Milk of the poppy is basically opium isn’t it? Maybe she was just high as fuck and didn’t feel the pain.
One theory I’ve heard on this is that Operation Scorched Sparrow will go wrong and end up with Tommen being toasted, thus fulfilling the Maggy the Frog’s prophecy we saw in S5E01.
Agreed. Until reading this thread I had no clue on what Qyburn might be talking about. Wildfire makes sense, especially with Bran’s visions.
The Tullys and the Starks are still rebels. According to the King, the Freys should hold Riverrun and the Boltons should hold Winterfell. In loyalty to the King, there’s no way that Jaime would allow a rebel army to go assist another rebel army, but since Jaime isn’t entirely heartless, he let Brienne go safely. I think Jaime said she could get the Tully army to leave because he was fairly sure that the Blackfish would never agree to it, and he was right.
Wildfire would be a terrible idea for someone like Tywin who would want to regain control from the Sparrows and rule over a functioning city, but Cersei is increasingly defensive and seeking revenge. And she has repeatedly said over the seasons about how she’d burn the city to the ground and burn whoever to protect her children. It seemed metaphorical, but she increasingly might mean it for real.
I think the actress was just getting another bottle of Milk of Poppy, it looked like the same liquid she gave Arya earlier. I don’t know why she was getting it down, other than to maybe make us think it was the Waif in disguise or something. I don’t think it was healing, Arya was just able to run around because of plot armor.
I agree they should have done more with the faceless thing, like the Waif attacks her and Arya runs, and then some other person attacks her in the alley, and someone else and so on as she’s running, and it’s one person who keeps pulling off masks like before.
Or everything would have made more sense if Arya had originally wanted to leave her name and everything behind, but then saw the play or something that reminded her of her family and how they’d been betrayed, and then she wrote her list and decided to go after her enemies. But as it was, you are right and she could have learned a lot more a lot easier with the Hound.
That the rivalry between the Waif and Arya was essentially part of their training and that only one of them was ever going to live through this. This was basically Arya’s graduation.
That was my thought as well.
I assume it was more milk-of-the-poppy; although Arya clearly did not need it, considering her athletic run through the crowded streets a few minutes later.
Unless you are Roose Bolton, in which case a single stab in the gut causes instant death.
Arya was blatant and obvious last episode, throwing money around and acting like a big shot in an attempt to draw the waif out and lead her to the “trap” where she had her sword in the dark room. She just underestimated the waif and got wrecked before she could pull it off. Remember, the waif has no idea Arya even owns a sword, let alone that she’s been trained by the First Sword of Bravos.
This episode, she’s recovering from her stab wounds (which definitely haven’t healed yet) but partially able to resist the pain due to the drugs she’s been taking. This go around, she was able to lead the waif to the trap and spring it properly, where she has all the environmental advantages.
I don’t think it’s sloppy writing at all. All of the boring training scenes led directly to this.
…and Jaime said it again this very episode when talking to Edmure. That both Catelyn and Cersei would burn cities down for their children.
Another stupid thing about Arya’s actions: she’s going home to Westeros, a place where she is very much wanted by her enemies. She would never flounce around like royalty buying that ticket - that’s the best way to ensure a Lannister squad waiting for her when the ship docks after the captain sells her out. She should have gone home in disguise or at least portrayed herself as a merchant or something.
And the whole point of the faceless man training should have been to allow her to get home anonymously and start killing her enemies from the shadows.
Arya wasn’t drawing the waif out and leading her back to her lair as some kind of genius plot - she was running like hell for her life, back to the only possible chance to live - her sword.
She took a bag of silver from the Hound as he lay dying.
I’m fairly confident that they meant to portray this as Arya springing a trap. She hid her sword in a particular place instead of carrying it with her (presumably using one of her only advantages in that they don’t know how good she is with a sword or that she has it at all) and all of her loud, obvious actions were apparently meant to lure the waif. The original plan seemed to be that she would get noticed, the waif would see her, and then she’d lead the waif to her secret dark space with needle and kill her.
Of course that was still a pretty stupid plan when she decided to go up and hug strangers with faces she’s seen in the face vaults before.
After the botched first attempt, she goes and hides and then recovers miraculously in a day or two, wakes up just in time to catch the loudest, slowest superassassin in the world, and then resumes her plan of parkouring to lead the t-1000 to her hidey hole, at which point she murders someone who probably has the same blind/darkness training, who has always beaten her at combat, and who isn’t grievously wounded.
It certainly was not a genius plot, but it’s pretty clear we’re meant to understand that Arya was setting a trap.
If that’s the case, and that’s the usual part of the Faceless Men training, then their hold religion/cult/assassin group is even dumber than I had thought. There’d never be a way to grow the group if each new member means that another one dies, in addition to the original assignment. It’s possible that this is the case, since we still don’t know that much about the Faceless Men, but that just seems like bad training and doesn’t fit with how imposing and widespread they had seemed to me at the beginning.
It could be like the Sith. Always one master and one student.
But I generally agree. The whole Faceless Men thing was ill thought out and illogical.
I think this is the most charitable interpretation possible; but still, I feel that it expects the viewer to suspend their disbelief/outright dismiss a lot more things than they have had to so far on the show. Where did Arya’s money come from, why doesn’t she recognize the old woman, whose face she’s already seen in the House of Black and White, why isn’t she generally more careful about strangers approaching her, seeing as how she’s trying to draw out an assassin who could be posing as pretty much anywhere, why she isn’t armed (even if she intended to keep Needle secret, a plan like this really cries out for a backup weapon, which she shouldn’t have had any problems procuring with her new-found riches), why she isn’t more circumspect about her surroundings, etc. etc.
This is a show that had Theon Greyjoy proclaim in the early second season that he’d be thought a ‘eunuch’ by his men if he doesn’t carry through with his plan—which of course then lands him in captivity and actually costs him his manhood; where Melisandre hints nearly from the beginning that she’s ‘been fighting this fight far longer than you have’; where we’ve had things like the Hodor-reveal; and where generally, the little things—odd behaviors, unexplained occurrences—have a way of mattering later on. So I’d say that the Arya episode still was far from the heights of writing the show has shown itself capable of.
Didn’t she throw all her money into the water when she hid Needle?
You’re glossing over the whole point here. GoT is, or at least used to be, enough better than a normal TV show that it doesn’t depend on this kind of crap. In fact, at its best, it teases you with tropes and then goes another way.
The whole Arya plotline felt like the plot from a much worse show (albeit one with GoT’s production values and acting), which is why people keep both expecting and hoping that in fact we’re being misled into assuming that the obvious cliche is going on, when in fact something more interesting is going on. But nope, turn off your brain and turn on your knowledge-of-tv-cliches, the obvious thing happened.
Arya-in-Braavos is (assuming the plot is mostly complete) either the worst or second worst plotline the show has ever done, competing only with the sand snakes in Dorne. In addition to everything stupid discussed in this thread we have:
-Arya is within moments of completing her first assignment (the insurance guy) when one of the 5 people in the entire world who she wants to murder, who was an entire ocean away, walks past her in plain sight
-Arya is suddenly stupid enough that not only does she kill Meryn Trant, but she doesn’t bother also fulfilling her mission and killing the insurance guy, thus getting on the faceless god’s shit list
-Meryn Trant not only killed Syrio, but he happens to be a pedophile. Just because
-Arya pulls off her face dramatically so he can see her BEFORE she stabs him in the eye. She should have been dead right then. She had the drop on him 100%, no reason to start monologuing until he’s truly helpless
-And, when it comes right down to it, we have no idea what the fuck anything means. What lesson was Arya supposed to learn? Did she learn it? What is the actual philosophy or motivations of the Faceless Men? Dunno, and seems likely we’ll never find out.
I also hated HATED the scene with Edmure and the Blackfish. Haven’t people back then heard of the Stockholm Syndrome? And sure, taking an oath to obey your lord is a something some people might have taken seriously, but so is NOT laying down your arms and opening the castle gates to an army made up of people who betrayed and slaughtered your king and a bunch of your people. No reason not to have Edmure convince the Blackfish to take the Brienne deal. Then everyone actually gets something out of it. And the Blackfish dying pointlessly is just more stupidity.
I think this was literally the Worst. Episode. Ever. Granted, it’s still GoT so it had some great stuff such as the Hound axe-murdering some guys and the touching scene with Tyrion and G&M and joke-telling.
Yes. Here’s the scene in which she gets rid of all her belongings, and her throwing her money into the water (which wasn’t nearly as much as she offered to the Westerosi captain) is explicitly shown.
Also, I’d forgotten that the Faceless Men already knew about Needle.
Pretty sure they’ve never even heard of Stockholm.