It makes total sense, in that she wants to not stand out in a crowd right now. Women with swords are particularly noteworthy, a young girl with a sword even more so.
She probably thought standing out was more detrimental than carrying it with her.
Yeah me too.
When they first introduced the FM it was my favorite part about the GoT universe and then it just sort of petered out over the seasons. I really hope there is a satisfying pay-off next season.
I disagree. One of the ongoing themes of GoT is that power resides where people believe it resides. Who should have more influence with the Tully bannermen… the badass uncle, brother of their last “real” lord, who recaptured their castle and spits in the face of their hated enemies, or the weak and pathetic “official” lord, who is basically a fumbler in all ways?
Furthermore, they weren’t told “OK, I have guarantees that you will all be kept safe and free, but we need to surrender the castle”. They were just told “OK, lay down your arms and open the gates”.
I thing that whole sequence was just clumsy.
She “set the trap” (hiding Needle in a dark place) before she was injured. After she was injured, and knew she wouldn’t get away, she decided to go to where her sword was stashed, and she’d have a good chance to kill the Waif.
Again, she got sloppy, nearly got killed, got found after healing for days, nearly got killed, and ran to where her sword was stashed and she could put out the lights. That’s not particularly bad writing.
She got lucky because the Waif wanted to torture her. That was her luck. The Waif could have given her an instantly fatal injury. But the Waif choosing to do that was set up in the story.
Kind of lame, imho, brushing off all the stomach stabbing.
But I must say: of all the shows I watch, threads on this one are the most unreadable here. Sweet jesus.
The sad thing about the Arya plotline is that it could have been so much better.
How about this: Arya struts around with bags of money, looking for a ship to take her back to Westeros. She’s being very obvious about it. Later, we see a girl on a bridge dressed like Arya, but facing the water and away from us. Then we see the waif, and the waif starts stalking Arya. Suddenly, an old woman in the crowd lashes out and slits the waif’s throat. As the waif is dying, we see Arya pull the old lady mask off her face, turn to the girl on the bridge and flip her a coin, saying “thank you very much for the help”. Then she walks away into the darkness.
That would get the idea across that Arya has the skills of the faceless men, that she’s deadly, and it would intelligently call back to her looking at the old lady face in the hall of faces.
Next, we see the waif boarding a ship for Westeros, and the waif’s faceless body lying in a gutter…
There are lots of other ways that storyline could have been ended in a way that drove home what it was all for, and would leave us anticipating the fun when Arya starts checking the rest of her names off her list.
+1
We do tend to get lost in the weeds.
Everybody wants to be right and have everyone acknowledge them as such.
If you don’t-- I recommend watching the Cracked.com recap series Winter is Taking Forever. It’s pretty funny.
So you say.
This would be perfect. As it stands, the entire sum of training imparted onto Arya seems to be to fight when she can’t see. A neat trick but not exactly the makings of an assassin.
She may end up having the face-changing power, which would be significant. She’s used them before (to kill Trant) and she was in the face library before she left, and may have taken some. Of course she apparently isn’t fully trained or compatable in their use, since the last time resulted in blindness, but maybe we’ll just forget that as we’ve forgotten so many other things previously established in that storyline.
I just assumed that she doesn’t have the face changing ability because, y’know, the time to use it would be when a murderous assassin is chasing you.
Some bannermen take their oaths more seriously than others. A realist/pragmatist might think as you do; a loyalist/stickler like this guy flatly says Edmure is his liege, and obeys his orders, even if they were personally distasteful and offered no assurances of personal safety.
Ah, okay, maybe this is what Jaquen meant by his otherwise stupid “Now you are No One” comment. Maybe it wasn’t just a setup for her replying “I’m Arya Stark of Winterfell.” Maybe he was saying now you can wear faces without going blind.
I hope he was meaning something more significant than that and that it will have some significance in Arya’s story. We’ll see.
Something unrelated that has been bugging me for a while : what are Danaeris motivations for claiming the throne of Westeros, exactly? She presumably doesn’t even have a memory of being there, and she could build and rule her own kingdom/empire in Estros much more easily (no need for those eluding ships to begin with, she’s much more familiar with the area and on top of it she feels she has now a duty towards the locals of Meereen and neighbouring cities, and there’s a lot of work to do).
Of course, it could be as simple as a desire to avenge parents she never knew, or simply because she’s been raised with this idea constantly repeated to her by Viserys. But it could be as well just a sense of entitlement. Did she ever state clearly why this was her goal in life?
Given how central the dragons were to the Targaryen dynasty, and the respect in this world for the supernatural, I imagine that she must see her imperviousness to fire and her motherhood of the first non-pygmy dragons in generations as a sure sign of her destiny to rule as her ancestors did. Everyone else does, after all.
What really got Dany’s motor running to take back Westeros, as I recall, was when an agent of King Robert tried to kill her and her unborn son.
Oh for the love of Norman Rockwell and the Lettermen, give it a rest already.
Reading this thread is like reading a social media thread on gun control. Sheesh.
She grew up being told of how evil people killed her family and usurped her birthright. She also grew up powerless, passed from pillar to post, and a pawn in potentates’ political ploys. Now she has power to burn* and, as Quimby says, a rekindled hatred of Westerosi. It’s no surprise at all that a) she wants to retake the position stolen from her and b) she enjoys being the Queen who rescues the oppressed from bondage.
*Of course I meant that.