Arya vs. the Waif

[King Louis II (KLII)]

So at the end it was bad writing and bad directing in my opinion.  What is a shame is that the same storyline could have been 100 times better with 2 small modifications in the direction of last episode :

1- If Arya was walking more carefully, afraid of being spotted. Talking with the sailors with less arrogance.

2- Having the waif stabbed her once. She would still bleed, will still have drama. 

Sad to see bad direction ruins a subplot that had good potential.

[FingerlittleGood]

The only thing that bothers me about the entire Arya character is the amount of time she has spent learning to become no one... So she has trained all this time to become a faceless assassin and face change but will never use this skill? I think it would have been better to 1. Kill Jaqen and steal faces or maybe just steal faces and escape... If she never face changes then the entire training and time was wasted, but hopefully she will kill and take her own faces when she gets home 

[ToTheWolves]

42 minutes ago, King Louis II (KLII) said:

So at the end it was bad writing and bad directing in my opinion.  What is a shame is that the same storyline could have been 100 times better with 2 small modifications in the direction of last episode :

1- If Arya was walking more carefully, afraid of being spotted. Talking with the sailors with less arrogance.

2- Having the waif stabbed her once. She would still bleed, will still have drama. 

Sad to see bad direction ruins a subplot that had good potential.

This

[Banjo]

6 hours ago, Phill P said:

Exactly. And if you ever find yourself dead just get some red woman to mumble over you for a bit

As I said, difference between foreshadowing, setting the rule up ahead of the game and some random nonsense at the last minute = difference between a good fantasy book and some junk.

 

I will give you an example. Nightfall by Asimov is considered one of the best science fiction stories of all time. The premise (and spoilers) is that there is a planet which has 6 suns and hence the people have never seen darkness. Once in every thousand years all suns set and there is an eclipse which makes the planet truly dark. Everything from there is based on this premise, how ordinary human beings would react in such a situation. What happens at nightfall and how people react is the story. Now suddenly if in the last few paragraphs, Asimov had something like, well the men all also had radar and echo location built in, so the darkness didn't affect them, that would be bad story telling. You can argue that a planet with six suns can produce people with dormant abilities. However that would spoil entirely the impact of the story.

 

Or take Kafka's metamorphosis where the main character turn into a giant insect. Again, the impact of the story is because we get to know that once the premise has been set, how does the main character deal with it. You can argue that once a giant insect has been introduced, you can have ginat lizards and spiders. However, the reason the story is so effective is that because after the ridiculous premise, it shows real human reactions to such things

 

 

[Greg B]

5 hours ago, Survivor92 said:

Areo Hotah dying by one stab in the back from a small blade and Arya easily surviving two stabs (with a twist!) and a slash, is inconsistent and an immersion breaker. Just in this season we have two major deaths by a single stab each (Roose and Areo), yet we're supposed to believe Arya can chase the Waif one day after being stabbed twice?

Yes. Based on my admittedly inexpert internet research, the damage inflicted by a stab wound is entirely dependent on where it lands. As far as I can tell, there is no inconsistency at all between a big man being killed quickly by a single stab wound and a slender girl surviving two stab wounds with little more than lingering soreness. It's all a matter of what parts are cut. If we'd seen the Waif go up under the ribs to the heart like Roose did Rob, we'd have a problem. But the Waif was too overconfident and sadistic for that.

4 hours ago, Survivor92 said:

a. Arya would be so stupid to "walk around like a rich person", in the open, throw around money (with her right hand?) and not see the Waif's attack coming

b. If she somehow did anticipate the Waif would attack her, then she's incredibly stupid for putting so much faith in the Waif giving her a non-fatal stab

c. The Waif is such a worthless assassin that she can't fatally wound or finish off Arya

a. Arya knows she's not going to escape Braavos without settling up with the FM. She anticipates the Waif will come after her. How this plays out all depends on which of them has a better read on the other. The Waif thinks she knows Arya after all those question-and-caning scenes; she's wrong. Arya knows the Waif.

b. Arya is not a pre-cognitive masterplanning supervillain like, say, LF or Varys and Illyrio in the books. The best she can do is devise a plan that exploits the Waif's failings; the plan still carries terrible risks. She may lose. She may die. There's no guarantee she'll escape Braavos alive. My read on what happened is that she did not expect to be stabbed on the bridge -- she expected to be sighted and shadowed. But she still knew there was a chance the Waif would try to do her right there, so she picked her spot well -- a spot with an excellent escape route. Hopefully, the Waif shadows her and Arya can lead her into the trap. If not, she has a contingency plan.

c. The Waif is physically skilled. Her failings are psychological. She's sadistic and emotionally invested in murdering Arya. JH gave her one command when he greenlit the murder: Don't let Arya suffer. The Waif could have killed Arya a hundred different ways and Arya would never have even known what hit her. That's how a FM would have done it. The Waif wants to look her in the eye, twist the knife, and watch her die slowly. And even when Arya survives the first attack and escapes, she's a wounded, weak little highborn girl, so the Waif remains fatally overconfident. She follows along as Arya leads her into the trap, relishing the delusion that she's stalking her prey. She remains sneeringly hateful and overconfident right up to the moment when that candle goes out.

Arya had the right read. The Waif didn't.

[Xarkar]

Thank god this ridiculous storyl ine is FINALLY over.

The only thing Arya learned was that she is in fact Arya, (and apparently she can fight in the dark and cut off faces).  Unfortunately she still sucks at being an assassin.

 

Of course i am sure she will go back to Westeros and be a badass.

[Destiel's Child]

3 hours ago, Darkstream said:

I believe I fell victim to Poe's law when I initially read this. 

forgot the winky 

[Survivor92]

50 minutes ago, Greg B said:

Yes. Based on my admittedly inexpert internet research, the damage inflicted by a stab wound is entirely dependent on where it lands. As far as I can tell, there is no inconsistency at all between a big man being killed quickly by a single stab wound and a slender girl surviving two stab wounds with little more than lingering soreness. It's all a matter of what parts are cut. If we'd seen the Waif go up under the ribs to the heart like Roose did Rob, we'd have a problem. But the Waif was too overconfident and sadistic for that.

a. Arya knows she's not going to escape Braavos without settling up with the FM. She anticipates the Waif will come after her. How this plays out all depends on which of them has a better read on the other. The Waif thinks she knows Arya after all those question-and-caning scenes; she's wrong. Arya knows the Waif.

b. Arya is not a pre-cognitive masterplanning supervillain like, say, LF or Varys and Illyrio in the books. The best she can do is devise a plan that exploits the Waif's failings; the plan still carries terrible risks. She may lose. She may die. There's no guarantee she'll escape Braavos alive. My read on what happened is that she did not expect to be stabbed on the bridge -- she expected to be sighted and shadowed. But she still knew there was a chance the Waif would try to do her right there, so she picked her spot well -- a spot with an excellent escape route. Hopefully, the Waif shadows her and Arya can lead her into the trap. If not, she has a contingency plan.

c. The Waif is physically skilled. Her failings are psychological. She's sadistic and emotionally invested in murdering Arya. JH gave her one command when he greenlit the murder: Don't let Arya suffer. The Waif could have killed Arya a hundred different ways and Arya would never have even known what hit her. That's how a FM would have done it. The Waif wants to look her in the eye, twist the knife, and watch her die slowly. And even when Arya survives the first attack and escapes, she's a wounded, weak little highborn girl, so the Waif remains fatally overconfident. She follows along as Arya leads her into the trap, relishing the delusion that she's stalking her prey. She remains sneeringly hateful and overconfident right up to the moment when that candle goes out.

Arya had the right read. The Waif didn't.

How does this even begin to make sense? There's a reason why so many people created theories about Arya=Waif etc., because this is just bad writing so people didn't want to believe it and were looking for alternatives. Even Unsullied seem to be in an uproar now and are starting to cricitize Arya's plot. Based on your point a, b and c, one thing that immediately doesn't make sense is why Arya isn't carrying Needle with her. Needle isn't such a big sword that you can't hide it.

Also, how does her plan even begin to make sense? So she picked the bridge spot and prepared to wait there? How did she know the Waif would attack her there? What if the Waif would simply wait, track her down and kill her in an alley later? You say Arya "did not expect to be stabbed", but "picked the spot well". To do what, exactly?  Was she just gonna wait there for 24 hours until the ship would depart?  If that was her plan all along, why not hide in that dark place where she blew out the candle?

Secondly, how did she not recognize the Waif when she walked straight towards her? Arya has seen this face before, in fact it was the last thing she saw before she became blind. Why did D&D even put in all these hints (left-handed Arya, same face, unusual walking posture for Arya, etc.) if they're not gonna do anything with it? Anyway, after Arya knew it was the Waif, why didn't she try to defend herself or jump straight into the water? If Needle is somehow too big to carry, why not carry a knife? Why isn't she using any of her skills, like trying to blend it, to outsmart the Waif? If the definition of outsmarting the Waif is, letting herself be stabbed and then conveniently getting accelerated healing, then I call that bad writing.

[Cas Stark]

Arya's walk around turned out to be very similar to all those letters that "Talisa" writing and those weird looks she kept giving, much ado about nothing.  Talisa wasn't a spy, Arya had no plan.  It's just the show trolling the audience because they couldn't come up with anything interesting or suspenseful in the story.

[mattnj81]

I really thought when Arya took the milk of the poppy she would sleep and warg into Nymeria. I was so disappointed when that didn't happen.

[Greg B]

29 minutes ago, Survivor92 said:

How does this even begin to make sense? There's a reason why so many people created theories about Arya=Waif etc., because this is just bad writing so people didn't want to believe it and were looking for alternatives. Even Unsullied seem to be in an uproar now and are starting to cricitize Arya's plot. Based on your point a, b and c, one thing that immediately doesn't make sense is why Arya isn't carrying Needle with her. Needle isn't such a big sword that you can't hide it.

Also, how does her plan even begin to make sense? So she picked the bridge spot and prepared to wait there? How did she know the Waif would attack her there? What if the Waif would simply wait, track her down and kill her in an alley later? You say Arya "did not expect to be stabbed", but "picked the spot well". To do what, exactly?  Was she just gonna wait there for 24 hours until the ship would depart?  If that was her plan all along, why not hide in that dark place where she blew out the candle?

Secondly, how did she not recognize the Waif when she walked straight towards her? Arya has seen this face before, in fact it was the last thing she saw before she became blind. Why did D&D even put in all these hints (left-handed Arya, same face, unusual walking posture for Arya, etc.) if they're not gonna do anything with it? Anyway, after Arya knew it was the Waif, why didn't she try to defend herself or jump straight into the water? If Needle is somehow too big to carry, why not carry a knife? Why isn't she using any of her skills, like trying to blend it, to outsmart the Waif? If the definition of outsmarting the Waif is, letting herself be stabbed and then conveniently getting accelerated healing, then I call that bad writing.

She's not carrying Needle because she doesn't want a standup fight with the Waif. She knows she'll lose a standup fight -- that fact was beaten into her over several episodes. Her only chance is to lure the Waif into a trap, where she can gain the advantage. So there's no point in her carrying the sword, concealed or otherwise, and in fact carrying the sword makes her more likely to die.

As I said, she walked through the streets and waited on the bridge because she wanted the Waif to find her. As I also said, I don't think she was expecting to be attacked -- I think Plan A was "The Waif shadows me, and I lure her into my trap." But the bridge was a good choice of location to set the bait, because it gave her a plausible Plan B (an escape route) if the encounter didn't go as she hoped. I'm just repeating myself, here.

It's not clear to me that Arya didn't recognize the Waif. We're following Arya, but of course the directors are showing us Arya as the Waif sees her. So we don't know, in the moment, if that innocent and unaware expression on Arya's face when the old woman approaches her on the bridge is genuine. In hindsight, we can gather (at least I do) that Arya is playing a role for the Waif's benefit.

Arya didn't "try to defend herself" because she knows she can't win a fair fight against the Waif. The plan -- the only plan -- is to lure the Waif into her trap. If Arya can do that, she wins. If she can't do that, she loses. It's weird to me that your take is "Arya didn't use any of her skills." We know she can't outfight the Waif. So instead, Arya accurately profiled the Waif, set her up, baited her, lured her into a trap, and defeated her in a situation where she had the advantage. Apparently this is not as "skillful" as a knife fight in broad daylight on the bridge? I guess it depends on what kind of skills you want to see her deploy.

[Trollosi]

7 minutes ago, mattnj81 said:

I really thought when Arya took the milk of the poppy she would sleep and warg into Nymeria. I was so disappointed when that didn't happen.

The milk of the poppy taken by Arya was fake. The real one was taken by Arya's writer.

[KhaleesiButton]

10 hours ago, Phill P said:

Indeed. It wasn't as if it wasn't foreshadowed. We saw her hide Needle there in the previous episode, then she led the Waif back there. We saw Lady Crane take down a bottle from the top shelf. It's not too hard to think that this accelerates healing but is clearly only to be used as a last resort, hence the worried look between Lady Crane and the boy who saw her with the bottle. It also makes for a parallel with Sandor, who was left with fatal stomach wounds but got healed, and nobody questioned that.

And Arya didn't use any of her assassin training apart from blind fighting. She used the skills she already had before going to Bravos, which fits with the idea that she never really stopped being herself.

So. I'm pretty sure that "boy" was the waif with a face on and that was immediately prior to Lady Crane getting killed. So whatever was in that magic bottle is irrelevant. 

[JMJ]

Although it's not great writing, I will at this point have to believe Arya's stab wounds missed vital organs. An abdominal stab would risk either rupturing a major vessel - IVC or aorta if deep enough, or even a major branch to one of the vital organs, or more likely intestinal rupture, which is a setup for infection and a slow death. I guess we have to presume those stabs by a supposedly trained assassin missed any of that.

 

[Greg B]

4 minutes ago, KhaleesiButton said:

So. I'm pretty sure that "boy" was the waif with a face on and that was immediately prior to Lady Crane getting killed. So whatever was in that magic bottle is irrelevant. 

Yeah, it was the Waif. I don't think there was any magical or "accelerated" healing. I don't think Ayra's injuries were  that severe. We see this when Lady Crane is treating her. She's not freaking out ("OMG we have to get you to a healer!"). Arya is perfectly lucid and clearly not in shock or in extreme pain. Arya was stabbed in the gut twice with a short, slender blade by someone more intent on torturing her than killing her quickly. Arya didn't hang around to be tortured and thus her injuries weren't that severe.

Again, this is not implausible. I once read a story about a 12-year-old girl who was stabbed nineteen times with a large kitchen knife, including some wounds that damaged major organs. In this story, she not only survived, she crawled through the woods to the road and was able to speak to a passerby and ask for assistance. The predictable punchline, of course, is that this story is true. Given that Arya's injuries are much less severe and she's a fantasy hero, I'm really baffled that her obviously painful and impaired running and jumping is such a strain for so many viewer's suspension of disbelief.

[Trimula]

Wow...............in the end, it was the Waif sightless training of Arya that killed her in the end.  I kind of knew the final fight will take place in darkness.  I know there is a tight $ budget, but just showing a cat in the rafters sitting there could have cost less then $5.  Heck, I have 2 lazy cats in my home they could have use for free.  I think the disappointment fans are feeling, this moment for Arya was cheapen! 

 

my 2 cents

[Dizzy Walker]

 I didn't get a feeling either way on if Arya had planned the whole candle ambush, or if she just used the situation moment to moment to her advantage.. I don't want to be spoon fed,  but I think it is reasonable to have a little more confirmation on a question or two to a multi episode story line. They left this out, so now a little part of Arya's character development is kinda left out there, imho.

After all week of thinking of all kinds of fun plot twists, I am good with what they did.  Arya is Arya and she survived.  But the way they did it left this feeling of being unresolved.  Even though we finally get a Arya is going home moment..  

   is anyone else got tinfoil  out because Jaqen's cheek twitched a little, almost  like a smile when she told him she was going home?  that is huge for a well trained faceless man!              crinkle crinkle crinkle....

now all they have to do is give Oathkeeper to Arya during the next dark Long Night and the shows a wrap!    crinkle crinkle...

 

[sifth]

So what's the deal with Arya's quick healing. She was stabbed 2 or 3 times and after one or two nights rest she's back on her feet jumping around again. This is crap writing if I ever saw it.

[FoyeTwenty Boston]

10 hours ago, Phill P said:

I did say it was probably only to be used as a last resort, hence the worried look between the boy and Lady Crane. You don't keep last resorts immediately to hand, it makes them too tempting to use as first resorts.

This is the second time you, or another person has referenced the little boy like that look was anything of significance about the bottle. It was the waif with a face and her creepy ass scared Lady Crane and then brutally murdered her. I'm sorry but that is all that was.

[Damitol]

4 hours ago, King Louis II (KLII) said:

So at the end it was bad writing and bad directing in my opinion.  What is a shame is that the same storyline could have been 100 times better with 2 small modifications in the direction of last episode :

1- If Arya was walking more carefully, afraid of being spotted. Talking with the sailors with less arrogance.

2- Having the waif stabbed her once. She would still bleed, will still have drama. 

Sad to see bad direction ruins a subplot that had good potential.

I agree completely.  The arrogant and clueless stroll around Bravos were bad acting and direction choices.  As to the fight, she seemed to have the initial slash across her stomach then the two stabs and the twisting knife.  If her training had kicked in after that first slash and she blocked the Waif and jumped into the canal before being stabbed, the drama and blood would have still been there since we wouldn't know how badly she was hurt.  Then - last night could have played out exactly the same, with maybe Lady Crane saying it wasn't a deep wound, but to be careful or risk the bleeding starting again.  Then -  the jumping and running would have been so much more believable.  It was the two stabs and twist that made last night's acrobatics, let alone her ability to simply stand up without help and intense pain, hard to believe.