Arya shows ‘GoT’ mettle (and metal)
Spoiler alert: This story contains significant details from Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” episode, “The Long Night.”
When it came to “The Long Night,” Arya Stark saved the day.
Heroes were everywhere on Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” episode, a battle between the Night King’s army of death and the forces at Winterfell aiming to save humanity.
Death likely would have triumphed, however, were it not for the one warrior who saved all: Arya (Maisie Williams). For a character once trained by assassins to say “I am no one,” Arya proves at the most pivotal moment how much of a someone she is.
Late in the episode, with the Night King (Vladimir Furdik) about to administer his icy touch to Three-Eyed Raven Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright), a move that effectively would end civilization and all its history, Arya leaps heroically to action.
The young warrior, who trained as an assassin with the Faceless Men and honed her skills killing those deserving of death, leaps toward the Night King with a Valyrian steel dagger – one that her brother, Bran, had given her and that had been used in a Season 1 assassination attempt on Bran.
The Night King proves too quick and strong, however, grabbing Arya by the throat. Her dagger appeared to be falling from her left hand to the ground, but it was an expert assassin move and likely something she might have learned training with the Faceless Men in Braavos. Arya catches the dagger with her right hand and plunges it into the Night King’s midsection, turning him – and his army – into a zillion exploding ice cubes. How’s that for the perfect icebreaker?
Others deserve an assist on Arya’s brilliant save, as she likely would have died in the episode without the help of other estimable warriors: Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer) and Sandor “The Hound” Clegane (Rory McCann).
Earlier in the episode, as Arya takes refuge in one of Winterfell’s many rooms, she quickly realizes she isn’t alone.
Wights, the dead-eyed, resurrected zombies who make up the Night King’s forces, were shambling about the room. Arya, showing her skill at remaining undetected, evades her undead enemies. Eventually, she kills one and escapes, but then a battalion is in pursuit.
Fortunately, Beric and Sandor, shaken from his battle stupor by Beric’s words and Arya’s plight, shows up just in time to save her. Beric, unfortunately, suffers mortal wounds, and this time Thoros of Myr, a fellow disciple of the Lord of Light, wasn’t there to bring him back from the dead, as he has so many times in the past.
Melisandre (Carice van Houten), who also follows the Lord of Light, explains to Arya that Beric had completed his mission and no longer required resurrection.
Melisandre reminds Arya about the need to maintain a defiant attitude in the face of death, advice she had first received from Syrio Forel, the man who trained her in sword fighting back in Season 1 when she was just a child.
“What do we say to the God of Death?” Melisande asks.
“Not today,” Arya says, remembering those words. And then she makes sure that is the case for humanity.