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It is not a pale horse


Areisius

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I am pretty sure it was the same horse that Strickland was riding.  It was knocked down by the gate blast but survived.  Strickland was also knocked down but survived the initial blast.

Note that the little girl who was burnt with mother was clutching a toy horse.

What does it all mean? Hell if I know.

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16 hours ago, dbunting said:

I assumed it was just a horse, there were a bunch of them running around in KL, the Dothraki came in on them, seems like everyone has forgotten that? 

The reason, I think, people are wondering about the symbolism is that the little girl was also carrying a white horse with blood on the legs in several shots, so it's a weird parallel they did with the real horse showing up and it's also white and has blood on it's legs...any other show this would have some actual meaning, but GOT I expect they said 'cool idea' and that was that.

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7 hours ago, Kajjo said:

Yeah right, in-show I fully agree. As to connotations the directors might want to make, the color scheme can have some relevance, though. Like Daenerys clothes white-grey all the previous S8 episodes and now clothed in dark.

As to her clothes, she is in mourning. She just lost Jorah and Missande, so black clothing is traditional. Not saying that's 100% why, but it would make sense.

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4 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

The reason, I think, people are wondering about the symbolism is that the little girl was also carrying a white horse with blood on the legs in several shots, so it's a weird parallel they did with the real horse showing up and it's also white and has blood on it's legs...any other show this would have some actual meaning, but GOT I expect they said 'cool idea' and that was that.

They also had to give her some plot help to get out of the city since she was farthest from the outside. They sort of explained it and why they give us her view in the making of special.

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"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying,
'Come and see.' and I saw, and behold a white horse"
There's a man goin' 'round takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down
When the man comes around"
 
Let's retain two points here: Johnny Cash mentions a "white" horse. And D&D like that song ("chaos is a golden ladder").
If you want to discuss this seriously, please keep in mind that Benioff and Weiss are Jewish and thus for them the Book  of  Revelations is not canon.
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Well,

  • practically they wanted something to appear to help save Arya to leave the city
  • cinematographically they wanted to have it leave a 'magical' or 'fairytale' or 'divine" like impression on the viewer and make it look symbolic. They had the child carry around a white toy horse the entire episode. The slow motion, the approach and the sunlight effect was intentional.
  • they're not going to "explain" it, and whatever you read into it d&d may not have followed up on it in the finale

That said there are two different types of music themes used in the entire final scene of Arya.

  • a distorted version with violins of Bran's theme whenever he flashbacks at some Stark related past event in s6, including the one where a young Lyanna rides a white horse. This is at the start of the scene, when Arya still has to step away from the wall and look down the street to see the pompei like embrace of mother and child with toy horse
  • a violin version of Dany's theme as played during her wedding to Khal Drogo and she is gifted her horse 'Silver'
  • you could hear a wandering neighing horse in the background the moment that Arya finds herself in the dwelling with the mothers and children hiding, where she tries to urge the mother and child to flee with her and keep moving

So, they may have intended to link Arya to Lyanna, the wild wolf, who disappeared in the RL, and whose story-role is to be a mother of a royal heir. And also link Arya to Dany. Dany here was the mother who avenged her dead children, but also killed mothers and children (who would have been her nation's children if she had ceased violence after the surrender). Meanwhile Arya attempted to save a mother and child. Dany's journey to mother Mysha and mother to Rhaego began with the gift of Silver. Her journey will end soon, and Arya no doubt will want to "kill the queen".

BTW the first victims Arya sees is a daughter crying while trying to hold up her dead father, and a Lyanna lookalike bathing in blood (belly and legs) and her husband looking for her (and he looked like a Gendry of S1-s3), asking Arya "Whether she saw his wife?" Much of the carnage that Arya witnesses, and the inner courtyard with the map where Sandor sends her home and being a parallel to the day Syrio told Arya to choose life and flee the keep, sort of takes her along matchy-matchy imagery of the carnage and death she witnessed since the end of s1. It could be seen as a trip and confrontation through Arya's trauma since she fled from Syrio, including the carnage at the Twins. After the Twins she chose to go to Braavos, as an agent of Death, to be an assassin. Now she gets a re-do, and choose life.

All the proposed imagery works:

  • Arya "Death on a pale mare". She might have chosen life, but in her mind she may still want to try to kill Dany. But since she tried to act like a savior instead, she won't be the one actually doing it, just like she didn't kill Cersei either. The one she killed, the NK, was death itself, and thus a precursor of an arc, where Arya is put on a path of a savior. 
  • Arya "life on a white horse": she is one of the few survivors out of the heart of the city.
  • The unicorn image, though here as a white horse without a horn, a sign of purity
  • and many of the other prior proposed images

Now, the episode aired on Mother's day, and we had two major "mother figures" in the plot: avenging Dany and Cersei crying she wanted her baby to live. Cersei's death scene with Jaime is interspersed between the moment when the mother and child that Arya tried to save are being burned to a crisp, and Arya finding them dead. They also had Arya's make-up matchy-matchy with how LS is supposed to look, and LS is also called "Mother Mercy". So, imo they tried to cinematographically first put Arya through her childhood journey to have her end as some type of mother figure as well.

This might be for symbolical reasons, but might be literal. She might be with child and a mother to be. In the books the Kindly Man says that women rarely are FM, because women give life, and you can't give life and be a killer at the same time. But it could just as well mean that the Mother (one of the Faith's aspects) saved her child.

Both Dany and Cersei are queens. Arya may be a queen to be. Gendry did call her "beautiful", so she's hypothetically a potential "younger, beautiful queen".

For sound effect: just before you hear a horse and she finds the living mother and child in the dwelling, the bell tower came down, and you hear the "bell" again. Bells have several meanings: bells to signal death, weddings, shame, alarm, or now surrender. So, it could mean 'for whom the bell tolls' (ominously), to mourn, or to celebrate.

Anyway, take your pick, it has several potential meanings, and could just amount to nothing much whatsoever. I think they did put it in there on purpose to make the viewer wonder and theorize and speculate, but this might have been only for red-herring reasons.

So, in the end, for me :dunno:

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57 minutes ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

I thought we witnessed the end of the Dothraki in episode 3

Well, during ep 3 you see some coming back during the retreat with Jorah so no. Plus, spawning so...

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I think the horse symbolizes Silver - Daenerys' horse from the beginning of the show. When the queen was still a young, tender girl, and not a "dragon". Horse is now stained with blood, like Dany herself. Riding a white horse Arya returns her humanity, after years of being faceless killer. Dany lost humanity, and Arya found it. I see it this way.

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