Arya and the Waif !?

[TickTak7]

The Faceless Men clearly are emotionless, and have trained Arya to drop her grudges & let go of her past. 

Yet The Waif seems to hold a massive grudge against Arya pretty much from the first time we met her. 

Why is Arya subjected to a set standard by the Many Faced God, and yet The Waif has her own set of rules and standards? 

Arya is forced to drop her grudges (her list) or is beaten by a stick. The Waif holds long-standing grudges against Arya, and is rewarded by being sent to kill her?

Makes no damn sense to me. I'm so fed up with Arya's story line & it's complete lack of meaningful progression - she's done nothing for a season and a half. 

The writing here has been sloppy and pathetic. 

[Net-Viper X]

I never took it as a grudge, they are just making life a living hell for Arya to see how bad she wants to join them. That's why they left her standing outside when she first arrived, and its why they have abused her since. Its to be sure a new applicant is willing to endure any hardship and weed out the weak and un-dedicated. Arya is in assassin boot camp right now and they are doing their best to break her down and build her back up as no-one.

That being said I do think that Jaquen has probably been more tolerant of Arya's lapses than he would be of others on account of her saving him from the fire. This is making the other girl Jealous and causing her to actually feel emotion when she is torturing Arya, rather than just doing it as part of her job as a trainer.

I also think the other girl is just an advanced student and not an actual faceless man yet. You might think of her helping to train Arya as part of her internship.

[Pandean]

6 hours ago, TickTak7 said:

The Faceless Men clearly are emotionless, and have trained Arya to drop her grudges & let go of her past. 

Yet The Waif seems to hold a massive grudge against Arya pretty much from the first time we met her. 

Why is Arya subjected to a set standard by the Many Faced God, and yet The Waif has her own set of rules and standards? 

Arya is forced to drop her grudges (her list) or is beaten by a stick. The Waif holds long-standing grudges against Arya, and is rewarded by being sent to kill her?

Makes no damn sense to me. I'm so fed up with Arya's story line & it's complete lack of meaningful progression - she's done nothing for a season and a half. 

The writing here has been sloppy and pathetic. 

I was honestly thinking the same thing. The Waif in the books is totally different from the Waif in the show. This Waif seems to have a clear grudge against Arya and looks like she will enjoy killing her--when to them killing is supposed to be an emotionless, religious act.

[TickTak7]

47 minutes ago, Net-Viper X said:

I never took it as a grudge, they are just making life a living hell for Arya to see how bad she wants to join them. That's why they left her standing outside when she first arrived, and its why they have abused her since. Its to be sure a new applicant is willing to endure any hardship and weed out the weak and un-dedicated. Arya is in assassin boot camp right now and they are doing their best to break her down and build her back up as no-one.

 

The line the Waif gives to Jaqen - along the lines of "you promised me" - suggested that she has a very personal issue with Arya. 

The same sort of personal issue that isn't really isn't allowed by the Faceless Men. 

[Xarkar]

Plot Twist...

Arya and the Waif changed faces when Arya was blind...

She now has the opportunity to kill the Waif, and take back her own face!

[Xarkar]

I also never understood the set of rules.

Jaqen promised Arya she could offer up people on her list to the red god.  This implies the list is OK.

Yet as soon as she gets there she has to give up the list.

None of it makes sense.

[HellasLEAF]

Don't bother trying to figure out the many faced god story line.

It's so ridiculous.  

And after all that Arya bails on the cult with needle in hand.  Which, again, seams bizarre after seeing the powers he possess.  I mean, surely turning her back on them means only a matter of time before they kill her no?  Unless the waif is the only means of retribution here..

[Greg B]

Maybe Arya was never the one being tested. Maybe she was the test.

[TickTak7]

The pay-off for Arya wasting all of season 5 and half of season 6 with the Faceless Men HAS TO BE more than just killing the Waif and then fleeing Braavos, right? 

I mean - surely that's not what they've built all of this for? 

Maybe she takes the Waif's spot as Jaqen's right hand girl? Maybe she steals some faces for use later before she leaves? There HAS to be something more, surely ?!

 

1 hour ago, Xarkar said:

 

None of it makes sense.

Nail on the head

[Direwight]

It'd make sense if the Waif didn't clearly display a grudge even when alone with Jaqen. But since she does, the only thing that would make sense would be that it's also a test for her, and she's failing it.

If I wanted to be charitable, I'd theorize that contrary to what she's supposed to do, the Waif will try to kill Arya in a painful and malicious manner, at which point Jaqen will interfere and kill her instead, because all things considered, she's failing worse than Arya. Jaqen gets soft, bends the rules a bit and lets Arya go, knowing that he himself will be getting a poison dart to the neck for it when he goes back to the HoBaW, which we see happen.

[RedShirt47]

1 hour ago, Direwight said:

It'd make sense if the Waif didn't clearly display a grudge even when alone with Jaqen. But since she does, the only thing that would make sense would be that it's also a test for her, and she's failing it.

If I wanted to be charitable, I'd theorize that contrary to what she's supposed to do, the Waif will try to kill Arya in a painful and malicious manner, at which point Jaqen will interfere and kill her instead, because all things considered, she's failing worse than Arya. Jaqen gets soft, bends the rules a bit and lets Arya go, knowing that he himself will be getting a poison dart to the neck for it when he goes back to the HoBaW, which we see happen.

That was my thinking too. The Waif is quite young so likely still in training herself.

I assume the grudge is due to Arya just turning up and being really good after a short time whilst the Waif could have been training for three or four years and had much slower progress.

I could see Jaqen turning up and helping Arya in the fight and afterwards telling her to leave Bravos and never return.

[rayarts]

The show-Waif's got to go, it's really nothing of what the FM should be. At this point, I don't care. I just hope that Arya's tiny bit

of training that she got, is enough to do sth RELEVANT when she returns to Westeros. 

[Lemore]

9 hours ago, Xarkar said:

Plot Twist...

Arya and the Waif changed faces when Arya was blind...

She now has the opportunity to kill the Waif, and take back her own face!

That would be quite cool lol but we saw Arya recover needle and show emotion at the play involving her family so unlikely haha

[a black swan]

Unless the Waif is the second part of her test? Unless Jaqen has more up his sleeve.... why did he care if Arya suffered or not at the hands of the Waif? He mourned losing her many gifts? He knows things that happened to Arya ever since she got to KL. I think he has been watching her since then and has his own agenda. The actor that plays Jaqen confirmed recently that Arya meeting Jaqen was not random. 

[dbunting]

The whole FM and House of Black and White is just a plot device to show Arya getting training to be an assassin so she can get involved in the wars to come and be believable. Imagine Arya had basically pulled a Rickon and was off screen for a few years then comes back a killing machine, would she seem realistic?

She gets there as a young girl in the books and show, she learns some skills and realizes that this isn't for her. She then kills someone, or refuses to kill someone and leaves the FM training. In the books it is said that she has a choice and can leave(not sure how far into the training), this hasn't been mentioned in the show.

[Letrax]

9 hours ago, Xarkar said:

I also never understood the set of rules.

Jaqen promised Arya she could offer up people on her list to the red god.  This implies the list is OK.

Yet as soon as she gets there she has to give up the list.

It becomes less incongruous if you forego the assumption that this Faceless Man is Jaqen H'ghar.

I rewatched the entire series before the sixth season started, and I noticed one interesting thing: The name "Jaqen H'ghar" hasn't been used since Arya knocked on the door and asked for him. The person who's wearing Jaqen's face has never referred to their time on the Kingsroad and in Harrenhal, and Arya hasn't really done any reminiscing either.

Keep in mind that Jaqen was never at the House of Black and White in the books. The showrunners decided to change that and bring back Tom Wlaschiha though, because it was a familiar face and probably makes it easier for the casual viewers to relate to this person that Arya trains under (plus that there already were some scattered theories that it was the same person).

I think that this Faceless Man, after hearing from Arya that she was looking for Jaqen H'ghar, decided to adopt his face (which Jaqen had already dropped at the end of the Harrenhal storyline), both to learn more about Arya and her relationship to the original Jaqen (well, original from our point-of-view at least), and to facilitate her training – it should be easier for her to trust in someone who appears familiar to her. Although I believe that Arya, on either a conscious or a subconscious level, realizes that it's not him and therefore doesn't bring up their past experiences.

Remember that scene in the last season finale, when Jaqen seemingly killed himself and then the Waif suddenly became Jaqen? That confusing nightmare-like scene becomes easier to process if you decide that "Jaqen" is just a convenient face that the Faceless Men use while they're dealing with Arya. At least one of them already wore a false face in that scene, but I think both of them did.

So with that assumption foregone, it becomes easier to deal with the inconsistencies in "Jaqen's" rules and behavior, between then and now (it's not a theory that I'm dead certain about; I'm just choosing to believe it for now since it seems to work quite well). Although there are still other problems with the show's version of this storyline, most obviously the Waif's attitude.

[Nymeria-of-Royne]

I don't think Arya had an agenda when she showed up at the door of the house of black and white. But she was game to become a faceless man because she was consumed with one purpose, "revenge." She lost her purpose for revenge after she killed Meryn Trant. Then her purpose became, "becoming a faceless man." probably because she was blind and all she could think of was how she could survive in a world of darkness. The whole time there's been this odd rivalry with The Waif. I don't know what the Waif has told us in the show but in the books we know the Waif is from a house of nobility. In the show it has always been apparent the Waif does not particularly like Arya Stark. At present Arya has returned to being herself. Why would Jaquen send Arya to observe this play about her family and kill an actor who "plays" the wicked Cersei, from her list, but IRL is a kind good person? This was not be chance. What Jaquen says to Arya is proof of this. He says something about "does death only take with him the wicked?" Arya gives up all this time with intention to be a faceless man and regains her true purpose from an important decision to go back to her original intentions to kill the people from her list. The Waif at some point talks about being a child of nobility. But the waif is overtly angry and particularly hostile towards Arya. At some point Arya mentions the Walder Frey from her kill list. We see the Waif's face. Could be coincidence but I have always believed the Waif comes from a house that does not favor the Starks and this is what fuels her dislike for Arya. in the last scene the Waif tells jaquen what happened and he says, "pity..bla bla.." I think the Waif believes she's going to kill Arya, but it will be Arya who smashes the Waif and we'll find out more on who the waif is/was and where exactly she came from. I also believe Jaquen knows all this.

[valirpaz]

This sounds like a very good theory to me!

[lakin1013]

While there are some good theories here, look at the walls of text to explain this.  If viewers have to work that hard to overcome show inconsistencies, maybe none of this really matters.  Arya has needle, may fight with the waif, then moves on.  Perhaps later Arya will need the skills she learned here.  

 

[Ludo Kressh]

I just see it as a transition for her character: gain some kickass assassin skills and a few other tricks and break away and move on. Sure, they drew it out a bit(we could have done with a lot less Arya getting beat up by the Waif scenes), but it showed us how determined Arya is to kill the people on her list. I never really thought she'd truly become no one; it wouldn't advance her character anymore and be a dead end.

The one thing that does confuse me is the Waif's attitude towards her; she's pretty much had it in for Arya since Arya walked through the black and white weirwood doors of the House. There's some backstory there that's not being told and it's a little confusing because the Waif should be like all the other FM: without emotion.