Why doesn't the Night King kill Arya?

[Angel Eyes]

At the very end of the episode, the Night King has Arya in a neck lift and he doesn't see her other hand dropping to catch the knife. Why doesn't he just move his fingers the extra few millimeters and break her neck or crush her windpipe, like Darth Vader with Captain Antilles?

[BlackLightning]

Plot.

A bad one.

[Angel Eyes]

1 hour ago, BlackLightning said:

Plot.

A bad one.

True. My thought was that the Night King, while foolish to expose himself in such a manner for the final battle, still had a big chance of winning at that point since he had Arya by the throat and could have still won since nobody was around to stop him from turning Bran into a shish-kabob.

 

Question: do you think Arya was supposed to be killed in the Long Night and her fate changed by D&D at the last minute? Because the fact that she does little of consequence in the last half of the season makes me think that she could have been killed by the Night King (perhaps in the act of killing him) and the exact same story would have been told.

[Narsil4]

The NK's body language gave me the impression that he just wished to kill UnBran. 

Only killing Theon to protect himself and then hesitating to kill Arya because he didn't want to slaughter a little girl. 

 

[Angel Eyes]

32 minutes ago, Narsil4 said:

The NK's body language gave me the impression that he just wished to kill UnBran. 

Only killing Theon to protect himself and then hesitating to kill Arya because he didn't want to slaughter a little girl. 

 

She was technically trying to kill him since he stopped her knife hand. And it's uncharacteristic for the Night King to show mercy like that since he tries to have everything slaughtered in front of him before you could say "Bob's your uncle".

[Narsil4]

1 hour ago, Angel Eyes said:

And it's uncharacteristic for the Night King to show mercy like that since he tries to have everything slaughtered in front of him before you could say "Bob's your uncle".

I'm not so sure.. 

I get the impression they could have easily wiped out the Wildlings and instead herded them south.

They also seem to require living children to reproduce. So killing all humanity would result in destroying themselves and that seems unlikely to be their goal.

The limbs arranged in a swirl, with the child at the center, suggests a message of "we are here to kill the magic tree boy."

I imagine if the NK succeeded in killing UnBran, he would have returned north and garrisoned the Wall. Then perhaps would have tried to implement a new Pact to adopt more human children into their ranks. 

So hesitating to kill a child may be more characteristic of the NK than it might first seem. 

[Angel Eyes]

On 12/12/2019 at 10:58 PM, Narsil4 said:

I'm not so sure.. 

I get the impression they could have easily wiped out the Wildlings and instead herded them south.

They also seem to require living children to reproduce. So killing all humanity would result in destroying themselves and that seems unlikely to be their goal.

The limbs arranged in a swirl, with the child at the center, suggests a message of "we are here to kill the magic tree boy."

I imagine if the NK succeeded in killing UnBran, he would have returned north and garrisoned the Wall. Then perhaps would have tried to implement a new Pact to adopt more human children into their ranks. 

So hesitating to kill a child may be more characteristic of the NK than it might first seem. 

But from what we see, they turn children into wights, not White Walkers. Remember the undead kids who killed Karsi? And Arya technically isn't a child (as often mentioned about Arya's scene with Gendry in the previous episode), so she's well within his killing purview.

[Narsil4]

3 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

But from what we see, they turn children into wights, not White Walkers.

There's the scene a child is taken to what seems to be the Heart of Winter and turns them into an Other.

3 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

Remember the undead kids who killed Karsi?

Ordering minions to kill children in a battle may be a bit easier than having to do it with ones own hands. 

3 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

And Arya technically isn't a child (as often mentioned about Arya's scene with Gendry in the previous episode), so she's well within his killing purview.

Having sex doesn't automatically make one an adult, nor do I think the NK would have any way of knowing that, even if it did matter. 

[Angel Eyes]

13 minutes ago, Narsil4 said:

There's the scene a child is taken to what seems to be the Heart of Winter and turns them into an Other.

Ordering minions to kill children in a battle may be a bit easier than having to do it with ones own hands. 

Having sex doesn't automatically make one an adult, nor do I think the NK would have any way of knowing that, even if it did matter. 

True; funnily enough, I thought there would be some sort of consequence of the Night King grabbing Arya, similar to the mark that he left on Bran.

Aren’t they still in battle?

As far as Arya being an adult, I meant more in the age type.

 

[Narsil4]

38 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

I thought there would be some sort of consequence of the Night King grabbing Arya, similar to the mark that he left on Bran.

If I remember correctly, that happened in a vision, not from a physical interaction. 
Perhaps done so Bran could be magically tracked. 

47 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

Aren’t they still in battle?

One could argue that the battle was over by then, but my point is more that it is a lot easier to order men to their deaths than it is to kill them yourself. Easier to ignore the moral issues when one isn't seeing them in person. In the same vein as Neds wish to carry out executions himself. 

1 hour ago, Angel Eyes said:

As far as Arya being an adult, I meant more in the age type.

Theon and Arya are supposed to be closer to 21 and 11 years old. 
So hesitating to kill Arya may be a bit like hesitating to kill a squire, that one doesn't actually feel threatened by. 

 

[Mystical]

9 hours ago, Narsil4 said:

Theon and Arya are supposed to be closer to 21 and 11 years old. 

Arya is not 11 by S8. That was her starting age in S1. She is (supposedly) 18 by the time S8 comes around. That is considered an adult in our time, nvm in the world of Westeros.

Neither the NK nor his minions have shown any qualms about killing children. There were children in the NK's army. The whole point about the NK is that he doesn't discriminate. Old or young, black or white, healthy or handicapped, man or woman...none of that mattered to him, he welcomed everyone into his ranks.

As to the question, it's a plot driven show. The plot is 'Arya kills NK' so nothing else matters. The NK, by all rights, could have made quick work of Arya but that wasn't the plot. Plus you know, Arya has nuclear resistant plot armor and that is always helpful.

[Rast-afari]

I think the Night King was being a bit sadistic. He wanted Arya to know she was going to die and for her to think about it, similar to how he looked down at Theon after running him through. A typical super villain mistake.

[Angel Eyes]

13 hours ago, Rast-afari said:

I think the Night King was being a bit sadistic. He wanted Arya to know she was going to die and for her to think about it, similar to how he looked down at Theon after running him through. A typical super villain mistake.

Perhaps. The Night King takes about 10 seconds to hold Arya by her throat, three seconds for the knife flip. That’s plenty of time to break a neck; Darth Vader took 2-3 seconds to break Captain Antilles’ neck.

[AryaNymeriaVisenya]

On 12/11/2019 at 1:59 AM, Angel Eyes said:

At the very end of the episode, the Night King has Arya in a neck lift and he doesn't see her other hand dropping to catch the knife. Why doesn't he just move his fingers the extra few millimeters and break her neck or crush her windpipe, like Darth Vader with Captain Antilles?

The knife drop is in slow motion. He only has time to look down by which point she's caught it. The fake out works by making it look like you've dropped your weapon to the floor. Not that you are making a move.