I Have a Crazy Game of Thrones Theory—And I’ll Bet It’s Right

This past Sunday’s Game of Thrones featured a surprising resolution to one of the biggest storylines of the past couple years. But when I reached the end of the episode, I had to rewind and watch it a few times. I couldn’t shake a feeling that something was off.

Here Come Some Spoilers

I’m referring, of course, to Arya, the younger daughter of House Stark. She’s spent the past couple years in the free city of Braavos studying to be an assassin with the death cult known as the Faceless Men. Her mentor, the assassin formerly known as Jaqen H’ghar, has pushed Arya to prove that she can give up her identity and become “no one” in the service of the Many-Faced God.

The story of Arya’s time with the Faceless Men is one of her failing at this. She hides her sword, Needle, instead of giving it up with all the other trappings of her old life. She murders someone without the Many-Faced God’s blessing (Ser Meryn Trant, a Westerosi who was on Arya’s oft-chanted shit list) and then refuses to kill one of her assigned targets, an actor known as Lady Crane. It’s pretty clear Arya is and always will be Arya—she can’t even hide her emotions when watching a play about her family’s downfall. Though to be fair, we’re all still sad about Ned.

Not assassinating Lady Crane is Arya’s second and final strike (there’s no baseball in Braavos, I guess), and when he finds out about it, Jaqen reluctantly orders the Waif to kill her. The trainee assassin, who’s been bullying Arya since she moved into the temple, tracks down the Little Wolf and stabs her in the stomach repeatedly. The next day, she chases Arya all over town, Terminator-style.

At last, at the end of the aptly-named “No One,” Arya gets the Waif alone in the room where she’s stashed her sword, strikes a dramatic pose, and slices the flame off the room’s lone candle with a flourish that would make Syrio Forel proud. The room goes black.

The next thing we see, Arya has hung the Waif’s face on House of Black and White’s trophy wall, and she tells Jaqen she’s reclaiming her identity and going home. Jaqen is like, “A man is super chill and accepting about this development.” The end. Uh, OK.

WTF?

So… how did Arya, who has multiple stab wounds in the stomach, score a kill on an opponent she’s never bested? (The darkness couldn’t have helped too much—she didn’t get that good at fighting while she was blind.) She’s not even staggering a little in that last scene. Why is Jaqen H’ghar suddenly OK with Arya traipsing back home to Westeros, after telling her earlier that there are no third chances? What happened to Arya’s idea of finding out what lays to the west of Westeros? Etc. etc.

Here’s the theory: Arya Stark is dead. She died in that dark room, and the Waif is wearing her face. Every time I re-watched the episode, I became more convinced.

Faceless

In the final scene, Jaqen H’ghar enters his temple to find a trail of blood leading to a face on the wall. “You told her to kill me,” Arya says, accusingly. Yes, he responds, “but there she is, and there you are.” Then he adds something odd: “Finally, a girl is no one.” Why would Arya be “no one” if she killed in self-defense, wielding a weapon given to her by her family? The very notion of “self-defense” implies that there’s a self to defend.

Jaqen’s compliment makes no sense (unless he’s just trying to placate her because she’s holding a sword to his chest). If anything, Arya’s method of killing the Waif is the final proof that she never became “no one.”

But maybe he’s not speaking to Arya. The Waif has also been trying to prove that she can be “no one” while training at the temple. And maybe the fact that she not just killed Arya, but took her place so convincingly is the ultimate proof that she’s accomplished her goal.

That little smile that Jaqen gives “Arya” when she says she’s going home sealed it for me. Having a reliable member of the Faceless Men masquerading as Arya Stark would be worth a great deal to the Many-Faced God. Just think of how many targets she can take out before anybody catches on.

There is, of course, the question of whose face “Arya” pinned to the wall? It could be anybody’s, really. It doesn’t look that much like Faye Marsay, who played the Waif, but it’s also possible that Waif herself was not the original owner of that face. It could also be simple misdirection; what you learn from reading George R.R. Martin—especially the sample chapter from The Winds of Winter—is that the Faceless Men do a lot of method acting to get into character.

Clues from the Future

In that chapter, Arya is impersonating an actress named Mercy for the Faceless Men. We see her internal monologue as she’s completely submerged in Mercy’s thoughts. Mercy doesn’t understand the Westerosi Common Tongue, so when Arya hears it, she thinks she doesn’t either—until she does. Mercy has no understanding of Westerosi politics, so Arya doesn’t understand any of it either. (She sees Ser Harys Swift’s crest, a bantam rooster, and wonders why he has a chicken on his chest.)
So maybe that whole performance is just the Waif creating a believable scenario in which Arya walks away from the House of Black and White, to help herself get into the role?

I did some Googling after I saw the episode, just to see if anybody else had thought of this first, and I didn’t find anything. Which probably means I’m wrong. (Although apparently some people believed the Waif was a figment of Arya’s imagination, or an aspect of Arya’s personality, which would leave the House of Black and White even more deserted than it already looks.) If I’m right, though, we’ll probably find out soon.

Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, Marsay said that she was sad to be “off the show,” but also added that there’s a reason we didn’t see Arya kill the Waif: “It would have been amazing to do a final fight scene, but the creators of this show are so good at making people second-guess things.” I can’t help wondering: What exactly are we supposed to be second-guessing?

OK, so my theory is admittedly crazypants. And you can just imagine the howls of rage ringing out across America if it turned out that Arya Stark was killed off screen. It would be the Red Wedding times a thousand.

On the other hand, the alternative is that the Faceless Men are not only faceless, but a little spineless, too.