Is It Time For Arya Stark To Die On ‘Game Of Thrones’?

Game of Thrones is kicking off its penultimate season on Sunday, July 16. As we sprint towards the show’s finish line, time is running out for many of our favorite major characters in Westeros — but who should live and who should die? Decider’s own Meghan O’Keefe and Joe Reid will weigh in on all of your favorite leading lords and ladies, breaking down the reasons why they deserve to survive the brutal war ahead or should just get killed off already. First up: Arya Stark.

First thing’s first: Do you think it is time for Arya Stark to die?

Joe: Short answer: yes. Medium-length answer: if only so Sansa outlives her. Long answer: I suppose it depends on how one sees the Stark family in the grand scheme of Game of Thrones. The Starks were our entry point into this TV series. We met them when they were all tiny little pups learning at the feet of their principled but terminally un-cunning father, Ned, gifted with metaphors/direwolf pups of their own. Once a more traditionally unfolding show, the fate of those Stark children would mirror the fate of Westeros, and Ned’s season 1 death would be avenged by his orphaned children. But that’s not the show that Game of Thrones really is. It’s become a much more expansive universe, and one that’s been much less sentimental about offing its characters. It’s not only that Robb and Rickon Stark were killed suddenly and brutally (thanks a lot, Boltons), ending their stories long before they could fulfill any kind of Stark destiny. It’s that Game of Thrones doesn’t seem all that interested in poetic justice. Cersei Lannister, as much responsible as anyone for the fate of Ned Stark, sits atop the Iron Throne and will most likely be killed by Daenerys or her own twin brother. Her son Joffrey, who ordered Ned’s beheading, was offed by a shade-throwing grandmother, a scheming string-puller, and a pie full of pigeons. I think part of what was interesting about Arya encountering the Players last season was that she got to see that Westeros was going about the business of dispatching the people on her celebrated kill list as efficiently as she was. I no longer have any sense that the show needs Arya to complete her little to-do list before her time on the show is up. And now that the show is coalescing around a pair of battles — one for the Iron Throne; one against the White Walkers — I don’t see a place for Arya in either of those endgames.

That said, while I no longer see the necessity for Arya in the story, I also don’t see where Arya’s story would meet a natural endpoint in the season to come. Maybe you can help me out here (if indeed you’re even interesting in helping come up with ways to off Arya). I’m on the record as never being her biggest fan, but I’d still be let down if she just dies at the hands of, like, a Greyjoy or something.

Meghan: Well, I was just going to go with a simple, “No, not yet.” I think the big thing you’ve honed in is the moral/political part of Game of Thrones. Yes, this is a show about feuding families, their vendettas and their ambitions. However, it’s also a fantasy epic about ice zombies marching south to murder everyone. There are “magical children” scattered all over this world and the sense is they must pool their resources together to fight this impending Armageddon or die. And come back as wights.

See, I think Arya has skills now that could help in the war against the White Walkers. I mean, heck, why send her to Braavos and put her through the Faceless Men’s rigorous training camp if she wasn’t learning something that could come into play later? I know that everyone points to her showy ability to take on the faces of other people, but I’m more interested in how she finally bested the Waif in pitch black combat. The White Walkers have been often linked with darkness.

I would argue that Arya still has something to offer the final stages of the saga and that her character has unfinished emotional business (but Game of Thrones cares less about that than sheer usefulness to the plot). So, no, it’s not Arya’s time yet.

Let’s break this down. Where else can Arya’s storyline go?

Meghan: Since her father’s death in Season One, Arya has been on a sort of “one girl road trip” journey that took her through the darker parts of Westeros and Braavos. At the end of last season, the fully armed and operational (heh) Murder Girl Arya™ made her return to her homeland. Her first pit stop was The Twins. She snuck into the Frey stronghold and managed the smooth feat of killing Walder Frey and his two most prominent male heirs. It’s important to note that she waited until the Lannister armies had left the castle and that her uncle, Edmure Tully, was last “seen” in the Freys’ dungeons. If she’s smart, she’ll release him to take back the Riverlands, but then again, political strategy and military maneuvering aren’t Arya’s bags. MURDERING is Arya Stark’s bag.

So where else can her story go? Well, she could go home. There she’ll find an uneasy alliance between her beloved “half-brother” Jon and her detested sister Sansa. She’ll also find Littlefinger. Petyr Baelish has yet to make it to Arya’s kill list, but that’s only in part due to her ignorance about his involvement in her father’s death. However, she also doesn’t yet know how much he did (or didn’t do) to hide her identity from Tywin Lannister at Harrenhal back in Season Two.

So Arya still has some storyline to burn through: an awkward family reunion, a possible showdown with Littlefinger, and a potential place on the frontlines of the war against the White Walkers.

Joe: And again, Game of Thrones is sometimes a show that doesn’t necessarily give us the reunions/revenges we want. I do, however, think we are owed a reunion of Arya and Sansa, the Stark sisters (work! work!). The oppositional nature of the girls — Arya the adventurous/courageous tomboy; Sansa the putting-on-airs dreamy princess — was a bigger deal in the books than on the show, but I think there’s a lot of meat left on those bones. Arya’s precocious fencing lessons have hardened around a Murder Girl exterior, while Sansa’s dreams of castles and pretty gowns were burned away, leaving a harder and more cunning woman in their wake. Seeing how they will receive each other fascinates me, especially given that Jon will likely be around too, and Arya and Jon were always very close.

If she is killed off, how does that affect the rest of the “gameboard”? (i.e. What are the military/political/personal repercussions? What loose narrative threads need to be tied off?)

Joe: See, I think losing Arya has very little impact on the greater chessboard in Westeros. I appreciate your take on how Arya’s fighting repertoire can be of use in a battle against a White Walker, but it still feels like we’re heading to a dragons vs. ice zombies showdown, and I don’t see Arya having a place in that. And since, as you say, she’s not really a creature of politics or palace intrigue either … I mean, the kid’s an assassin. How many are there even left to assassinate at this point?

Meghan: That’s a good point, but I’d argue that she disrupts the game board more in life than death. Most characters on Game of Thrones leave a power vacuum when they’re gone, but Arya wouldn’t. However, she could cause a lot of consternation for Littlefinger and Sansa if she lands in Winterfell this season. HBO has been teasing that this season will give us a power struggle against Sansa and Jon. Littlefinger is clearly putting his thumb on the scale for Sansa, but Arya would be an interesting ally in Jon’s corner. (And by “interesting ally,” I mean a ruthless assassin happy to dispose of those whom Jon can’t kill for honor’s sake.)

Can you make a case for her to survive until Season 8?

Meghan: I think Arya still has a role to play in internal Stark family battles and that with her skills, she could give us at least one fantastic battle scene in Season 8 (which I am dumbly assuming will be a non-stop series of intense melees and jaw-dropping catastrophes).

Joe: If only so she can reunite the viewers with the longest lost of all the direwolves, Nymeria, in the final episode.

Crazy bet: Do we think she’ll survive the whole series?

Joe: She probably shouldn’t. But there are few characters whom this show is more deeply in love with, so I won’t put my sack of Bravvosi coins on it.

Meghan: I’m going to surprise myself and say she won’t survive the whole series, but I, too, worry the show is too fond of her.

Game of Thrones Season Seven premieres Sunday, July 16.

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