“I’ve done my part,” she says after shipping the two Targaryens. Maybe she’s just exercising some caution, having been burned (so to speak) by her big miss on Stannis, but maybe she’s already identified Arya as the real fateful figure, as the showrunners had.īy that point, Mel has become a matchmaker. As does another: the King in the North, Jon Snow.” Again, Melisandre stops short of pronouncing that either of them is the subject of the prophecy. And in the Season 7 episode “Stormborn,” when Dany asks Melisandre whether she thinks the prophecy applies to her, Melisandre says, “I believe you have a role to play. “Stannis was not the Prince Who Was Promised, but someone has to be,” Melisandre says in the Season 6 episode “Oathbreaker,” right after reviving Jon. So, it seemed, did Melisandre, who grew out of her “Stannis is Azor Ahai” phase when Stannis was (presumably) beheaded by Brienne after an earlier Battle of Winterfell. This spring, when we exhaustively considered the qualifications of the leading candidates in two separate pieces, the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to Jon or Dany. In 2017, we considered several contenders for the title of Prince Who Was Promised, up to and including Hot Pie, and Arya wasn’t one of them (not that Redditors didn’t try). For all we know, the next episode will start with Bran confiding that he took a trip back in time and conveniently noticed that Arya was born amid all of those things, but barring that, Arya is far from a perfect fit. Except, that is, for the small matters of the smoke, salt, and bleeding star. As Maester Aemon observes in the books and Missandei mentions on the show, the High Valyrian word typically translated as prince isn’t gender-specific, which means that either prince or princess applies. If the Prince is fated to kill the Night King, and Arya did kill the Night King, then the transitive property tells us Arya is the Prince-or, rather, the Princess. Put it all together, and the prophecy seems as clear as a cryptic prophecy can: The Prince Who Was Promised is going to kill the Night King. Most of those elements also appear in the show, albeit with fewer references and a little less detail. (In the books, Azor Ahai may be another name for the “ last hero,” an even more hazily defined figure of Westerosi legend who reputedly defeated the White Walkers and ended the Long Night.) The Prince is supposedly destined to stand against “the Other” and deliver the world from “the cold breath of darkness,” winning “a war for life itself.” Sounds like someone we know! Melisandre believes the Prince is the reincarnation of legendary hero Azor Ahai, who forged and wielded a burning sword dubbed Lightbringer and used it to drive away a darkness that fell upon the world. As Melisandre lays it out in A Storm of Swords, “When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt.” Maester Aemon and others cite the same supposed omens of the Prince’s arrival: smoke, salt, and bleeding star.Īsk the Maester: Everything We Know About the Night King As We Bid Adieu Azor Ahai, with the caveat that it’s understandably difficult to discern whatever truth underpins a thousands-year-old prophecy whose origins are lost to time. Let’s quickly recap what we know about the Prince Who Was Promised, a.k.a. Does rescuing humanity from the White Walker menace make the younger Stark sister the Prince(ss) by default? If Arya isn’t the prophesied savior, who is, and what would it mean to be a prophesied savior in a world that suddenly seems devoid of an existential threat? Are any surviving characters capable of interpreting the will of the Lord of Light? And if the plot point that was promised is still unaddressed when our watch is ended, should show watchers shrug or riot about the wasted speculation? With one dagger to the gut, Arya shattered not only the Night King, but widespread expectations for the rest of the season, creating new questions about both the arc of the final three episodes and where we stand with one of the series’ most prominent unresolved threads: the prophecy of the Prince Who Was Promised. Her successful stealth attack, which neither the Night King nor many spectators (irrespective of screen darkness) saw coming, was great news for the North, terrible news for nihilists and, frankly, confusing news for Game of Thrones theorizers. On Sunday, amid a murky, long night of compressed cable signals and miscalibrated screens, Arya Stark killed the Night King.
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