I'm No Longer Team Arya After She Got This Fact All Wrong During Her Intense Conversation With Sansa
This article contains spoilers about Sunday's episode of Game of Thrones.
We were rooting for you, Arya! We were all rooting for you! I've spent the past seven seasons of Game Of Thrones hoping that the Stark sisters would finally reunite, but last night's episode had me second guessing what I wished for. Back together at Winterfell, Sansa (Sophie Turner) and Arya (Maisie Williams) are anything but united, and after the conversation they had at the beginning of the episode, it's clear that Arya has gone off the rails, and is convinced that Sansa will betray her family. Sure, there's bound to be tension and frustration after so much heartbreak, but Arya's view towards Sansa is wilfully ignorant, and just plain wrong when it comes to how she remembers just how their family's diffusion went down.
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"I remember you standing on that platform with Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) and Cersei (Lena Headey) when they dragged father to the block," Arya says to her sister. "I remember the pretty dress you were wearing, I remember the fancy way you did your hair...I was there, standing in the crowd near Baelor's statue."
But here's the thing: When Joffrey announced that he would be executing Ned Stark (Sean Bean), Sansa was not the cool and collected picture Arya painted. She was distraught, and was held back by a guard while she fought to get to her father and stop the execution. Sansa had only instructed her father to confess to treason after being told Joffrey would pardon him — but she was betrayed.
Arya may have missed this, since as soon as her father was sentenced, she jumped down from the statue before being restrained by one of Ned's men. Her face was shielded from the madness, which means she didn't see just how hard Sansa fought to stop it.
Arya also missed everything that followed. Sansa, on stage in a pretty dress, may look like she had switched over to the enemy's side, but after her father's death, the eldest daughter was essentially held captive by the Lannisters, later being shuffled from man to man — a fact Sansa wants to make sure Arya is well aware of.
"You should be on your knees thanking me," she said in last night's episode. "We're standing in Winterfell again because of me. You didn't win it back, Jon (Kit Harington) didn't win it back, he lost the Battle of the Bastards. The Knights of the Vale won the battle and they rode north for me while you were off, where? Traveling the world?"
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Arya insists that she was training, but Sansa was fighting her own battles.
"While you were training I suffered things you could never imagine," she said. "You never would have survived what I survived."
And this is true. The two women have wildly different tactics when it comes to vanquishing their enemies. Sansa plays the long game, while Arya acts impulsively. Neither would have survived if their situations were flipped, which is why it's absurd for Arya to act like Sansa didn't do anything these past seven years. Had Sansa done what Arya wanted her to do, she would have been killed, which means they never would have reclaimed Winterfell, and they would not be as close as they are to winning over the Seven Kingdoms and establishing peace.
Arya, I supported you while you were out on your own — but now, I'm calling bullshit.