Arya Stark Will be the Last One Standing in 'Game of Thrones' Season Eight
“Be careful you don’t cut yourself,” Jon Snow tells his sister, Arya Stark back in the first episode of Game of Thrones when he gives her Needle, her first weapon.
“It’s so skinny,” she marvels.
“So are you,” he says. “You’ll have to work at it every day. First lesson: Stick them with the pointy end.”
Since that scene, we’ve watched Arya go from a young girl to a ruthless killing machine. She hasn’t sought the Iron Throne. Instead, she’s spent her time avenging the deaths of her relatives. Every night she repeats the list:
Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon, Ser Meryn Trant, Tywin Lannister, Walder Frey, Polliver, The Hound, The Mountain, Melisandre, Ser Ilyn Payne, Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr.
Some of these people remain alive, some have died by other means, and others have died by Arya's hand. Who could forget the satisfying slaying of Walder Frey and his kin? It was a moment only possible thanks to Arya's unrelenting determination for justice. For Arya, it's never been about power or playing the Game of Thrones, winning in the end means she's avenged her and her family.
When we first meet Arya, she is practicing archery with her brother Bran while her sister Sansa learns needlework. From the beginning, Arya rejected the notion that women only advance a family’s standing through marriage-she always wanted to be a fighter. After Jon gives her Needle, their father, Ned Stark, hires Syrio Forel to train her how to properly use it.
After her father is brutally executed, Arya escapes King’s Landing by cutting her hair to convince others she’s a boy, with the ultimate goal of making it to the Wall to join the Night’s Watch with Jon. On her route, Arya recites the name of her enemies every night, to give her the strength to persevere. The people Arya meets on her solo trek over the next seven seasons have taught her valuable lessons.
On her way to the Night's Watch, Arya meets Jaqen H'ghar, one of the Faceless Men of Braavos, who are assassins able to change their identities. After saving his life in Season Two, he gives her a coin that will give her access to training with his order in Braavos a few seasons later.
After escaping Harrenhal and the Lannisters, Arya finds herself as a prisoner of the Hound, Joffrey's former bodyguard, who wants to use the young Stark to obtain a ransom. Though, he's on her hit list, the Hound teaches Arya the brutality required to survive in Westeros. By the end of Season Three, she arrives at the Twins just in time to see the aftermath of the Red Wedding, where her mother and brother were massacred by the Freys. By the end of Season Four, Arya is able to slip away from The Hound, where she finds a ship headed toward Braavos.
This is where Arya finally gets the opportunity to achieve the potential she's always had. She tracks down Jaqen and the Faceless Men. When she finds him, Jaqen tells her she must give up the Stark name to truly become “no one” and employ the tactics he can teach her. To prove it, he shows her the Hall of Faces, a host of identities she could take on if she becomes Faceless. The Stark family has always been proud of their name, and avenging her family is Arya’s whole driving force. So, she attempts to skirt the rules, stealing a face to carry out one of her executions. But she’s caught and her punishment is blindness. That’s when Arya learns to fight without vision-further honing her other senses.
When she finally returns to Westeros, Arya has changed. She's no longer an innocent child. Arya is a hardened assassin with the taste for blood, ready to avenge her family by any means necessary. She kills Walder Frey, then uses his mask to poison his entire family-justice for the Red Wedding, at last.
When we last see Arya in Season Seven, she uses her years of training to kill Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish after he tried to pit her against her sister, Sansa. So, it’s clear going into the final season that years of determination have primed Arya for the role of her family’s protector. At the end of Season Seven, Sansa calls Arya, “the strongest person I know.”
That all brings us to Season Eight. Arya has proven herself to be a survivor and fiercely loyal. She’s reunited with her siblings as the final battle heats up for the Iron Throne.
The characters who remain on Arya's kill list are: the Hound, Ilyn Payne, The Mountain, Melisandre, Beric Dondarrion, and, of course, Cersei Lannister. The Hound is complicated, since he's gone from villian to an unlikely ally of the Starks. Illyn, the one who executed her father, would be a priority, but there are far more important people on her list. Same goes for Beric, who was last seen fleeing the Wall in Season Seven when it collapsed. The Mountain, who was involved in the torture at Harrenhal, and Melisandre, who kidnapped Gendry, are the enemy to many going into the final season. The ultimate kill would be Cersei, for her role in Ned Stark's death. Completing her list, particularly Cersei, would be Arya's victory, more satisfying than any throne.
In an interview with The Guardian, actress Maisie Williams describes her final scene as “beautiful.” She says, “I ended on the perfect scene. I was alone-shocker! Arya’s always bloody alone. But I was alone and I had watched a lot of other people wrap. I knew the drill, I had seen the tears and heard the speeches.”
Sure, this could mean a lot of things. But when you combine it with this Instagram Williams posted with the hashtag #lastwomanstanding the message is clear.
A post shared by Maisie Williams (@maisie_williams) on Jul 7, 2018 at 4:53am PDT
Arya has fought to stand alongside her family. If she was alone in her final scene, it means she survives the brutal battle in the final season, thanks to her years of training at the hands of the show’s most dangerous characters. Arya is the ultimate survivor, one who went from the most vulnerable character on the show to one of the most lethal. She has all the tools to survive, and if she's the last woman standing, what could that mean? It's unlikely this would be Arya on the Iron Throne, since that's never been her goal, but maybe she'll crumple up her completed kill list, and go searching for the adventure she's always craved, and set off to continue her training.
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