Game of Thrones: Arya's Real Purpose
- profjsherwood
- Jun 4, 2022
- 6 min read
Arya Stark's journey was not about becoming a faceless assassin or checking off names on her list. Arya's story is about forming her own identity.
After the lackluster final season of Game of Thrones, one of the many criticisms voiced by fans was that of Arya Stark’s storyline with the Faceless Men of Braavos. Some fans questioned what the journey toward No One was for if Arya did not use her face-swapping ability in the final conflicts, particularly involving Queen Cersei. Arya’s story post-Bravos may turn out drastically different in the final two novels (if George R.R. Martin ever writes them) but going off the TV show and what is already published in the first five A Song of Ice and Fire novels from which Games of Thrones is adapted, it is clear that Arya’s character arc was not meant to come to a close wearing another’s face, behaving as vengeful and violent as ever. Arya’s entire character arc is about losing and reforming her own identity. “No One” is not an identity, but the lack thereof. I am not suggesting the skills Arya learned in Braavos were totally pointless. Arya killed the Frey’s, The Night King, and Littlefinger, but Arya is so much more than a tool for destruction.
Before Arya was literally wearing the faces of others, she figuratively wore many faces. Even while still in Winterfell, Arya struggled with who she was, vowing to never become a lady, as was expected of her. But in Game of Thrones, Arya adopted other aliases, most notably Arry, the boy who travels toward The Wall with Gendry, Hot Pie, Jaqen H’ghar and others, and is later Tywin Lannister’s hostage/servant at Harrenhal in season 2. After she was captured by The Hound, Sandor Clegane, she put on the guise of his daughter, when necessary, like when the two were taken in briefly by the father and daughter in the countryside. In the novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya takes on even more aliases: Arry, Cat of the Canals, Nymeria, Nan, Salty, Squab, Blind Beth, and Weasel. It is fair to say that even up until Arya traveled to Braavos, Arya had been denied her own identity at a time in her youth when she should have been in the process of self-discovery, finding and forming who she is and would grow to be.
The only constant that defined Arya for four seasons was her passion for revenge—to bring death to those who had wronged her and her "pack," House Stark. Death was her god, as her season one mentor, “The Sword of Braavos,” Syrio Forell planted in her mind, “There is only one god, and his name is Death” (“A Golden Crown,” 2011), and as Arya told Ser Beric Dondarian when Beric claimed the Red God the one true god. “He’s not my one true god,” Arya says, and Beric responds, “No? Who’s yours?” Arya replies, “Death” (“The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” 2013).
When Arya traveled to Braavos at the end of season 4, she did so with the express purpose of becoming a Faceless Man, but not because she wished to be No One, but because she wanted to train and learn to kill each enemy on her “list.” While she focused on revenge, Arya Stark still existed. Nevertheless, she assumed the “identity” (or absence of identity) of a Faceless Man, or tried to, but she never really became No One.
For someone so hellbent on revenge and carrying a very dichotomously black and white worldview, even when she sincerely tried to let revenge go and truly become No One (well, maybe not truly, as she did not dispose of Needle, but near enough), Arya found herself in situations where empathy and compassion emerged in ways we, nor she, had yet seen or perhaps even thought capable. Arya found herself sympathetic toward an actress she had been tasked to kill: the actress Lady Crane who played Cersei in a stage play in Braavos. Arya warmed to Crane and gave Lady Crane advice on her stage portrayal of Cersei as she watch Joffrey die. Because Arya did not witness Joffrey dying, her advice was not born of observation but empathy (not to be confused with sympathy). In helping Lady Crane find Cersei’s emotions in that moment, Arya related to Cersei, herself, in a very compassionate and human way, despite Cersei’s place near the top of Arya’s kill list, second only to King Joffrey.
Arya’s journey is sprinkled further empathy and compassion, despite her resolve to stay in a hardened, vengeful state. Arya’s reluctant and suppressed affection for The Hound, after their long time traveling together, is a prime example. Another example is Arya’s stumble upon Lannister soldiers, meeting and eating with them in season 7. This scene was not just an excuse to feature Ed Sheeran, who was cast as a treat for Arya actor Maisie Williams. Arya spoke to soldiers who fought for her enemy, heard stories about their lives, laughed with them, and perceived them each as individuals and not faceless pieces of a whole—the whole being a Lannister army, a symbol of Cersei. Arya could not continue to fully commit herself to generalizing entire groups, which involves dehumanizing others, making them easier her to kill. She began to see that groups are comprised of complex, nuanced individuals. Her favorite brother, and savior of the Wildlings, Jon Snow, would have been proud.
Arya connecting to others and the commitment to avenge her family both support Arya’s actual desire, even if she did not recognize it at the time, to regain a “pack.” Arya lost a big part of herself when she sent away her direwolf Nymeria. When Arya found Nymeria (or when Nymeria found her), Arya plead with the direwolf to join her on her way to Winterfell. When Nymeria left, Arya accepted that Nymeria is who she has become—a direwolf loyal to her own pack. After this, Arya was able to start moving forward, herself. She began the process of accepting that she, Arya, must evolve and become who she is, as well, not who anger had shaped her to be.
The point of Arya’s arc was to become who she was meant to be. She traveled to Braavos to become No One, and in doing so, realized that she could never be No One; she had to find her way back to becoming Arya Stark of Winterfell. Arya Stark of Winterfell could not be herself while defined by hate. In a truly symbolic moment, Arya slayed Death itself, killing The Night King, and metaphorically conquering the force that had taken over her identity for so many years. But Arya did not fully realize who she was in that symbolic act of slaying Death. It was when she traveled to kill Cersei while Daenerys burned down King’s Landing that The Hound helped Arya reach that last step in self-discovery. The Hound implored Arya to leave the crumbling Red Keep and abandon her quest for revenge, “You think you’ve wanted revenge a long time? I’ve been at it all my life. It’s all I care about. . . . Look at me! You want to be like me? You come with me you die here.” And we see the realization and acceptance that she must let go of vengeance when she replies to The Hound, calling him by his real name, a mark of sincerity and affection, “Sandor, thank you” (“The Bells, 2019).
People were mad that Arya’s Faceless Man skills were “wasted” or “meant nothing in the end.” They did, though. Through trying to become No One, wearing faces and identities other than her own, and also, by training, which ensured her survival and the skills that would grant her murderous quest closure, she forged her own identity. She found a place where she could be Arya, not a vessel for revenge. When she let go of vengeance and decided to find purpose in something she had chosen for herself--sailing west--she fulfilled her arc and her character got closure. She decided what defined her, and she finally regained her pack—her family.
Arya was never meant to become No One. She was meant to be reborn as the true Arya Stark.
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