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Question re: Arya and the Faceless Men


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To me the purpose of the Arya plot in this episode was to show us that although she still understands how it is "human" to feel the need for revenge when one has been emotionally severely hurt (what she said to Lady Crane) she is now aware that this needs to be tempered with rationality and empathy.  I was beginning to worry at some point in the books and show that she was loosing an important part of her humanity but of course that was what we were meant to fear.  Another important factor, as I see it, is that although in some circumstances and to some people "the end might justify the means" blind obedience or even fanaticism (like the Melissandre antics) are not the correct answer :) In fact I think George has been building us up to cry out for revenge by us identifying with characters who might be going through this emotional state but I feel that there is also a strong warning to the reader.  To me the typical example, or call it clue was the Oberyn episode with the Mountain.  In both books and show he was clearly winning but he was so blinded by the need for retribution and justice that he paid with his life.  On that occasion my thoughts went to Tyrion in that I wanted to shake him (when he was sort of breaking down in Essos and swearing all sorts of nonesense) because I thought "you've had the warning, mate; if you continue in this vein, that will happen to you too, or at the very least you will self-destroy."  He seems to have come out that high horse at least a bit and I was very glad to hear that so has Arya.  I have always viewed the FM as something that she had to experience but to me the real test as her arch is concerned was to severe all ties with them.  No doubt she will, at some future point, be tempted to get in touch with them to serve her purposes but to me they basically represent temptation (a sort of antagonist really) and I believe she can only succeed by staying well clear of them but of course once again this is just my interpretation...

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36 minutes ago, The Handsome Man said:

And I agree with the comment above re: the Faceless Men in the show:  on the one hand they are this mystical cult of assassins yet an understudy actress, visiting the city, can hire them?  Sure, she may have paid a different "price", but at least take 1-2 lines of dialogue to explain that.

No one has confirmed that the actress hired the Faceless Men. It could have been the Waif behind it or a test from Jaqen. Maybe even one of the other actors. That or we discover that Lady Crane is more evil then we thought. Or just cheated Death somehow. 

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1 minute ago, missingm said:

No one has confirmed that the actress hired the Faceless Men. It could have been the Waif behind it or a test from Jaqen. Maybe even one of the other actors. That or we discover that Lady Crane is more evil then we thought. Or just cheated Death somehow. 

My money is on she cheated death somehow

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33 minutes ago, Greg B said:

Am I the only one who thinks Jaqen already knows Arya is going to kill the Waif? I think he's fine with it -- actually, I think it's the Waif who is in the process of learning a hard lesson. Why would Jaqen "promise" to let the Waif kill Arya if she failed? That's a setup. When he's giving the Waif "permission," Jaqen says something like, "It's a shame. She has many gifts." Maybe it's just me, but "gifts" is a loaded word for the FM. It reminded me of Melisandre seeing the darkness in Arya, and in the darkness all the eyes she would close forever. I think Jaqen recognizes Arya as a servant of the Many-Faced God and her trials were just to determine whether she would serve Him as "no one" or as Arya Stark. She'll serve either way. Valar dohaeris.

Agree. Here and with WQA. The Waif shouldn't have such an investment in hating Arya if she's indeed a FM. So, yes to the hard lesson. Keep in mind also that the pronoun ambiguity in the "she" of many gifts could also be the Waif. 

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Maybe it is all a set up.


What if Lady Crane is a FM, and the whole thing is a test.   Jaqen knows she will fail?

Didnt anyone else find it odd when Lady Crane asked who Arya was.  

 

Maybe Arya needs to learn another lesson, which is completed by killing the Waif?  

 

Her story is just so rushed.  She really has not gained a 'lot" of skills, in her time there.  She is mediocre with a staff, and cant blend in (Lady Crane notices her behind the scene).

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I do not think they are going to say anything more about who hired the FM for the job of killing the actress.  That's part of the problem some of us are voicing here: there is a disjointed feel to the whole Arya in Braavos/FM plot line in the show  - something that is all the more frustrating give how those chapters in the books are, to me, some of the best written in the series (and how fantastic the Arya scenes are in Seasons 1-4 of the show).

I am hoping we will see some of Arya's skills come togeher and be put on display in the escape from Braavos/showdown with the Waif. Otherwise, her time in Braavos would not seem well spent.  Maybe she even steals a face or two to take with her.  The showrunners must be moving toward Arya coming back to exact some revenge.  I am sure I am not alone in wanting it to be on the Freys -- but if, as discussed elsewhere, that is reserved for LSH, there is not much left for Arya save for Kings Landing. 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Xarkar said:

Her story is just so rushed.  She really has not gained a 'lot" of skills, in her time there.  She is mediocre with a staff, and cant blend in (Lady Crane notices her behind the scene).

She seems to do really well when she's killing for her own reasons (Polliver, Meryn Trant), not so well when she's pretending to be no one. Hmm.

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2 minutes ago, Greg B said:

She seems to do really well when she's killing for her own reasons (Polliver, Meryn Trant), not so well when she's pretending to be no one. Hmm.

Do we also remember when Jaqen (the first one) told her she could kill everyone on her list?

Before he gave her the coin he says she could offer all the names on her lips to the red god.

Yet when she is training to be a FM, she is punished for taking the wrong life....

 

Maybe the whole thing is a test, and killign the waif is the final one.  Maybe the FM do have some morals... What if the test for killing Lady Crane was actually PASS by not killing her (IE her life did not need to be taken).

 

 

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2 hours ago, tallTale said:

Anyone else notice that Arya was able to defeat the Waif in combat when she was blind? But when she regained her eyesight Arya got wrecked. I wonder if that will play out when they meet again.

The best thing I can make out of it is that Arya, when she could see again, was testing the waif. In the books Tyrion several times played and lost a chess-like game with a man to find out about his tactics and eventually beat him when Tyrion started to play at "full force". So Arya could be testing the waif and see how she reacts etc to eventually gain all the knowledge to be able to beat her. But seriously, it really looked just like the waif beat Arya's ass because she is simply better, so I don't know, because it doesn't make much sense for someone to beat someone else while blind and then being unable to do it again while seeing. Maybe only if the waif was underestimating her way too much while she was blind...

 

24 minutes ago, missingm said:

No one has confirmed that the actress hired the Faceless Men. It could have been the Waif behind it or a test from Jaqen. Maybe even one of the other actors. That or we discover that Lady Crane is more evil then we thought. Or just cheated Death somehow. 

Yeah, I think that the Sansa actress didn't hire the FM. Arya just thinks it. I'll go with Jaqen choosing her herself, probably because she is a nice person to see if Arya would be able to kill her. Lady Crane may be a FM herself? And it's just a test. We don't know what poison Arya uses. In one of the earlier episodes Jaqen gives Arya a poison (or so we are told) to drink to prove if she is a true no one. Maybe they could give her the same poison to kill Lady Crane who would be immune to it but would act as dying. I suppose I'm overthinking it a bit.

 

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1 hour ago, Morgana Lannister said:

I take you are being sarcastic lol but my honest opinion is that I would love to see that damn House of Black and White totally be destroyed a la Dany; that would rock! ;) and no, not that anyone is thinking that but... not to show female power with yet another femme doing this but because I don't think they are any better or any less sinister than those guys with the blue lips in Quarth lol

The needle grants the power, power to the needle :P

This is the most notorious guild in all of the Seven Kingdoms, and there just isn't any hiding anywhere from its death and taxes. Nothing short of the divine retribution from Dany bringing her dragons dooming Braavos, which has a Titan, the god of storms? Bran doing some other magic, or possibly she changes her faces every week a disguise its own worshipers would obviously be aware of, she shouldn't be around long enough for the amount of bulletproof plot armor needed to prop up this murmurery

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2 minutes ago, House Toad said:

The needle grants the power, power to the needle :P

This is the most notorious guild in all of the Seven Kingdoms, but there isn't any hiding anywhere from death and taxes. Nothing short of divine retribution of Dany bring her dragons dooming Braavos, which has a Titan the god of Storms, Bran doing some magic, or  possibly she changes her faces every week, a disguise its own worshipers would be obviously aware, she shouldn't be around long enough for the amount of bulletproof plot armor needed to prop up this murmurery

lol totally agreed but I would certainly cheer if anyone brings them down ;) 

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1 minute ago, Morgana Lannister said:

lol totally agreed but I would certainly cheer if anyone brings them down ;) 

:) I don't know, I like the reaper religion, at least they make sense, haha, death comes for us all. But they are very bad people.

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1 minute ago, House Toad said:

:) I don't know, I like the reaper religion, at least they make sense, haha, death comes for us all. But they are very bad people.

lol wouldn't it just be poetic justice if the White Walkers turned them into Wights?  that would cheat their god for sure *rolls on floor laughing* 

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Ok I have a lot of nitpicks with Arya's story in Ep6 but I'm going to gloss over those and mention something interesting that just occurred to me.

In the final scene when she is getting ready for bed with Needle at her side,  Arya blows out the candle and goes to sleep without reciting her prayer list.  I can't tell if this was just omitted because it's unecesary at this point and they just didn't overthink the scene.  OR if this was deliberate and was done to show that Arya has infact overcome her "self", that her training is actually taking root and she has learned something.

Thoughts?  Maybe she's not actually going to sleep and she's just laying in wait to set a trap but still.   Flames + bedtime + list is her ritual, has been since season 2...

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24 minutes ago, Morgana Lannister said:

lol wouldn't it just be poetic justice if the White Walkers turned them into Wights?  that would cheat their god for sure *rolls on floor laughing* 

It would be funny. But I think there is more to their mythos, possibly suggesting how they have acquired their status as becoming the World Bank and why they have remained figuratively its puppet masters.

Almost assuming that the likes of Varys and Illyrio are a part of a similar cult of magic, as the game changers its movers those spiders slinging their webs. Isn't that really what Braavos is about, as it has the World Bank and a contracted god that kills for the sheer death of it, protected from the Storms, as its players move through the shadows funded by the World's monetary needs.

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There is a definite sense of killing time with Arya's storyline.  I mean when you spread these stories out over 7-8 books 1000 pages each this can happen. 

I'm sure we all want her to remember her Stark heritage and rejoin the fold but the many faces god unless factors into future story lines looking unimportant..

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I'm thinking arya will be hunted by waif, set up a trap where she leans against a wall like when she was begging/ perhaps she's asleep... Then as waif nears in for the kill- Boom! Arya pops up, poking her through the gut....shes been warging the cat, watching her sleeping self.

To me i that would keep in line with the books while also dropping another bombshell to the viewing audience.

I would love to see something along those lines, and a flashback to aryas blindness, where she discovers her talent and uses it to defend herself from waif. That would make sense seeing as she seems to fight better blind than with sight...

 

Feel free to criticise :)

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Arya kills the Waif, wears her face, goes back to Jaqen, kills Jaqen, steals another face from the Hall, shows up again in the season finale, kills someone important with her new face. 

You read it here first, folks. 

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This turn bummed me a bit.  I was actually hoping we would see the full training until she eventually becomes a skilled assassin, and for her path then to intersect with the rest of the story by being given a mission to kill somebody big that we might already know elsewhere.  Alas, I guess the bit with her being unable to let go of Needle really telegraphed that she wouldn't be able to give up her Arya-identity so easily.  I find the faceless men fascinating since they seem to be able to kill anyone in the world flawlessly, and wanted to see into the full repertory of their techniques and deeper into details of their order and religion.  Bah humbug.  Praying that the upcoming book gives her further apprenticeship some more heft with them.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she somehow goes back or that this is a further test, but I don't think that's going to be the way things go.

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1 hour ago, House Toad said:

It would be funny. But I think there is more to their mythos, possibly suggesting how they have acquired their status as becoming the World Bank and why they have remained figuratively its puppet masters.

Almost assuming that the likes of Varys and Illyrio are a part of a similar cult of magic, as the game changers its movers those spiders slinging their webs. Isn't that really what Braavos is about, as it has the World Bank and a contracted god that kills for the sheer death of it, protected from the Storms, as its players move through the shadows funded by the World's monetary needs.

On a serious note, this makes a hell of a lot of sense.  Kicking myself hard for having missed the connection in the books!!!  Thanks for pointing it out (even if it is just a theory) because I really endorse this theory or did I miss something and this is actually canon?  

Varys is very wary of magic (for understandable reasons lol) but I get the feeling that we will get to learn more about that too.  Now, hell, all I remember from the books is that people shit themselves when Cersei came up with the revelation that she wasn't paying them for now... and her advisors kind of freaked out.  They said it was because they would just go (the bank) and support other contenders to the throne but I reckon that is definitely not their only method, wow, how could I be so blind!!!  and of course our dearest Petyr got well and truly indebted to them as has Stannis...Yes, yes, yes, we are definitely going to see more about them.  Both organisations (FM and Bank of Bravoos) sound worse than all the Lannisters, Tyrells and High Sparrow put together but great, great potential plot.  Now, I doubt they would order Arya to kill Cersei (despite her being on the list) because I think Cersei's arc will pan out differently but someone is certainly going to be in big shit.  Now with Arya my view is that is she kills the Waif, the debt is paid and she should be able to walk free but then I have now demonstrated what a Tommen like naive reader I am lol

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