Why tonight’s episode was so important to girls and women (Battle of Winterfell spoilers)
Let me just get it on the record right now: Arya Stark killing the Night King is going to get a lot of shit, especially from the male book snobs. But let’s just take a moment and revel in the fact that they can complain all they want about how Arya didn’t fit into the prophecy as Azor Ahai because it still won’t do shit to change the fact that she is the prince that was promised. She brought an end to the Long Night. She did that.
Throughout the three years that I’ve been a member of this fandom, I’ve read all the books, watched every episode as soon as I could get my hands on it, watched all the theory/explanation videos, and from the very first time I was introduced to her in the books, I singled out Arya Stark as my favorite. On New Year’s Eve of 2016, my family adopted a puppy, who we named Arya Bark because she was everyone’s favorite character. I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit studying her every movement in an attempt to understand her character, and having this episode now, having her being the one who killed the Night King, I’ve genuinely never felt more proud of a character in my life.
So many people said that it would be Jon and/or Dany because they represented ice and fire, they were the heads of the dragon, they were Azor Ahai and Nissa-Nissa. But let me just say, this was 100% Arya’s moment because the Night King and the whole war between the living and the dead wasn’t about ice, it wasn’t about fire, it wasn’t about dragons or wolves, it wasn’t about honor and shame, it was about one thing and one thing only: Death. Throughout this series, we have seen Arya’s relationship with the god of death shift many times. In season one, under the training of Syrio Forel, she defied death. (“‘What do we say to the god of death?’ ‘Not today.’”) In seasons two through four, she witnessed death. In season five, she served death. (Valar morghulis, valar dohaeris.) In season six, she cheated death. (She spared Lady Crane and then defeated The Waif when she came to kill her.) And finally, in season 8, she faced death, and defeated it, once and for all.
This time last week, straight men everywhere took to twitter to talk about how “wrong” it was for Arya to lose her virginity because they still saw her as a kid (apparently violently murdering 50+ people and then wearing their faces didn’t do the trick). But she showed everyone in that episode that she didnt give a single fuck about what they thought, she saw what she wanted, she knew who she wanted to do it with, and she did it. She controlled the situation, but still gave Gendry agency (“I’m not the Red Woman. Take your own bloody pants off.”), which is honestly the only time in all of Game of Thrones that I can recall a woman losing her virginity in an empowering way on her own terms. And then this week, she showed us how you break the glass fucking ceiling. That moment when The Hound had stopped fighting and told Beric that it was pointless, that you can’t defeat death, and Beric pointed at Arya and said “Try telling that to her!”, my heart just swelled with pride. She never once let herself get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of wights that she was fighting, she just kept going. She knew that as long as there was still an enemy in front of her, she still had a job to do, and she didn’t hesitate to do it.
Arya Stark is easily the strongest character in this series, female or not. She’s been defying expectations and breaking all the rules since day one, saving the innocent and killing the guilty. She stared death in the face, had him holding her by the neck, and instead of giving up, instead of giving into fear, she adapted, and thus saved humanity. In this season alone, Arya Stark has proved to the world that women can be badass warriors as well as loving and caring family members and still be sexually empowered and desirable. She’s proving that you don’t need to pick one, that women truly can have it all.
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