would surely inquire why a large number of Iron Islands ships were heading east, and prevent them from leaving.
Pretty much nothing but baseless idle speculation—I’m still wondering what reason Euron could have to want to supply Daenarys with ships.
Well said.
Ask Trystane Martell just how incompetent they are.
I like it. I like it a lot!
He said he’s going to partner with her to conquer Westeros. Probably while giving her his yuuuuuge cock. He’s going to make Westeros great again.
Two years, or two seasons. She sailed to Braavos in the final episode of season 4, so two episodes short of two years right now. And sure not a lot to show for it.
I don’t think anyone, even SenorBeef, is saying at this point that this whole thing was part of Arya’s master plan. It very clearly was not.
The point of his post was to say that if you actually believed it to be purposeful, here are the ridiculous steps that Arya needed to have taken in order to carry it out.
The alternative, which you are arguing (and for the record I also believe) is that Arya got very very lucky to have not died multiple times in her attempts to evade and/or kill the waif.
The problem with this whole thing has very little to do with Arya at this point. It has to do with the writing.
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Most people believe that Arya as a character would NOT have acted the way she did leading up to her getting surprised and shanked by the waif.
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By having Arya get surprised, barely escape multiple times, and then have no plan other than to run and hope she gets to Needle before she completely bleeds out and dies, the writers completely negated (right now) everything Arya learned. Yes, I’m sure her Faceless Man training will serve her well in the future. That’s the future. But we’ve spent 2 years with her in training and the culmination of that isn’t a conclusion based upon skill but rather dumb fucking luck. As a viewer, that’s not satisfying.
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Beyond just dumb luck, the writers purposely placed Arya in a position where NO ONE should have survived. A gut wound, infected with feces, massive internal bleeding…and then she falls down about 1700 stairs when she’s not fully healed? No one survives any of that.
It’s not realistic. It makes no sense. It was a dumb, dumb choice all for the sake of “shock value” at the end of last week’s episode.
Volantis isn’t one of the cities that’s fighting Mereen. It’s west of Slaver’s Bay.