I can’t speak for others, but what disappointed me so much were the chase scenes.
I had a minimally invasive hernia operation several years ago. I could barely walk for several days. Arya was running full speed and leaping and dodging a few hours (and if it wasn’t just a few hours, they should have made that clear) after being stabbed with a foot-long knife. (If you have a DVR, look at it frame by frame – it’s literally a foot long. The Waif drove it in to the hilt. There would have been several inches sticking out of Arya’s back. And then she twisted it. Unless the people of Westeros are a different species, it is anatomically impossible for Arya not to have had some major organs lacerated. She would have bled out in minutes.)
Last week, after watching the stabbing in slow motion and freeze frame, I thought it was ridiculous that she could stagger through the streets as long as she did. This week, it completely took me out of the show to watch her leaping and sprinting a few hours later.
And as many have noted, the Waif ran like the android in the Terminator movies, and Arya hit every chase scene cliche, from the upset fruit stands to sliding under the cart. To be fair, they somehow missed having two guys carrying a large pane of glass in her path.
If I were a writer for SNL and wanted to spoof GOT, I would have written a chase scene just like that.
What reason did she have to be overconfident? up until their last meeting she had done nothing but get her ass kicked by the waif. She was also very clearly warned that she would be killed if she failed her mission. It simply does not make one lick of sense for her to be wandering around like she doesn’t have a single care in the world.
I posted some info above about how abdominal stab wounds are like 15% fatal. Your intestines tend to move out of the way of stuff as slow as a knife. It’s certainly possible she didn’t have significant organ damage. I agree the chase could have been better, but it told the story well enough.
In the GoT world, they’re almost certain to be fatal in a short time. Maester Luwin and Jojen Reed received similar wounds and they were mercy-killed without question by people who cared for them almost immediately.
I’ve seen feeble attempts, along the line of Sam Stone’s with the idea she should have whispered into the Captian’s ear, “I’m a tradesperson, I would like to secure steerage accommodations. Tell no one!”
It’s easy to say, “You’ve already been told.” Take ten seconds, and explain it as you understand it.
Presumably they got the bowels. Also, a sword wound. You can’t just generalize about abdomen wounds. They could kill you in seconds, or kill in in days, or you can survive.
From where she was stabbed, the Waif would have gotten Arya’s bowels. And the people on the show are so sure such wounds are fatal they mercy kill anyone who receives them.
Pardon, but that’s almost certainly not true. In that cite I posted above it mentions that blades tend to push the intestines out of the way.
I’m finding it weird that you’re assuming all abdomen wounds are the same, and worth a mercy killing. Robert Baratheon’s wound was such that you could smell shit. He was totes gonna die. The evidence is that Arya’s didn’t puncture her bowels, because she isn’t septic.
If so, why was the Waif so incredibly incompetent so as not to inflict a fatal wound when she had taken Arya totally by surprise?
You can’t have it both ways. Either way it’s stupid: That the Waif didn’t know her business, or that Arya survived what should have been a fatal wound.
And that’s why it’s bad writing. No matter how you try to explain it, you end up with stupidity on the other end. Just the incredible contortions you’re going through trying to explain this stuff makes my point.
You’re underselling your cite, the study found the 95% confidence interval for all stab wounds to the abdomen to be between 3% and 9%. Of course everyone in the study received proper 1950s style hospital attention, and “People who died before reaching hospital are NOT counted.” So the Westeros rate is likely to be much, much higher than the 1950s Memphis Tennessee rate.
It’s a challenge coin signifying Arya’s link to the organisation rather than a piece of currency.
I think that’s motion blur, because that knife in the screencap is coming out so as to be sideways. Here I did a few more. I know the scene you’re talking about, for one frame it’s smeared out, and does appear longer, but it really seems to be a shorter knife. In the bottom pic there is a view of the knife in the Waif’s hand held pointing down in the long shot.
Because she was overconfident, and arrogant, and wanted Arya to suffer, and know it was her before dealing the death blow. She took her mask off, and leered at her after all.
No, it can also be the Waif was trying to cause suffering.
