Sorry for the delay, loves. I’m in the process of buying a house, studying for a big exam, and informing a backlog of sexual partners about a certain little bug I recently picked up! It’s a wonderful life!
Braavos
So, Arya has somehow managed to stumble her bloody way, undetected, to the backstage of the theater. Lady Crane finds her, and takes her home for a little nursing. We get some more background info, like she’s a jealous domestic violence psycho who stabbed all her ex boyfriends. What the fuck? Also, we learn that “Bianca” was an actual name in Braavos, when I thought it was made up in like 1972, and that Lady Crane gave said Bianca a good maiming for trying to have her assassinated.
All in all, Lady Crane is terrifying.
Arya still likes her, though, enough that she wishes she could join the theater company in Pentos.
Arya’s next stop? Going west of Westeros, Columbus-style, to see the end of the world. Wait, what? I thought she was going back to Westeros to claim her claim and stuff? Argghh.
After her extremely dumb decision to flaunt her ass around town and get stabbed last week, Arya makes another dumb decision: taking milk of the poppy, which knocks her out.
This leaves Lady Crane free to be murdered by the Waif, wearing a creepy scraggly man face. We hardly knew ye, Lady Crane, but now we know what your inside bits look like.
The Waif is here for her jealous revenge/divine mission to kill Arya. Because this show’s idea of injury and healing makes no sense, Arya leaps out a window and takes out running and jumping and rolling down stone stairs. WHAT THE FUCK SHE WAS JUST STABBED ONE DAY AGO. There are stairs and a sweaty man-sauna and some more unnecessary aerials, and the Waif generally comes off like a smirking Roald Dahl villain.
Goddamnit. Why did we spend like ten minutes on this? Cat and mouse is NOT this show’s strong suit, and there is no interesting risk or character angle here. Arya’s not going to die.
Arya finally turns things around by getting the Waif into a dark, confined space with just one candle. Arya grabs Needle, snuffs the candle, and – we can only assume – defeats the Waif in the dark. I guess that’s the Waif’s comeuppance for the blind abuse.
Rather than taking off immediately, as I would have, Arya returns to the Temple to put the Waif’s face on the wall. Eww! (Umm continuity wise I think it’s already there because the no-ones can change into one another but whatever). I guess she wants to see if Jaqen is a threat.
He doesn’t seem to be. He says “finally a girl is no one,” and smiles like a proud papa when Arya says “I am Arya Stark of Winterfell, and I’m going home.”
This whole arc raised more stupid questions than it answered. For instance:
– Why would there be a Many-Faced God just to make sure that petty people could pay to kill people they don’t like and then also sometimes letting people commit water-suicide and sometimes healing them?
– How in the actual FUCK did Arya survive those stab wounds, let alone go on to FIGHT while injured?
– Wouldn’t the Waif have had the exact same training as Arya, and thus also be awesome at fighting blind?
– What exactly did Arya learn here that she didn’t already know? Is fighting blind some big part of her destiny in avenging the Starks? Cause I’m pretty sure she was already fine at blending in (as a boy, as an urchin, as a cupbearer) before going to Braavos.
– Why was Jaqen happy that Arya killed the Waif, who appeared to be the only other goddamn ‘no one’ in Braavos and was presumably his protege?
Woods-ish
Remember how the Hound is back and all his friends got murdered? Well, he’s still really good at killing people. He takes out four members of the Brotherhood Without Banners in about thirty seconds with his axe. Entrails abound. These are not the same men who attacked the village, I don’t think.
He finds those same men with nooses around their necks, ready to be executed by the Brotherhood Without Banners. According to Beric Dondarrion, he of the constant resurrection, these guys were actually deserters, acting under the Brotherhood’s name and doing bad stuff. The Brotherhood lets him hang a few of them (he wanted a gutting, but what can you do), and the Hound takes the boots off one of the still wriggling bodies.
Beric Dondarrion and the Red Priest Thoros of Myr try to convince the Hound to join them in their eventual fight against the Walkers. He’s not convinced his solo career is over.