Whatever Happened to Arya? [GOT SPOILERS]

As most of you know, I am a big fan of the book series A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) and the Game of Thrones (GOT) television show. Obviously the show-runners have run into a pickle, since Georgie is writing slower than a sloth avoiding being run over by a Zamboni. Without a guide, the show producers have had to either become more efficient with their characters, or make sudden swift adjustments to character arcs. As a writer, I found what they did with Arya this season to be lazy writing, not only because there were scenes which went against everything we know about Arya, but her overall character arc was jarring.

Stabbin' Folks with My Hobo Knife...

I'll start this off by admitting the last two ASOIAF books aren't nearly as good as the first three. Part of the problem was resetting the chess pieces, which required a build-up. Even then, Martin admitted he wrote himself into plot knots. Let's focus on Arya's arc.

Arya has seen some shit in the show and books. Her desire to enact revenge on those who have wronged her and her family drive her into the waiting arms of a strange religious cult who are paid to assassinate anyone who has the money to pay for it. They do this by literally taking people's faces, allowing assassins to look wildly different. The Faceless Men's goal is to drive away the individual and attachment to a person's previous life, something Arya struggles to give up. By the end of A Dance with Dragons, she has succeeded in her first assassination mission, but the lingering thoughts of her family and wolf dreams leave the reader wondering if she will succeed in becoming a full-fledged assassin for the Faceless Men.

With a short timeline to play with in the show, Arya becomes an assassin far faster than one would expect, but she still holds on to her previous life. She is trained by a waif who hates her (shouldn't her hatred for Arya be questioned by the Faceless Men?) Pressed with a choice between protecting someone she grows to care for or finish her mission, she chooses to save the person. Knowing the cult would come after her, she goes into hiding.

Now, here's where I grew frustrated with what the show runners did. Up until that point in the show, Arya is shown as being intelligent and a little fearless. She's a trained fighter. She can fight in the dark. She knows how to blend in with crowds, and is a successful liar when questioned who she is. She is cautious, deadly, and most of all, tenacious. She would know the Faceless Men would come after her, and the shot of her hugging her sword in the dark suggested she knew her life was in danger.

Grandma be stabbin'...

So the next episode, instead of trying to hide and quietly find passage out of Braavos, she's out in the open, tossing cash into any Braavosi ship captain willing to take on a passenger. She walks around without any fear or care, and without her sword. Stopping at a bridge to smell the air/reflect on how beautiful the sunshine is, old lady walks up to her and stabs her in the stomach. The waif was dressed as an old lady the whole time, utilizing an old lady's face to get close to Arya. Arya manages to escape the fight.

Now, here's what's wrong with this scene. The Arya we know would never do that. She wouldn't be stupid enough to go out in the open. She wouldn't go anywhere without her sword. She would be far more cautious in her plans to escape back to Westeros. The previous episode suggested she was scared, and being cautious was the best approach to take.

This scene was so blatantly anti-Arya that it led many to speculate it wasn't really Arya who got stabbed. That the Faceless Men setup the waif to see if she passes the test. That Arya was wearing a blood bag.That the waif and Arya were the same person, like in Fight Club.

In the next episode she makes a miraculous recovery from an awful stomach wound and manages to parkour her way back to her dark room, where she takes out the waif. It becomes clear Arya wants nothing to do with the Faceless Men's cult, and she is somehow given reprieve from her mentor to leave without penalty.

This is lazy writing, plain and simple. There is nothing suggesting Arya would have been that dumb. She'd survived numerous deadly situations, witnessed atrocities, and losing everything she held dear combined with everything she had gone through suggested a smart and deadly character whose only goal is revenge. Ultimately that's what we get when she kills Walder Frey, but it was shoddy writing that got her there.

Characters should be consistent. If they make a decision against their grain, it should be visible to the reader/viewer. This is something I dealt with personally with my own novel, Survive Well. I had a character make a major decision that went against everything I had written about her. It required some re-writing to make the decision more organic.

Overall the show has done an admirable job with character arcs, but Arya's was poorly done this season.

I will admit it was satisfying to see her gut Walder Frey though, so yay!