GoT S7E1: Arya's Revenge
Nov. 1st, 2022 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerIn the season 7 opener of Game of Thrones Arya Stark shows us that not only is revenge a dish best served cold, but when you refrigerate it it can keep for a few weeks and you can whip up a batch that serves 24. 😨😈😵
S7E1 starts with a cold open that shows Walder Frey toasting his family at a feast in his dining hall. There are maybe 20 men present.
"Is this a flashback?" I wondered momentarily. We saw Arya kill Walder (along with his older sons, Black Walder and Lothar) in the season 6 finale. So it can't be him, at least in the present day. But the showrunners have said several times in behind-the-scenes commentary they consider flashback a confusing device and thus use it very sparingly in this series. Thus I recognized even just a few seconds into the scene, "OMG, this must Arya Stark wearing Walder Frey's face... which means she's going to kill them all!
As servant girls pour tankards of wine for everyone on Walder's instruction I was like, "Okay, so it's a poisoning." We know Arya studied poisons in her assassin training in Braavos.
Then Walder's toast turns from praise, to a warning, to an epithet. Arya pulls her mask off as the assembled Frey men are choking and dying on poison. She turns to Walder's frightened (underage) wife and hisses, "When anyone asks what happened this day, tell them the North remembers. Tell them winter came early for House Frey."
Diabolical? Yes. But also well deserved. Walder Frey coordinated the murder of her mother, her brother, her brother's wife and unborn baby, and hundreds of allies while they were invited guests of his house. It's about damn time good served up some serious revenge against evil.
S7E1 starts with a cold open that shows Walder Frey toasting his family at a feast in his dining hall. There are maybe 20 men present.
"Is this a flashback?" I wondered momentarily. We saw Arya kill Walder (along with his older sons, Black Walder and Lothar) in the season 6 finale. So it can't be him, at least in the present day. But the showrunners have said several times in behind-the-scenes commentary they consider flashback a confusing device and thus use it very sparingly in this series. Thus I recognized even just a few seconds into the scene, "OMG, this must Arya Stark wearing Walder Frey's face... which means she's going to kill them all!
As servant girls pour tankards of wine for everyone on Walder's instruction I was like, "Okay, so it's a poisoning." We know Arya studied poisons in her assassin training in Braavos.
Then Walder's toast turns from praise, to a warning, to an epithet. Arya pulls her mask off as the assembled Frey men are choking and dying on poison. She turns to Walder's frightened (underage) wife and hisses, "When anyone asks what happened this day, tell them the North remembers. Tell them winter came early for House Frey."
Diabolical? Yes. But also well deserved. Walder Frey coordinated the murder of her mother, her brother, her brother's wife and unborn baby, and hundreds of allies while they were invited guests of his house. It's about damn time good served up some serious revenge against evil.
