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Is the Arya Stark/Brienne scene in GoT S07 the dumbest scene in GoT?
- Thread starter Deleted member 11093
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Even Samwell has killed a being without a trace. Not exactly difficult to do in a medieval setting. I assume you meant that she killed them all sneaky sneaky?
Dorne should be totally different. Laws, terrain, culture. The difference should be more stark when comparing the Southron and Northern nobles and folk.
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It is a little stupid but it is not even close to the stupidest thing in season 7, let alone in the series
Hell, it isn't even the stupidest thing involving Arya in season 7
It is a fun bit of fanservice that is admittedly unrealistic but I lay the blame for that squarely at the feet of the overall awful execution of the Arya in Braavos arc. I don't blame them for wanting Arya to have came out of there with Faceless Man level skills, I blame them for doing a shit job of showing her training
Is this really what we are going to complain about when the Arya vs Sansa shitfest starts happening like immediately afterwards
Or Tyrion's fucking dumbshit stupid plan that's bad
Or the fucking Sand Snakes fight (the actual stupidest scene in Game of Thrones)
Hell, it isn't even the stupidest thing involving Arya in season 7
It is a fun bit of fanservice that is admittedly unrealistic but I lay the blame for that squarely at the feet of the overall awful execution of the Arya in Braavos arc. I don't blame them for wanting Arya to have came out of there with Faceless Man level skills, I blame them for doing a shit job of showing her training
Is this really what we are going to complain about when the Arya vs Sansa shitfest starts happening like immediately afterwards
Or Tyrion's fucking dumbshit stupid plan that's bad
Or the fucking Sand Snakes fight (the actual stupidest scene in Game of Thrones)
Well I mean... if I was in a friendly sparring match with an ally of my family that was using a blunted weapon, maybe I would use my pokey stick like a slashey stick so i didn't accidentally... fuckin stab her lol :-D
Out of all the garbo in GoT this scene was pretty low hanging fruit
I thought it was pretty stupid, but only the execution, not the concept. Arya is shown slicing with her rapier against an opponent in plate armour, which is stupid. That moment when she hits Brienne's wrist is a good example - Brienne recoils and it looks like Arya's won a point, but why? With that armour it shouldn't have any affect on her at all. Also, the match ended in a draw, so why people are treating it like Brienne lost, I don't know.
We do know that Westerosi knights have serious problems when facing Water Dancers. Syrio Forel defeated several members of the King's Guard at once with nothing but a short wooden sword, and then there is this scene -
Jorah Mormont is a very competent fighter who was given a knight's worth of training, the same as Robb and Jon, and probably by his similarly competent father. In this scene he faces a fully trained Water Dancer in the fighting pits, and the Water Dancer destroys him. Just tears him apart with no effort at all, and Jorah is wearing a considerable amount of plate armour - only his arms and below his waist are unprotected. Without the intervention of the spear-wielding warrior, Jorah is dead. He doesn't even get a hit in on the Water Dancer in their very short engagement, that's how much trouble Westerosi warriors have with people trained as such.
Arya trained for a short while with the First Sword of Braavos and kept up her training wherever she went. She also had extensive martial training with the Faceless Men, even learning to fight blind. She is an exceptionally dangerous assassin, we know this. This scene was meant to show us she is also an exceptionally dangerous opponent in battle, too.
ScholaGladiatoria did a great analysis of the fight, I definitely recommend you give it a watch -
We do know that Westerosi knights have serious problems when facing Water Dancers. Syrio Forel defeated several members of the King's Guard at once with nothing but a short wooden sword, and then there is this scene -
Jorah Mormont is a very competent fighter who was given a knight's worth of training, the same as Robb and Jon, and probably by his similarly competent father. In this scene he faces a fully trained Water Dancer in the fighting pits, and the Water Dancer destroys him. Just tears him apart with no effort at all, and Jorah is wearing a considerable amount of plate armour - only his arms and below his waist are unprotected. Without the intervention of the spear-wielding warrior, Jorah is dead. He doesn't even get a hit in on the Water Dancer in their very short engagement, that's how much trouble Westerosi warriors have with people trained as such.
Arya trained for a short while with the First Sword of Braavos and kept up her training wherever she went. She also had extensive martial training with the Faceless Men, even learning to fight blind. She is an exceptionally dangerous assassin, we know this. This scene was meant to show us she is also an exceptionally dangerous opponent in battle, too.
ScholaGladiatoria did a great analysis of the fight, I definitely recommend you give it a watch -
Complain about all of them. Complain especially loudly about the 'loot train attack'. The fact that an invader with well over 100000 troops, and likely two to three times as many horses, thought burning supplies is a good idea.
Striking someone's hand still hurts, even if you're wearing armor. The force of a strike does not simply disappear. And she isn't actually wearing a gauntlet in that scene, either.
This scene is also dumb, though. There is a distinct lack of proper technique by Jorah.
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I mean I guess what I'm saying is that they are all more worth complaining about than this pretty harmless bit of fanservice with fault that lies mostly with the execution of the intended setup and not with the scene itself
Remember that this topic exists to discuss whether it is "the dumbest scene" in the whole show and... No, it's not.
(EDIT: just my opinion: I'd posit that for s7 it's Jon's contrived obligatory self-sacrifice only to be saved by Benjen's contrived obligatory self-sacrifice. Please slap me if I ever pull that kind of "there's no time!" shit when writing. Bonus s7 dumb: when Tyrion suggests the plan itself)
I totally sympathize if one has a low tolerance for stupid bullshit don't get me wrong but if that's the case I have to wonder how that kind of person made it past season 5
I'm not trying to argue too hard here though like I get it lol I love Thrones but it's written like solid ass a lot of the time esp once they pass the books (and tbh maybe more often in earlier seasons than people would like to admit)
I just feel like this is an odd choice of scene to lay out the hyperbolic superlative of "dumbest in the series" about. It's like shelling out $100 for an extremely fancy buffet and you run right past the steak and lobster tails and all you decide to eat is a small salad
with no salad dressing
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They didn't show all of her Faceless Men training. She was there for like a year or more, and we get a couple of clips. Presumably she trained a lot.
Yes, this was monumentally stupid. Use your dragon to burn supplies your massive armies need since you have no resources on Dragonstone, and lose some good men fighting the enemy instead of burning them.
I missed that. It didn't look like Arya put much effort into the hit, but if Brienne isn't wearing a gauntlet, then okay.
Possibly to highlight what I said above, maybe?
Well, that's fair enough. I guess how stupid someone finds any particular scene depends entirely on how knowledgeable (or ignorant) such a person is. So it is sort of subjective. If you were referring to Tyrion's Casterly Rock plan, I don't consider it as dumb as the the Arya scene. How it played it is laughable, however. Maybe these scenes can serve as a reminder to the audience that GoT is written by people who are trying to entertain a certain target audience. An audience who, by and large, have no concept of how medieval combat works. You're raising a good point, though. This is one of the better scenes all things considered.
Realistically, Jorah should have trampled over the water dancer. Warfare mostly develops similarly throughout the world and the ages. Swords are not particularity heavy and neither is armor. You can do back-flips in full plate if you really wanted to. 'Water dancing' is objectively ridiculous against any armoured combatant. I guess that's why the writers decided to portray the knights without proper attire? To make it less silly?
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The parts of the show where she actually trained to get to that point were handled so poorly that her being this ultra badass assassin rings hollow. Especially because he training in the books is actually cool, mysterious, and compelling. Arya was my favorite character in both Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire but once she heads to Bravos and D&D diverge wildly from GRRM's writing, her stuff becomes some of the worst stuff in the show with only the Dorn material being worse than it.
The show has been terrible about showing Arya's progress. One scene she's still scrubbing the floors or something, a little later she has masterfully assassinated every Frey in Westeros without breaking a sweat. The Brienne fight is consistent with this "has ascended to faceless god of death" plotline she has going that kind of magically happened when she killed the Waif iirc.
Not to mention that this happened literally an episode before she's suddenly this cunning, masterclass god tier assassin.
Arya becoming an amazing swordfighter and assassin is something I always wanted for her character. But her going from running away from the world's most deadly assassin guild, strolling around in public knowing she's going to be targeted, and being so unaware of her surroundings she get's ganked in broad daylight by the waif who is very obviously charging at her down a lonely road before jumping into septic water, to her being a god tier assassin the next episode is just bad. It's not good.
Also why did the waif need to be railroaded into being a depthless cartoon of a character who hates Arya just because?
It also makes more sense in the books, being just two Freys and having a completely different character that we don't know that well make the pies (so he might actually be a secret psychopath who would do this kind of stuff, we don't know). Meanwhile, Arya doing the same is weird. So not only did she apparently murder all the Freys without being noticed, she also decided to cut the Freys up and cook them into a pie. What the actual fuck, when did Arya become Hannibal Lecter?
Hey, but she got some bandages and chicken soup, it's all good.Not to mention that this happened literally an episode before she's suddenly this cunning, masterclass god tier assassin.
You can literally see the waif twisting the knife and also Arya's insides. You're fucking done. You're not going to survive that.
You could have just had Arya making her an obvious target in order to bait the waif into a trap and not have her somehow survive being fatally stabbed and swimming in septic water. It'd feel like far more organic of an arc since you don't suddenly establish her as Too Dumb To Live to god tier assassin.
I totally agree with you, I was being sarcastic. As I noted above, her not only surviving that stabbing, but then having a big parkour chase through Braavos is the single stupidest Arya-related plot line in the show IMO and also one of the main reasons why I strongly disagree with the people saying that Season 6 is as good as the early seasons of GoT.
No it wasn't. Its was a fantastic scene with 2 fan favorite characters. Was it pure fanservice? God yes. But that doesn't make it bad. People are so unbelievably critical over the most simple things sometimes lol
I get that you were being sarcastic. I just can't help but go into a rant when I think about Arya's Bravos arc.
This
Arya's faceless abilities are completely unearned..
She fails the first test and gets blinded.
Then she fails the next test, kills a loyal faceless practitioner, threatens one of its leaders and Jaqen pats her on the back and sends her on her way.. Like what?
Arya's training included, drinking poison
and for months getting the shit beat out of her before doing so:
I'm not saying she's straight up immortal but she's not a regular person. Faceless men aren't regularly people.
Faceless Men do not have super human durability. Faceless men are mostly regular people with the ability to magically wear the faces of other. They skilled. Well trained. Are deeply brainwashed and mentally conditioned. But they're ultimately people. They're not like Milessandre who can drink the deadliest of poisons, never have to eat, and is able to live in the north on the wall without the heavy winter clothing worn by others.Arya's training included, drinking poison
and for months getting the shit beat out of her before doing so:
I'm not saying she's straight up immortal but she's not a regular person. Faceless men aren't regularly people.
Understandable
None of these things make you invulnerable to stabbing wounds. Hell, if they were invulnerable to stabbing wounds, surely The Waif would've known that and wouldn't have tried stabbing her.Arya's training included, drinking poison
and for months getting the shit beat out of her before doing so:
I'm not saying she's straight up immortal but she's not a regular person. Faceless men aren't regularly people.
The story of Arya is one of tragedy. We're talking about a child whose seen nearly everyone she knows and loved brutally murdered in the most violent ways possible, and got tossed quite literally ito the dirt with no one around to help:
even moments before she would finally reunite with them.
This was her reaction to hearing someone brag about personally killing her family shortly after:
She can only sleep soundly at night if she explicitly says the names of every person she wants to kill.
And for months to possibly years had to endure explicit torture and brainwashing in order to become an assassin:
This is the face she makes as she gets revenge:
It would make zero sense for Arya to be a sane well adjusted person. The scariest thing is what happens after she's finally "satisfied" with her revenge. She can't settle down or live a normal life.
The waifs biggest mistake was refusing to kill her without making her suffer. I wouldn't be surprised if she purposefully avoided vital organs.
honestly, this last season isn't going to age well. I rewatched some of it recently and wow. some segments are just really really bad.
It's a trash scene. But most of the last few seasons have been trash so you eventually become numb to it.
It isnt peak stupid though like the Jaime and Dorne subplot. Every scene with them in that nonsensical subplot in season 5 was abysmal.
It isnt peak stupid though like the Jaime and Dorne subplot. Every scene with them in that nonsensical subplot in season 5 was abysmal.
All of this would be well and good if Arya didn't have an monumentally better story in the books than the show.The story of Arya is one of tragedy. We're talking about a child whose seen nearly everyone she knows and loved brutally murdered in the most violent ways possible, and got tossed quite literally ito the dirt with no one around to help:
even moments before she would finally reunite with them.
This was her reaction to hearing someone brag about personally killing her family shortly after:
She can only sleep soundly at night if she explicitly says the names of every person she wants to kill.
And for months to possibly years had to endure explicit torture and brainwashing in order to become an assassin:
This is the face she makes as she gets revenge:
It would make zero sense for Arya to be a sane well adjusted person. The scariest thing is what happens after she's finally "satisfied" with her revenge. She can't settle down or live a normal life.
The waifs biggest mistake was refusing to kill her without making her suffer. I wouldn't be surprised if she purposefully avoided vital organs.
I get it. You like Arya. I like Arya. Her actress is amazing. But her story went completely off the rails. It's a mess. Like the A to B of her becoming an amazing assassin is good on paper. But the connecting tissue is a mess. Her Bravos arc. Is boring. Lacks all the interesting magic and culture of Bravos. Is boring, and frequently just completely nonsensical. It's not worth defending when her story in the book is so, so, so much better.
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I wasn't saying she should've been nice or anything. Yes, her experiences have made her into an unstable, revenge-bend person (as it also does in the books), but it's still very hard to buy that Arya would choose to trick Walder Frey into cannibalism just 'cause. It one of those examples where D&D take an event from the books involving a character they pretty much cut from the show, changing the character involved and not think about the narrative consequences of doing so. The Frey pie scene in the book is a form of ironic justice. The character who makes them kills the Freys when they visit his court in a friendly/political visit (echoing the killing of the Starks by the Freys in the same kind of situation and the story of the Rat Cook, who also did the same thing to visiting guests). Meanwhile, Arya butchering the Freys and cooking them into a pie in their own castle signifies, uhm, just Arya being in a particularly cruel mood that day?
I have no issues with them changing Lady Stoneheart's 'kill all Freys' plot to Arya, because that's a change that makes sense since they're both characters whose main motivation is revenge, but Arya taking up her cannibal cooking skills just rings hollow. The writers also ran into the same issue in Season 5 by changing who Ramsay marries and rapes from Jeyne Poole to Sansa. Them doing that ruined Sansa's entire development and also made Littefinger into an idiot (handing over Sansa to Ramsay makes zero sense within his stated plan).
As for Arya surviving her wounds... that just makes no sense, no matter how you try to twist it. Even if The Waif purposely missed vital organs (highly unlikely considering the twisting of the knife), Arya still would have trouble surviving the stabbing, especially if we include her falling hard into dirty water probably further wounding her and also significantly increasing the chances of infection. Literally the only treatment she gets is a bandage, a cup of soup and some sleep and she's fit enough to run, jump and slide through the city again. Especially in a show where stronger people have died of less, this is very, very silly and one of the more egregious examples of plot armor in the show.
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Hey, this show had Sansa instructing skilled Northern/Vale armorers on how to properly make armor and she was teaching the commander of the Vale army - Lord Royce - about the importance of castles as a first line of defense against the WW. On the show Sansa is supposedly a better military strategist than Royce, Jon etc.
Compared to that, Arya winning against Brienne is nothing. Arya has actually learned to fight for several seasons. When did Sansa learn about armor and defense strategies?
The writing on this show went to the dogs long ago. The terrible WF plot with LF pitting two teens against each other should be proof of that. The show is just good spectacle now.
Compared to that, Arya winning against Brienne is nothing. Arya has actually learned to fight for several seasons. When did Sansa learn about armor and defense strategies?
The writing on this show went to the dogs long ago. The terrible WF plot with LF pitting two teens against each other should be proof of that. The show is just good spectacle now.
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Well looking at some of the defenses to the Arya fight in this thread, I guess you could make believe that Sansa learnt all of this during the off-season when we all weren't looking.
Not everything needs to be shown to you nitpicker! /s
Realistically yes, but we know enough about GoT's action scenes by now to know we're not going to get very realistic fight scenes. I believe it's mentioned in the books too that Westerosi knights have serious difficulties when facing Water Dancers, but I don't really know why. You can only get so far on very different martial techniques and styles before someone adapts.
I'm reasonably certain that they showed Jorah losing so quickly and easily to one because it's said in the books, and probably also to bring Arya's training and thus Arya herself to mind (outside of it's relevance to the plot, having Dany be conflicted about Jorah's return).