Well, yeah. That totally fits her character to be like that.
Yeah, you might be right. Maybe he hadn’t pissed her off yet. Either way, it’s not a plot hole or anything.
And from what we’ve seen of Arya v. Brienne, how do you think that would turn out? Someone’s going to end up dead in that matchup, and in either outcome the winner is Littlefinger.
We’ve seen Arya and Brienne spar. If it came down to a full-on fight Brienne would destroy Aria in a 1v1. Aria is no slouch to be sure but she relies on people underestimating her. Brienne knows what Arya can do now and Brienne is one of the preeminent swordspeople in the world.
Arya is much more dangerous in the shadows.
I agree Littlefinger is the winner if it comes to this.
Did Arya ever find out Tywin was behind the Red Wedding? He didn’t brag about it, really. Jaime and Tyrion knew. And of course Roose and Walder. But I’m not sure who else.
If I recall correctly, Littlefinger discusses it with Tywin while Arya is present.
I don’t think they do. Arya and Tywin are in Harrenhall in season 2. I believe they obliquely reference Tywin making a forced march to King’s Landing to repel Stannis, but the Red Wedding was a way off and it was super close to the vest anyway. Baelish wasn’t involved.
You’re right. Just rewatched. Baelish proposes to arrange the marriage of Margery and Joffrey, and conveys the offer he made to Caetlyn about the trade of the Stark daughters. Nothing about the Red Wedding.
I think you are seriously underestimating Arya here. She faced Brienne barehanded, grinned at her, and fought her to a draw. In an open fighting area where Brienne would have the most advantage.
If Arya decides to kill Brienne, Brienne is gonna die. If Brienne decided to kill Arya, honor would demand that she face her and ask for surrender first, given away the advantage of surprise. And Brienne is no good at stealth anyway. So Arya probably still wins.
And then Littlefinger has about 5 minutes to live.
But I don’t think that’s what was going on anyway. Littlefinger was suggesting that Brienne be a moderator, or facilitator, or counselor for the two of them. She is sworn to protect both, and therefore she can be trusted to be impartial. He was suggesting that Sansa seek her counsel. And of course, that Brienne would also protect Sansa if Arya or anyone else went after her. At least, that’s what I got out of it.
But that makes it more difficult to understand why Sansa sent Brienne away.
Wielding a (small) sword and (magic steel) dagger is barehanded? 
I read it as Littlefinger suggesting that Sansa use Brienne to kill or eliminate Arya. Sansa then sends her away, sensing littlefinger is trying to manipulate her, thus removing one of his pieces.
Hopefully that’s correct, because a lot of the other explanations means that the characters are acting inconsistent, which is basically poor writing all the way down.
Littlefinger is trying to get Brienne out of the way so Sansa could, if she wanted, take direct action against Arya without Brienne there to stop her.
Near the end of the match, Brienne knocked Arya’s sword out of her hand. The dagger was sheathed. Arya smiled, then dodged a swing, moved in close while pulling her dagger, and put it to Brienne’s throat just as Brienne put her sword to Arya’s: a draw.
But it was a draw that started with one person holding a sword, and the other with nothing in her hands.
Not if they are face-to-face and not if Brienne is committed to the fight.
A sparring session is by definition holding back. Knocking Arya’s sword out of her hand could well have been removing Arya’s hand/arm from her body.
If you want to call it a draw where both are dead (as the sparring session implied had they gone the last step) fine. Seems a loss for Arya to me and a win for Brienne in that case (in terms of the chess value of the pieces they are on the Game of Thrones board it is a good sacrifice).
Brienne’s handicap will be her extreme unwillingness to fully commit to a fight which could be all the opening Arya would need.
All that said if Arya goes to assassin mode and avoids a face-to-face confrontation then Brienne is dead.
I think you’re right.
During the show, I didn’t understand what Littlefinger was implying, but let’s break it down:
“She’s sworn to protect both of Catelyn Stark’s girls. Did she not?”
It’s obvious she’s sworn to protect Sansa, so LF is reminding Sansa that Brienne will protect Arya.
“And if one of you were planning to harm the other in any way, wouldn’t she be honor bound to intercede?”
So if Sansa has devious plans for Arya, Brienne will interfere. LF is letting Sansa know that she needs to do something about Brienne if she plans to take action against Arya.
I think Sansa sent Brienne away to play along with Littlefinger … for now.
A couple of lessons with a showboat, a bit of exercise on her own and some months of serious training with a stick don’t turn you into an expert sword fighter. And while we can explain this away by calling it “magic”, it’s harder to do the same with the fight that we witnessed.
Arya’s Needle wouldn’t be of much use against a longsword*, her reach is far smaller that Brienne’s and since Tormund’s crush is in armour, only the joints and her head are vulnerable, which gives her a serious advantage, especially considering the height difference.
Arya has to go really close to do the one attack her smallsword is good for: a stab. Any failure makes her vulnerable, a success against a joint as well since this can easily lead to a stuck Needle.
Besides, Arya twirls. You don’t twirl. You just don’t. It’s stupid, and the show used to know it. [Of course, sword twirling is worse]
Arya has turned into a walking fantasy cliche. She is just … boring.
- and lets not forget that the sword Brienne uses in a serious fight is supposedly made of a far superior material, able to cut through normal steel with ease.
I have no idea why Arya would kill Brienne. Surely she’s not really going to go full psycho, I think her increasingly unbalanced demeanor is just in service of the manufactured conflict-with-Sansa-while-Littlefinger-twirls-his-moustache storyline.
And having saved Tormund from certain death, there’s no way this cliched writing will now fail to deliver at least one more Tormund-Brienne encounter, so Brienne has inch-thick plot armor at least temporarily. I suspect that our plus-sized lovebirds will not ultimately ride off into the sunset together, but we need to ramp up the sexual tension a little more before delivering their fighting heroics.
In any event, why does anyone think Arya is going to fight anyone “fairly” face-to-face? Surely we’ve established that Arya’s modus operandi is Faceless Man assassin. Get close looking like someone non-threatening, stab 'em in the eye.
Very likely. Though if we find out that the sisters conspired to mislead Littlefinger, the scene with Sansa finding Arya’s faces doesn’t make any sense within such a plot. In that case, it only served to mislead the audience - which happens on plenty of shows, but its almost habitual use doesn’t make it less illogical or annoying.
I wouldn’t mind to see those two survive, actually I’d prefer to see most of the 2nd tier characters live through the crisis and kill off all the main protagonists instead.
But, yeah, it’s unlikely.
I’ve ranted about this episode too much already, but this was another annoyance I think no-one’s mentioned yet.
Tormund talking about a girl he likes, but she doesn’t like him back right now, was so pathetic, much worse than “dick…I like it”. People with as much experience as Mr T is supposed to have don’t talk that way.
So that (not a) relationship has already transitioned from funny and charming for me, to an out-of-character lame attempt at sitcom.
One thing that did bother me about this episode because once again I cant tell if its the writers trying to tell us something, or just poor writing.
Jon kills the WW, all the wights die but one which immediately goes into “fear for its life mode” something that is 87345% out of character for every other wight we have ever seen on the show. It was so heavy handed that it broke suspension of disbelief when I saw it, I think that was the writers attempt to tell us it was a trap set up by the NK himself. If so then he had better be revealed to have some way to predict the future or at least be able to do the things Bran can do.
It also annoyed me that Tormund, of all people, claimed that his people died because of Mance Rayder’s pride.
The Brothers would have never opened the gates for the wildlings before the attack, no matter what Mance would have told them.
When Stannis’ cavalry swept over them, Mance’s quick surrender was all he needed to do to save his people from being slaughtered.
After he became Stannis’ prisoner, his decision not to bend the knee was meant to save his people from turning into the king’s cannon fodder in the wars to come. It wasn’t pride that led him to the stake.
If there is one character who lived and died to break the wheel, it was Mance.