Warning: Contains Spoilers
While episode five of the final season of Game of Thrones gave us many, many deaths, Arya Stark still has her own personal hit list, and still has names to tick off.
After last night’s destruction of King’s Landing, some fans are wondering whether the young Stark has added another name to the lineup, and has set her sight on a new target.
During The Bells, the Hound convinced Arya to give up her pursuit of Cersei Lannister and flee King’s Landing. And, after witnessing Daenerys’ descent into becoming the mad queen, it seemed Arya was happy to leave.
She’d seen innocent people killed in the streets, a mother and daughter save her from being trampled to death, before the poignant moment of seeing a single white horse in the city and making the decision to leave.
As D.B. Weiss explained in the post-episode explaination, via TIME:
We knew that the Hound would be convincing her to part ways with him and to not go to her death.
And once she decides she needs to get out of the city, well she’s in the worst possible place you can be. So she’s gotta get from that central point all the way outside the walls of the city. It’s the longest, hardest journey anybody has to make in the entire episode.
In the final moments of the episode, Arya gets on the horse and rides through the ruined city with determination. We assume she’s fleeing – however, the teaser for the next episode may suggest otherwise.
You can watch it here:
Because of Arya’a steely-eyed look through the ranks of the Unsullied in the latest teaser, some fans are wondering whether she’s back for one more kill – the ‘mad queen’ Daenerys Targaryen.
It’s clear Arya has never really been a big fan of Dany, and after finishing off the Night King, it could fulfill Melisandre’s prophecy if she was to kill Daenerys too.
Melisandre told Arya she would close ‘brown eyes, blues eyes, green eyes’. If the brown eyes were Walder Frey’s, and the blue eyes belonged to the Night King, many people thought the green would refer to Cersei – but could they be Daenerys’?
Dany may well have earned her name on Arya’s list, though the young Stark could also have kept her promise to Sandor to flee the city.
Only one more episode before we find out!
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.