Minus the horse Uber at the end, I liked the stuff with Arya because it at least seemed to be grounded in some sense of humanity. Weirdly enough, it reminded me of “Black Hawk Down.”
Serious question: what is everyone's problem with the horse...??? I don't get it. It was definitely just some random horse that survived the insane chaos by chance.
The humanity of it is what I enjoyed the most (but I'm bias towards anything she does). I think the show quickly needed to establish a motivating force in her character beyond the simple act of revenge. Gives up on revenge...enter old lady and daughter...WA LA.
The woman that was helping Arya was holding some sort of...horse talisman in her hand right? Or did I imagine that?
Wow, I really missed that. I didn't see anything special about that lady. I need to give it a rewatch tonight with a few less martinis. I can't say I understand what Arya was really doing or why she decided to turn back, but I thought the scenes of her running around while the city is being destroyed all around her were incredible and really well done. We don't usually get a ground's eye view of that kind of stuff, from the perspective of the people getting the worst of it.
I didn't see it either and I generally don't rewatch but now I might have to. I'm still hoping it's Bran.
I thought that was possibly meant to be a callback to Shireen and her toy. The horse for me just seemed like a scene out of an entirely different story/genre. It wasn’t that it was a bad scene at all, just one that had a feel unlike anything else. Especially since it was the focus of the entire ending in a episode where so much happened. It was incredibly dreamlike and mystical and was shot in a way that seemed to be giving it a lot more weight than just being a last minute savior for Arya.
Isn't this arguing that she didn't snap, or go insane, or the coin didn't land on the wrong way, but that she made a calculated decision to do war crimes? Doesn't seem to jive with most readings of that aspect of the episode or Varys' whole speech about the coin flip or the reasoning for him betraying her or the whole point about nature vs nurture at all
I think you could have actually opened the next episode with Arya waking up and escaping and ending the episode with the couple crumble
All of the events that lead up to her doing what she did cumulatively caused her to snap. Including Missandei. The show is clearly framing it as the coin landed on the wrong side, but it wasn't a random event. She was actively trying to be better for the entirety of the show up to when she arrived in Westeros. Her hopelessness, fear, frustration, and anger drove her over the edge. It's almost Star Wars-y to me honestly, reminds me of Anakin. I don't think it's necessarily about nature vs. nurture entirely, I think it's a combination of both things. Sometimes the madness is inherent in the Targaryen (like with Viserys and, we assume, Aerys) and sometimes they're driven there by circumstances and by virtue of the fact that it's easy for someone with that much power to abuse it. I don't think Daenerys was born mad, I think she was born with a predisposition to wind up that way but the things that happened to her drove her there. I thought the show did a good job of showing that it was anything but a calculated decision to do what she did.
I find it a strange choice how they never do another close up on Dany as she's burning the whole city.
It’s also interesting to me that so many saw that as hinting that Arya will still have a major job to do, because in the moment it almost struck me as her goodbye forever. There was such a finality to it after all the chaos.
Yeah my buddy who is a huge fan thinks she is just going to head off and explore other lands at this point.
I think the framing of the last times we see her, watching as an innocent mother and child are burned alive and then waking up to see the devastation Daenerys caused, means she's on Arya's list now. I was half expecting her to say "Daenerys Targaryen" under her breath as she mounted the horse to ride away. I'm glad they didn't do that, though, it wouldn't have been as good as what happened.