Game of Thrones (The Final Season / 8 )

[Spinal]

In season 6? 7? she kills Walder Frey's sons and bakes them into a pie, that she then feeds to Frey. After slitting his throat, she adopts his persona and poisons his entire household.

Most of the tricky parts -- like dimembering bodies and baking while in the middle of a mass murder --- she does off-screen. We don't see the details and don't really know how she pulled all that off.

The Frey scenes are completely entertaining and totally ridiculous. As a hardcore fan and as someone who's read the books, why would you accept that on faith but not this episode where she basically pulls a Han Solo, appearing out of nowhere to save the day?

It is a lot easier for me to imagine how Arya could fool the Freys. That does not require explanation. There is a big difference between Freys and White Walkers.

[Irish]

It is a lot easier for me to imagine how Arya could fool the Freys. That does not require explanation. There is a big difference between Freys and White Walkers.

It isn't about the relative power of the Freys to the White Walkers. Both situations are relatively implausible; why accept one and not the other?

(I'm not trying to be a smart ass. You're not the only person I've heard who was annoyed by this moment. I'm genuinely curious.)

ETA: I mean, I cackle like an idiot when Arya goes into super-ninja mode, because it's fun, and I think it's meant to fun and only that.

[Spinal]

It isn't about the relative power of the Freys to the White Walkers.

But I just said it was. If you just dismiss my objection, I'm supposed to come up with another?

[Irish]

But I just said it was. If you just dismiss my objection, I'm supposed to come up with another?

Yes, please do!

Your objection doesn't make sense to me.

She's in the Frey's castle, surrounded by at least ~100 people who are hostile to her, somehow manages to commit multiple murders, dismember the bodies of two grown men, stops everything to bake dead bodies into meat pies (somewhere!), faces off against Walder, kills him, fashions an IMF/Ethan Hunt style mask, successfully impersonates Frey, and then poisons everyone else who's still alive. (None of whom, I guess, noticed strange smells wafting from the kitchen or an odd taste to their soup.)

Meanwhile, in this week's episode ... she walked out her parent's door and into her backyard.

[DavidSeven]

There was so much emotional build up to the Frey scene, not just for Arya but the entire arc of the Starks, that it was easy to give them some leeway there. Also, in the way that the scene was presented on screen, it just never struck me as being as logistically impossible as Arya springing out of nowhere through an army of wights to slay the Night King. Maybe if you broke it down into all the necessary elements, you could make that case, but the task was not as superficially impossible as the task in the Battle of Winterfell.

The "Behind the Scenes" stuff from the last episode reveals some of Benioff and Weiss's thinking on Arya's Han Solo moment. It really seemed to amount to little more than wanting to distract and surprise the audience. ("Here's all your favorite characters in immediate peril! You'll never see ninja Arya coming!") They employed the same shallow storytelling technique with Baelish's execution last season -- devising a completely useless scheme by Arya/Sansa that literally served no other purpose than to surprise the audience. These guys are in 100% fan service mode, and, yeah, that results in some big, dumb fun and meme-worthy moments, but this story used to be about the exact opposite of conforming to genre tropes and relying on tired "big fantasy" moments.

[amberlita]

There was so much emotional build up to the Frey scene, not just for Arya but the entire arc of the Starks, that it was easy to give them some leeway there. Also, in the way that the scene was presented on screen, it just never struck me as being as logistically impossible as Arya springing out of nowhere through an army of wights to slay the Night King. Maybe if you broke it down into all the necessary elements, you could make that case, but the task was not as superficially impossible as the task in the Battle of Winterfell.

The "Behind the Scenes" stuff from the last episode reveals some of Benioff and Weiss's thinking on Arya's Han Solo moment. It really seemed to amount to little more than wanting to distract and surprise the audience. ("Here's all your favorite characters in immediate peril! You'll never see ninja Arya coming!") They employed the same shallow storytelling technique with Baelish's execution last season -- devising a completely useless scheme by Arya/Sansa that literally served no other purpose than to surprise the audience. These guys are in 100% fan service mode, and, yeah, that results in some big, dumb fun and meme-worthy moments, but this story used to be about the exact opposite of conforming to genre tropes and relying on tired "big fantasy" moments.

I agree with this. They outright say that they wanted everyone to be assuming it would be Jon to kill the night king because "he's always the hero" so they wanted to shock everyone when it was Arya. Don't get me wrong - she's my favorite character and the moment totally worked. But as soon as it was over I was like...."wait, what?"

Not such much about the logistics of her ninja arrival, but the fact that we spent seasons - ever since Hardhome - developing an actual relationship between Jon and the Night King. It felt like a cheap attempt to get one of GoT's water cooler OMG! moments but instead just kind of betrayed a.) the tension they had created between Jon and the Night King for years, and b.) all the talk about Jon and/or Dany being the one to stop the long night.

Even if you don't care about the latter (though you should because Melisandre et al. reference it repeatedly throughout the show; it's not just a book thing), the former still feels wrong in hindsight.

[Irish]

What's wrong with surprise? Nobody called Arya as the killer before this episode. I think that's fun -- or at least more fun that Captain Emo grimly charging his mortal enemy and swinging a broadsword.

I didn't connect to the larger Stark family (I mean, Robb? Ew) so the Frey scenes came across as almost unbearably cheesy and highly implausible. I think there's a point where you just gotta shrug it off though because the show has repeatedly demonstrated it has no interest in logistics (or even physics, lol).

This is not the first time they've jerked the audience's chain, eg: teasing The Hound's death as a late season cliffhanger and bringing Jon Snow back from the dead using magic.

I liked that it was characters on the periphery to the "game" who got shit done this episode -- mostly Arya and Lyanna, two teenage girls -- and everybody else was left standing around with their weapon in their hand and a stunned expression on their face. That strikes me as pretty damned subversive in itself.

And while I agree that they totally undercut the tension between Jon Snow and the Night King and cast off years of build-up, it's also not the first time the show (or GRRM) has used sudden death as an easy narrative out.

[Grouchy]

Not such much about the logistics of her ninja arrival, but the fact that we spent seasons - ever since Hardhome - developing an actual relationship between Jon and the Night King. It felt like a cheap attempt to get one of GoT's water cooler OMG! moments but instead just kind of betrayed a.) the tension they had created between Jon and the Night King for years, and b.) all the talk about Jon and/or Dany being the one to stop the long night.

I hadn't thought about it this way but you're absolutely right.