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What is stopping Arya from killing Cersei and Euron?


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The majority of posters stating it’s poor writing without any explanation why they think that is ironic, it’s easy to criticise!

You guys may be right but a faceless man doing the deed surely isn’t that unrealistic is it? Best killers in the world and all that...

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8 minutes ago, State Trooper said:

I really don't understand the hysteria about Arya killing The Night King. In fact it's almost as if people have forgotten her story arc.

Same for me. I like this resolution. Arya did well, the story is fine. It was pretty likely that Arya would be killing the Nightking.

2 minutes ago, Hodor's Dragon said:

Arya magically appears somewhere and kills a central villain by extraordinary means verging on the unbelievable.

Exactly what is unbelievable of that scene? Please explain in detail.

Using a dagger to kill a major enemy was foreshadowed long time. Sparring with Brienne, well trained by the Faceless Men, she fought valiantly against wights in this episode. 

Using THIS valyrian dagger against the Nighking was expected long ago. That this dagger was decisive was very, very clear. That the "change the hand" move would become important, was almost 100% clear after sparring with Brienne.

 

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1 minute ago, King Tam Stark said:

The majority of posters stating it’s poor writing without any explanation why they think that is ironic, it’s easy to criticise!

 

It's the comparing everything to the books that does my brain in.

Just separate the two and enjoy the show for what it is. Surely it's not that difficult? 

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Just now, Kajjo said:

<snip> Exactly what is unbelievable of that scene? Please explain in detail. <snip>

Well, it's been gone over in some detail in this thread already, but I'll recap. Multiple other characters had a helluva time approaching the Night King, or really going pretty much anywhere in and around the castle. We saw that the NK was surrounded by a very solid retinue.

There are ways to get around all that, and Arya has special abilities. The problem isn't that it happened, it's that IT WAS NOT SET UP IN ANY WAY OR EXPLAINED AT ALL. On its face, with no setup and no explanation, it's incredibly unsatisfying and comes across as the sheerest, undiluted fan service.

A lot of things happen that way in GOT since they moved past the books.

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2 minutes ago, Hodor's Dragon said:

There are ways to get around all that, and Arya has special abilities.

The wights were paused by the Nightking. They didn't attack Theon anymore, too.

The Nightking sorted out Theon's attack on his own, too. He is overly self-assured and arrogant. 

Arya approaching the Nightking is not a mystery or secret abilities. Winterfell is her home, she was a tomboy, she knows her ways there. She run through the passage towards him and the WW relied on the NK handling the girl himself. No mystery. Very believable. Don't make it worse than it is.

Yes, there are some plot holes sometimes. This was not a problem in my eyes.

4 minutes ago, Hodor's Dragon said:

Multiple other characters had a helluva time approaching the Night King

Not really. He was justriding the dragon and not fighting anyway. Against Jon he raised the dead. In the Godswood he believe to be save and able to achieve his goal, to kill Bran.

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1 minute ago, Kajjo said:

The wights were paused by the Nightking. They didn't attack Theon anymore, too.

The Nightking sorted out Theon's attack on his own, too. He is overly self-assured and arrogant. 

Arya approaching the Nightking is not a mystery or secret abilities. Winterfell is her home, she was a tomboy, she knows her ways there. She run through the passage towards him and the WW relied on the NK handling the girl himself. No mystery. Very believable. Don't make it worse than it is.

Yes, there are some plot holes sometimes. This was not a problem in my eyes.

Not really. He was justriding the dragon and not fighting anyway. Against Jon he raised the dead. In the Godswood he believe to be save and able to achieve his goal, to kill Bran.

Not a single thing that you said in this post was said in the show. Like I said, the problem is not that it happened, the problem was that it was not set up to be possible and was never explained later. It's just a cheap whiz-bang surprise trick. I don't go for those, not anywhere, and especially not here, at the climax of a 7-year, epic television presentation that at least started off with four or so years of meticulous plotting. It's a sordid old trick--haha I made you jump!--way below this level of presentation.

p.s. While we did see that no one intervened when a single stringbean with a spear ran toward the waiting NK, that's not the same as an assassin with valerian steel stealing up from behind. Remember, it was the NK who purposefully went to Theon's location to personally confront those there - why would you expect others to jump in front of him? 

You would expect his large retinue to be watching his back, though.

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32 minutes ago, State Trooper said:

Spot on. 

I really don't understand the hysteria about Arya killing The Night King. In fact it's almost as if people have forgotten her story arc. Do they not remember her meeting the Red Woman at The Vale and what she told her, not to mention the whole Faceless Man story-line and how important it turned out to be?

Or maybe it just didn't play out how people hoped? Oh well.

Like every single Wight that she has "killed" didn't have the blue eyes.

Also, that prophecy could mean any ww since everyone of them has BLUE eyes.

The Night king is just one more. Its Just a dumb prophecy, especially to an assassin.

 

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1 minute ago, Hodor's Dragon said:

Not a single thing that you said in this post was said in the show.

It was SHOWN in the show. 

The Nightking has a long history of "remote-controlling" his wight servants. In many cases, e.g. Hardhome or the wight excursion. He gives signals to them and they react.

They showed us that all the wights stopped attacking Theon. Theon wondered why, looked around. The wights remote-controlled opened a passage for the Nightking. Come on, how much clearer they have to make it?! It's a show, you must watch, they cannot explain everything. To the contrary, I want to SEE it, not to be TOLD. That's what everyone usually claims!

4 minutes ago, Hodor's Dragon said:

hat's not the same as an assassin with valerian steel stealing up from behind

The WW couldn't know that this dagger was Valyrian steel. As we know from hardhome they even were surprised something like that existed.

The Nightking DID IN FACT handle the situation in a confident manner. He got her, lifted her by her trhoat, would have kileld her easily. It was just a "change the hand" trick and the Valyrian dagger and to some extent the arrogance of the Nightking that got him killed.

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12 minutes ago, State Trooper said:

Just a reminder for those who weren't paying attention - 

 

It's funny because they didn't plan Arya to kill the Night King until three years ago, basically right as they were writing season 7 and reintroduced the Cat's Paw dagger. This was never foreshadowing. They even retconned the order of the eye colors from brown, blue, green, to brown, green blue. Also am I to believe Arya never killed someone with normal blue eyes?

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Arya killed Littlefinger with that valyrian steel dagger.

Arya killed Night King with that valyrian steel dagger.

She should finish the job with Cersei, killing her by using that valyrian steel dagger.

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57 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

It's idle to guess whether there were some difficulties for her reaching the Godswood. We cannot see all characters all along their way. She is at home in Winterfell, she started in the great hall and probably new a good way to the Godswood. I have no problems at all believing this. She might have killed some wights on her way there, she might not. Doesn't matter at all for this story, because she killed dozens of wights the previous hour.

Killing the Freys was perfect for her arc. She returned from Bravos, reached the Twins on her way home and took revenge for rthe Red wedding she more or less directly witnessed and where she lost her mother and brother. Absolutely understandable and sensible. No problems with that at all. You hate and moan to much.

Executing Baelish after Sansa sentencing him was no "taking away a kill" from any other character. Baelisch was not the fighter, but the intrigant. He was defeated by his own manipulations after all.

I hope he does. I also hope Sandor kills Gregor. But again, it might be Arya who set off against the Mountain.

Agreed.

Please elaborate on exactly what is a massive plot hole in your eyes.

That the show has hyped Arya to the point where it seems, just as she did with the Freys, she simply needs to go (or prior to these events COULD have gone) to Kings landing and she should have ZERO issue assassinating Cersei, which seemingly wraps up the series as far as antagonists go, anyhow.  

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9 minutes ago, Wik said:

That the show has hyped Arya to the point where it seems, just as she did with the Freys, she simply needs to go (or prior to these events COULD have gone) to Kings landing and she should have ZERO issue assassinating Cersei, which seemingly wraps up the series as far as antagonists go, anyhow.  

Nothing in the show suggests that she could easily kill anyone in the world.  The Freys are certified idiots and had no reason to suspect a smallish young woman would come to kill them.

The NK also didn't suspect her--he thought Jon was the threat. And for all that what she did was a desperate and dangerous gamble that worked.

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I don't have a problem with show-Arya killing the Night King. But I do believe this super-Arya is a narrative problem for a show and I believe her demise of the Freys is a valid evidence of that. There is absolutely no reason why Arya could not replicate on King's Landing what she did in the Twins. This is not a problem in the books because, at least apparently, the Faceless Men are not able to create faces/masks on the spot, it is a long process and we are led to believe that they re-use masks from past 'jobs'. If Arya is able to wear the face of someone almost instantly then she is unstoppable and the whole tension of the story goes away in a snap. So forget about Robert Strong and Euron, there is absolutely no reason why Arya won't wear any Lannister soldier face and stab Cersei next time she walks through a corridor. 

Now D&D will have to create reasons for that not happening. But they don't have a reputation of doing this smoothly, to say the least.

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3 minutes ago, Erkan12 said:

Arya killed Littlefinger with that valyrian steel dagger.

Arya killed Night King with that valyrian steel dagger.

She should finish the job with Cersei, killing her by using that valyrian steel dagger.

Or maybe it will be Joffrey the Jerk's sword - widow's wail. I do think that the Oathkeeper/Widow's wail pair will be involved. They were made from Ice which began the war of seven kings. 

Thing is that Arya killing Cersei won't be a surprise at this point.

To answer the original question, the reason Arya couldn't kill Cersei earlier is that she didn't know the layout of the Red Keep well enough. That is what Varys can provide. The A-Team will include Arya, the Hound and Varys. Possibly Jamie. Either in person or as a face. I suspect that Bron joins up as well on the basis that Cersei will likely kill him anyway.

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8 minutes ago, Forlong the Fat said:

Nothing in the show suggests that she could easily kill anyone in the world.  The Freys are certified idiots and had no reason to suspect a smallish young woman would come to kill them.

The NK also didn't suspect her--he thought Jon was the threat. And for all that what she did was a desperate and dangerous gamble that worked.

There is absolutely no way the Freys could avoid their fate considering what show-Arya is capable. What? Should Walder scan telepathicaly his young wife's mind to find out it was an impostor? If Arya can take any face instantly, or in a practical amount of time, then nothing can prevent her hunt.

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Arya killing Cersei is too obvious. D&D as the connoisseurs of shock value will therefore not go for it.

Assuming that the identity of the person who kills Cersei will be a surprise, we can already eliminate the most likely candidates.

Which means it's not Arya, Tyrion or Jaime. These three are the prime candidates to kill Cersei.

 

Valonqar prophecy can be ignored since the showrunners don't care much for prophecy. It makes things too predictable.

Therefore, literally anyone can kill Cersei. Let's assume that it will be a main character that does it.

 

Since Arya, Tyrion and Jaime are eliminated, that leaves Jon, Sansa and Dany as the next likeliest candidates.

Sansa has previous unpleasant history with Cersei, so it might be satisfying if she kills her. It would also be shocking since Sansa has not killed anyone on the show directly. Sansa stabbing her in the back and her slowly bleeding out could be a good scene. Maybe Jaime even finds her while she's dying and they have a moment. 

Jon has no prior history with Cersei so it would be a shock if he killed her. However, let's say Dany and Drogon get killed by a scorpion. Jon would definitely avenge her by going berserk on Cersei. Jon would get also get his big kill since Arya snatched the Night King.

Dany killing Cersei would be the conclusion of the epic clash of the queens that Littlefinger mentioned previously (was this book only). It would also represent Dany getting her revenge on the Lannisters for what they did to her family. Even if what happened to Aerys was deserved, the killings of Aegon and Rhaenys were certainly not. 

 

I wouldn't mind Arya doing one of her revenge performances on her though like what she did with the Meryn Trant, Walder Frey and House Frey.

 

Whoever does the deed, I hope that it is satisfying.  

 

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