WINNER: Arya Stark
I know what you’re thinking: “She was blinded! Why in the hell is Arya considered a ‘winner’ when she just lost her eyesight?”
There’s some solid logic behind that, for all we know Arya is now blind and will have to go through the rest of her life without the use of her eyes. But much like none of us believe what happened to Jon Snow (we’re getting there) is final, I’m now fully convinced that whatever happened to Arya is permanent. For a brief second after killing Ser Meryn Trant in the brothel and before she was lost her eyesight it appeared like she was tripping balls. The faceless men in the temple dropped some SERIOUS KNOWLEDGE BOMBS on young Arya, and I’m hoping that this is just a lesson she’s being forced to learn…but since she’s now blind in the show I think we have to at least being to accept (on some level) that she’s permanently blind.
So why is she a winner? Her ‘kill list’ is one name shorter. She’s finally taken the life of the man who killed Syrio Forel, her swordfighting mentor (and the former 1st Sword of Braavos). Arya used to fall asleep at night repeating the names on her list, the names of the men who she’d one day kill. Now that she’s training to be a Faceless Man her kill list is in direct conflict with her training. So going forward she’ll be forced to make some decisions: ditch her kill list and accept that she is nobody, everybody. Or she can jump ship and continue her life of revenge.
Personally, I hope she follows the latter path. She’s already a badass enough killer to break off into the world on her own (even if she’s blind) and finish her quest of revenge. There are quite a few names left on her list, and I’d like to see it completed one day.
I could have named Arya Stark a ‘loser’ this week, but the fact that she’s finally murdered Ser Meryn Trant is enough for me to call her a winner. What’s in store for Arya next season I do not know, but I do think that her importance is on a level where we’ll continue to see her as a focal point character. It just sucks that we have to wait so many months for Season 6.
LOSER: Myrcella Lannister
She’s on her way home with her husband to be, she’s just found out that Jamie Lannister is her real father and she’s totally cool with the fact that she’s an incest baby, and soon she’ll get to see her mother and brother again. Things were going WAY TOO PERFECTLY for Myrcella Lannister. Then her nose starts bleeding shortly after they’ve disembarked from Dorne, the same sickness we saw Bronn nearly die from a few weeks ago in the jail cell.
When Myrcella was kissed goodbye by Ellaria Sand the poison was passed from her lips to the lips of Myrcella, and I’m not sure if it was a certain amount of time before it kicked in or an event that caused the heat to pick up speed, but Myrcella was left dead. Ellaria Sand is alive after ingesting the only antidote from the necklace of the sand snakes. Now Jamie Lannister is sailing back to Dorne with a Dornish Prince in tow and a dead daughter-niece. War between Dorne and King’s Landing is 100% coming at this point, and given that Dorne has stayed free of all the conflicts up until now I think it’s safe for all of us to assume the Dornish armies are the healthiest in all of the Seven Kingdoms right now.
After the War of the Five Kings the Lannister’s armies were decimated, as were the armies from Highgarden (the Tyrell’s), so if Dorne chooses to come at King’s Landing with all its might then I suspect by the mid-way point of next season there will be a Dornishmen sitting atop the Iron Throne. This is all assuming that Prince Doran Martell isn’t going to bitch out because the Lannister’s have his nephew now. The Sand Snakes were the ones who set this betrayal into place, and began this war. So we still need to see if Prince Doran, the ruler of Dorne, has the balls to go toe-to-toe with the Lannister’s (even if he’s a wheelchair bound man with gout). One thing’s for sure: the Sand Snakes will at least take a few lashes for this betrayal and treachery.