Crackpot - what if Arya´s arc is not what it seems?

[NutBurz]

Just an entertaining thought - what if Arya´s relation with the Waif is a big homage to the genre best represented by Fight Club? I´m fairly sure this must have come up in the past, sorry if it´s repetitive.

 

My hypothesis here would be that the Waif is someone Arya met when she first got there, and which Jaqen might have impersonated (or not) after she went blind in order to create a split personality that represents what she would become in case she tried to become No One.

The waif is generally better than Arya at everything concerning being a Faceless Man, as if she had been there for a longer time - except at the end of the arc when she shows clear signs of letting her feelings affect the job. That´s because after Arya went blind, the real waif probably just went on being a faceless man elsewhere, and the new waif is just a projection of the vengeful girl that Arya is.

That would explain why major scenes that happened in public between them seemed to have drawn so little attention, and why the waif is so unprofessional towards the end. She was just swinging her rod into the air when she thought she was blindly fighting the waif, and she was never deeply stabbed in the gut or chased down the streets.

When she sees the statue and think of herself when she first arrived, her fears and wishes, she realises she would really suck at being No One, she´s vengeful, she has a personal list of names she´s eager to kill on the other side of that sea. And then her subcouncious reminds her of what a Faceless Man would do to her - what Arya No One would do to her - if she simply left the job undone. Either way, a face will be added to the wall - hers or Lady Crane´s. She uncounsciously decides for Lady Crane.

 

So she wounds herself in the belly, jumps in the water and makes a little scene in the market, then looks for lady crane. Now she has her trust, she only needed to get her offguard. Lady crane doesn´t react to a stranger because it´s just Arya.

Arya doesn´t want to rationalize the things she´s doing, so she keeps the fantasy that she´s ultimately dueling the waif, and beats her when she "returns to her origins" using Syrio´s moves.

 

Jaqen is not quite sure what happened - Lady Crane´s face is in the wall, so he assumes that No One Arya won - "congratulations" and etc - and then she tells him she´s actually Arya Stark, and that she´s leaving.

He´s proud that she was able to realise she could not truly become no one, that she would just become an empty vengeful thing if she forgot why she wants to kill all those people in the first place, which is precisely because she is Arya Stark.

 

I think their coin helps support this notion of duality, as well as the glaring "House of Black and White".

 

What do you think? Not saying it´s the truth, but it kinda makes sense, right?

 

[[Deleted]]

It's a fun theory. There were quite a few conspiracy theories online that prescribed to the "Arya Durden" trope, not unlike Theon in the Ghost Of Winterfell chapter.

Basically, if you want to believe it, there's nothing stopping you. But I don't think D&D intended that. When it comes to the show, it's always safer to just take things at face value, there's rarely if ever anything deeper going on.

[A Time for Starks]

I was completely on board with this theory after episode 7, where parts of the story didn't make sense elsewise.  Like, why was she out in the streets when she knew the waif was going to be hunting her down?  And why would no one help her after she was bleeding to death?  A split personality explanation was the only thing that made sense to me.  But if this theory had been true, I think they would have unveiled it during the episode 8 where I think they concluded that part of Arya's story. 

[Littlefinger's dagger]

I just can't get behind the Arya Durden theory.

Arya was being very obvious wandering around in Westerosi clothes, flashing money to get passage, and so on. Too Obvious, like maybe she was using herself as bait. That seems a lot more likely to me. We don't have a handle on how much time had passed since she botched the lady crane job, so it could have been a day or several weeks. Weeks spent learning the alleys, preparing her kill room, training in it, stealing what she needs.  All you have to stipulate is more than a week of time passing between one scene and the other for it to make sense.

What I found disappointing is that Arya didn't learn to deal with the imposed blindness by slipping into the minds and borrowing the eyes of cats, the way she did in the books. I don't recall any other skinchanger being able to touch the mind of a beast and retain enough control of their body to even walk, much less fight. Usually they just look like they're passing out or having a seizure.

[NutBurz]

Well, I honestly always took these "indications" that she´s a warg with a grain of salt, personally I don´t believe that´s what´s happening.

 

I left a part of OP looking kind of funny on purpose-

17 hours ago, NutBurz said:

which Jaqen might have impersonated (or not) after she went blind in order to create a split personality

This is not what I think happens, really. I think it´s an effect of putting on one of the faces - they´re "poison", and the poison is making her see things. At the very first scene of poisoned Arya, someone who looked like Jaqen died, except Jaqen shows up and says that "no one" died. When she goes through the face, she finds her own. That´s synthetizing the process she was about to go through, one of the Aryas is going to die, but she would be "No one" either way.

[Ice Spider]

Arya isn't Arya at all, it has been Gendry all along. Arya has always been with her direwolf.

 

Seriously, why do people keep coming up with this stuff? Have they not been watching the show for 6 years?

[NutBurz]

15 minutes ago, Ice Spider said:

Seriously, why do people keep coming up with this stuff?

In this case, it´s because I see no other explanation that makes the slightest of sense. I know for a fact it´s not an 8 years old writing, so I refuse to believe Arya ever got deeply stabbed, chased down the street by a proffessional killer or managed to defeat said professional killer (which she had never done) with gut wounds, possible broken ribs and milk of the poppy in her head.

 

Not asking you to believe it, you can feel like the show is ridiculous as much as you want.

[Ice Spider]

27 minutes ago, NutBurz said:

In this case, it´s because I see no other explanation that makes the slightest of sense. I know for a fact it´s not an 8 years old writing, so I refuse to believe Arya ever got deeply stabbed, chased down the street by a proffessional killer or managed to defeat said professional killer (which she had never done) with gut wounds, possible broken ribs and milk of the poppy in her head.

 

Not asking you to believe it, you can feel like the show is ridiculous as much as you want.

You obviously don't see the twist of fate, that in which the Waif is forced to fight blind against Arya, who to this point has been fighting a very sight full Waif, while being blind herself.

[NutBurz]

The sheer pain Arya should be in, along with the internal bleeding, should render the dark element, however much you want to believe that´s actually enough, completely moot. She should not be able to move after jumping like she did with a recently stitched stomach.

[Ice Spider]

2 hours ago, NutBurz said:

The sheer pain Arya should be in, along with the internal bleeding, should render the dark element, however much you want to believe that´s actually enough, completely moot. She should not be able to move after jumping like she did with a recently stitched stomach.

So, what your saying is that your perfectly fine with Jon rising from the dead, but having Arya drink a magic healing potion given to her from Lady Crane, well now, that's totally unbelievable!

[NutBurz]

3 minutes ago, Ice Spider said:

So, what your saying is that your perfectly fine with Jon rising from the dead, but having Arya drink a magic healing potion given to her from Lady Crane, well now, that's totally unbelievable!

The story previously estabilishes that returning from the dead is possible.

The story also previously estabilishes that "men are made of water. If you poke them full of holes, the water leaks, and they die". She´s not dead, and Lady Crane can´t have become a surgeon and invented penincilin by stabbing boyfriends.

Also, milk of the poppy is probably just morphine and some other alkaloids, not magic healing potion, just an anesthetic. If she was under its effects, her reflexes would be much lower and she would never be able to deafeat anyone in the dark.

[Ice Spider]

Just now, NutBurz said:

The story previously estabilishes that returning from the dead is possible.

The story also previously estabilishes that "men are made of water. If you poke them full of holes, the water leaks, and they die". She´s not dead, and Lady Crane can´t have become a surgeon and invented penincilin by stabbing boyfriends.

Also, milk of the poppy is probably just morphine and some other alkaloids, not magic healing potion, just an anesthetic. If she was under its effects, her reflexes would be much lower and she would never be able to deafeat anyone in the dark.

The fact remains the show did do some foreshadowing into Lady Cranes past history into dealing with stab wounds. Week writing sure, but nowhere as week as something like this:

 

Quote

My hypothesis here would be that the Waif is someone Arya met when she first got there, and which Jaqen might have impersonated (or not) after she went blind in order to create a split personality that represents what she would become in case she tried to become No One.

The waif is generally better than Arya at everything concerning being a Faceless Man, as if she had been there for a longer time - except at the end of the arc when she shows clear signs of letting her feelings affect the job. That´s because after Arya went blind, the real waif probably just went on being a faceless man elsewhere, and the new waif is just a projection of the vengeful girl that Arya is.

That would explain why major scenes that happened in public between them seemed to have drawn so little attention, and why the waif is so unprofessional towards the end. She was just swinging her rod into the air when she thought she was blindly fighting the waif, and she was never deeply stabbed in the gut or chased down the streets.

When she sees the statue and think of herself when she first arrived, her fears and wishes, she realises she would really suck at being No One, she´s vengeful, she has a personal list of names she´s eager to kill on the other side of that sea. And then her subcouncious reminds her of what a Faceless Man would do to her - what Arya No One would do to her - if she simply left the job undone. Either way, a face will be added to the wall - hers or Lady Crane´s. She uncounsciously decides for Lady Crane.

 

So she wounds herself in the belly, jumps in the water and makes a little scene in the market, then looks for lady crane. Now she has her trust, she only needed to get her offguard. Lady crane doesn´t react to a stranger because it´s just Arya.

Arya doesn´t want to rationalize the things she´s doing, so she keeps the fantasy that she´s ultimately dueling the waif, and beats her when she "returns to her origins" using Syrio´s moves.

 

Jaqen is not quite sure what happened - Lady Crane´s face is in the wall, so he assumes that No One Arya won - "congratulations" and etc - and then she tells him she´s actually Arya Stark, and that she´s leaving.

He´s proud that she was able to realise she could not truly become no one, that she would just become an empty vengeful thing if she forgot why she wants to kill all those people in the first place, which is precisely because she is Arya Stark.

 

I think their coin helps support this notion of duality, as well as the glaring "House of Black and White".

 

[Cron]

12 hours ago, NutBurz said:

In this case, it´s because I see no other explanation that makes the slightest of sense. I know for a fact it´s not an 8 years old writing, so I refuse to believe Arya ever got deeply stabbed, chased down the street by a proffessional killer or managed to defeat said professional killer (which she had never done) with gut wounds, possible broken ribs and milk of the poppy in her head.

 

Not asking you to believe it, you can feel like the show is ridiculous as much as you want.

Nothing wrong with bouncing theories around, and reading your original post in this thread was interesting to me (I had not yet heard of the Arya Durden theory, and I loved Fight Club, it's a GREAT movie.  When I first saw it, with one of the most shocking reveals I've ever seen at the end of a movie, I had to go back and re-watch the whole thing almost immediately, with the new knowledge, and that was tremendous fun.  It was VERY cleverly done, I thought, and Ed Norton and Brad Pitt are both great in it)

But unfortunately, as much as I love GOT (and that's a LOT, believe me), I strongly believe the plot holes you're identifying in Arya's story are...just huge plot holes.

Many years ago, when Stan Lee was very active in Marvel Comics, they had what they called a "No-Prize."  That was when a reader sent in a letter identifying what SEEMED to be a problem (or error) in a comic book story, but then the letter-writer also came up with a clever way of explaining it for the comic book author's benefit so it was NOT a problem (or error).  So, the Arya Durden theory may be worthy of a No-Prize, but no, I absolutely do not believe this is what the show runners intended.  I think the plot holes are just plot holes, unfortunately

[NutBurz]

I´d like to leave a "b. question" for people who disagree with the theory, if you could be so kind, to help me maybe make another sense of the whole thing.

 

Why do you think the scene in which Jaqen drinks the liquid and dies, right before Arya goes blind (episode 9 of season 5, I believe), happened the way it did? Who was that person, and why did he have Arya´s face?

[The Dew]

Nice theory!

[yourgrace]

Arya lured the waif to the room and was able to defeat her in the dark because of her training during the time she was blind. As far as her being able to run, jump, fight etc after being stabbed and patched up by an actress...its a tv show. This show has asked us to accept much more unbelievable things than that. Maybe she was recovering at lady cranes longer than it seemed, who knows. Its tv. But any question that it wasn't Arya who got stabbed should have been nullified when lady crane found her bleeding in the dressing room. 

If you go back and watch the scene between waif and jaqen where she tells him that Arya failed to kill lady crane, the waif refers to herself as "I" and "me" ..."you promised me" etc, that scene. Jaqen looks disappointed and says something like "shame, a girl had many gifts". I think he was referring to the waif here, not Arya, foreshadowing the waifs downfall. 

But anyway its kind of moot now. If something like this theory was true it probably would've been revealed as such in episode 8. It wasn't. I think we saw it for what it was. 

 

[NutBurz]

10 hours ago, The Dew said:

Nice theory!

Thanks!

7 hours ago, yourgrace said:

If something like this theory was true it probably would've been revealed as such in episode 8. It wasn't.

I understand where you´re coming from, if they wanted to they could have been much clearer in telling the audience that this theory is actually the truth.

I wouldn´t need anything else, however, to believe my own theory - I´d need a more convincing explanation than mine not to, which taking things at face value doesn´t do. The way I see it, the scenes which "prove" my theory already happened, they´ve already shown us:

-Arya having a weird experience before going blind, in which "no one" dies and this "no one" has her face.

-Arya surviving wounds that were supposed to have killed her by any other standard within the own series.

-The inconsistent personality of the Waif.

and, the last one that "settles" it

-Jaqen proud at Arya after she supposedly killed one of his own people, and refused to join them, to the point he allowed her to take at least one of the faces with her for personal use - going against everything Jaqen apparently believes.

I believe this last one did happen in episode 8. (:

[A Time for Starks]

My question is if this theory is actually true and now that Arya is back in Westeros, what are your thoughts on the context it will it be revealed and what impact will it have on Arya? 

Side note: I was fully on-board with this theory before episode 8 (I even argued for it in another thread), but now have serious doubts. 

[NutBurz]

28 minutes ago, A Time for Starks said:

what are your thoughts on the context it will it be revealed and what impact will it have on Arya? 

Like I said, in my opinion they could leave it as it is and something at least close to "Arya Durden" could already be "canon" without it being farfetched.

That said, and since the question allows it, I´ll crackpot further - I still think Jaqen is Syrio Forell, who was in King´s Landing to kill Cersei probably. This here might be filled with holes since I never bothered to fact-check to see how much he could possibly know, but I suspect he might have realised he could use Arya to kill her after the Syrio disguise was busted by Meryn Trant. It´s a long shot, and I´m not saying Arya was the only plan he had, but it´s something he bet on.

If this was true, I think it would be cool if the show finally told us what happened by having Arya kill Cersei using Lady Crane´s face. ^^

 

Thanks for weighing in.

[Aedam Targaryen]

1 hour ago, NutBurz said:

That said, and since the question allows it, I´ll crackpot further - I still think Jaqen is Syrio Forell, who was in King´s Landing to kill Cersei probably. This here might be filled with holes since I never bothered to fact-check to see how much he could possibly know, but I suspect he might have realised he could use Arya to kill her after the Syrio disguise was busted by Meryn Trant. It´s a long shot, and I´m not saying Arya was the only plan he had, but it´s something he bet on.

I know you said that you didn't fact check this, so obviously you're not completely sold on it, but this is even crazier than Arya not being dead after the stomach stabs. 

So you think Jaqen created the Syrio identity to kill Cersei (why? He was there before Roberts death, before the twinscest was widely rumored), but when Syrio was discovered, his next best plan was to send Arya all over Westeros to get her to maybe go to bravos, to get her to maybe join the faceless men, to get her to complete her training, and then send her back to Westeros to kill Cersei? That's Jaqen's back up plan? He's a faceless man. We've seen him change his face at the snap of his fingers. He HAS to have a better backup plan than that. And while this might not be his only plan, I can't believe he's been in Braavos training Arya AND in Westeros working on his other plans.

If that is Jaqen's plan B, that's even worse writing than Arya being stabbed in the stomach right before her running and jumping through the streets. Which I believe is exactly as I took it... bad writing.