"No one": how will Arya Stark's story end? (Alt-Shift-X Vid)

Bullshit. Arya is compared to Lyanna because that is the best way GRRM had to show that Lyanna was not a typical lady and that there is probably more to the story than Robert's version. People compare Sansa to Catelyn all the time, that doesn't mean she is going to be killed and then brought back as a spirit of retribution and revenge. There has been zero foreshadowing Arya will end up living in Nymeria, yes she could do it if she died, but as the ADWD prologue clearly said, her spirit would disappear into the wolf after a while, that prologue was just there to explain how Jon may survive the attack he suffers at the end of the book.

Also, why the hell would anyone pay the exorbitant fees of the FM to kill Jon? and why would the FM send Arya of all people when she is not showing any signs of losing her personality? and when the books said very clearly FM can't kill people they have met?

ETA: not everything in the books is foreshadowing, IMO one of the worst things that the long wait between books has brought is the over-analysis of the text, people re-read the books several times looking for any clues about what will happen next, every description of clothes or food is a clue, every passing comment any character makes is the base of a new theory, everything becomes foreshadowing. Nothing is just there to help with the world-building or to show the personality of the different characters or just because GRRM wanted to include it, no, everything has a double meaning, and some fans have become experts in establishing hidden connections between things that have never been connected in the actual text. This video is one of those cases, instead of considering that the comparisons between Arya and Lyanna are there to give the readers information about the personality of a deceased character that is still affecting the plot and other characters, is foreshadowing Arya will die, instead of seeing Arya's warging abilities as a common trait she has with the rest of her siblings and a constant reminder of her true identity she just won't be able to get rid off, is a clue she will die, ADWD prologue is not a needed explanation of how warging actually works and what happens to a warg if he dies because it will be relevant for Jon by the end of the book, is a clue that Arya will die and live through Nymeria, and the bittersweet ending that GRRM promised can't mean that Arya has to live a life she doesn't truly enjoy because that's her duty, it means she dies.

Sorry for the rant, but this video is the typical example of someone who developed a theory starting with the conclusion and later looked for the evidence to support it. And that pisses me off.

A lot of his analysis is good, and Arya and The Hound are two of my three favourite characters so I wouldn't appreciate the video if he was getting them all wrong, he's just drawn his conclusions out of thin air a bit.

Having said that it's a nice idea that has some thematic resonance even if I really don't think it will happen. I'm not so bothered by the constant theorising about the endgame because it's what happens when people have the time and the passion to think about the story for years on end. Any theory like this is going to be doing some leaping, which is why I don't worry too much about where every character's fate is eventually going to end.

Edit: Oh and yeah the Jon bit is stupid, for sure.

I wonder how George handles this in the rest of Winds? No reason some 'time' can pass, maybe a few years. It's done all the time in prose narrative , I am guessing GRRM  has done it. It does not need be jarring.
To me Maisie absolutely looks like an older teenager , even sometimes her age of 18, even if she is short and in costume.
And Sophie has looked even older than 19 for years now! But then her character seems more than aged up on the show.

Enid - First off, I appreciate your willingness to call out what you found to be blatant reverse theorycrafting. I know it's much easier to decide what your conclusion/end will be and then go search for passages to support it. That is, afterall, how many religious people interpret the bible. They want a certain thing, or outcome, so they go search the bible for the passages that can help make it true. And I agree, that's annoying and bullshit.

Second, I should state for the record that I have never really ever gotten 100% on board with any fan created theories other than maybe the most well supported one of R+L=J and even then I do keep in mind the opposing evidence and arguments against it. I do think it's probably true and look forward to finding out. I try to look at the plot theories of ASOIAF from a pragmatic viewpoint. Sometimes I appreciate some more than others, and of course there are the crackpot ones that are just too silly to take seriously.

This guy has had some spot-on points though, in his other videos and even in this one throughout the first half leading up to his theory. Whether he gleans that info from all the other fans he reads theories from or they are his own doesn't matter since the value of his work is the way he presents it. 

I will agree that when he got to the part of the FM sending Arya to kill Jon Snow - I had strong objection. He *did* state quite clearly he did not think she would ever go through with something like that, and he did conveniently leave out reason why they would do that in the first place, unless it has something to do with the plot of the Grandmaesters some have supported which is again, another fan made plot theory. 

As for her actually dying and becoming a permanent part of Nymeria ... it's not impossible but we have absolutely no way to know who will die and who will survive the great 'endgame' of this story so it has to be dismissed as only an idea, a possible outcome. It is entirely possible Arya could die. It's possible any of the main characters from the beginning of the story dies and something I know we are all bracing ourselves for as we must realize by now it's not going to be a happy ending entirely. Bittersweet was the word the author himself used. 

If Arya were to die for whatever reason, and warg her spirit into Nymeria, it would be as described by Varamyr in the ADWD prologue. This guy simply pulled exact wording from the book and attributed it to another character. Many believe the Varamyr prologue was a foreshadowing for Jon Snow. This guy just moved it to another character and decided to become a psychoanalyst and decide Arya is permanently broken and unfixable for her future. I disagree with that too. I'm glad you called it out. I enjoy seeing others reactions. That's exactly why I tried not to give specific examples in my post because I didn't want anyone to think as the OP I either agreed or disagreed with this theory. It DID make me sad, but it didn't 100% convince me. I will be a stubborn fence-sitter for all fan theories until I have the book proof in my own skeptical little hands to read.

I don't have the time to read everyone's responses in this thread just now, but while I don't agree with some of the in-between parts of this guy's video (Arya being sent to kill Jon? lolno), I do think his theory of how Arya's story will end is kind of awesome? I think it's arguably one of the best possible endings for Arya. If she lives, what will she do? No one who is so horribly traumatised and used to killing at 11 years old is likely to have any kind of normal life. I would seriously struggle to swallow that. But Arya dying and living on in Nymeria would be perfect for her. Perfect.

Sorry I was so aggressive in my previous post, but I'm just sick of it. 99% of the theories about Arya are about her death, and I'm really tired of it, specially because people always give the same exact motive: that she is too damaged and won't be able to be happy ever again so she is better dead (guess then all the people from the Riverlands who have also suffered the worst part of the war should die too, because Arya is far from being the only one who sees all the horror from the war or has to kill to survive).

I don't see Arya living in Nymeria as a good ending. This guy is wrong when he says that would give Arya everything she wants: she doesn't just want a pack, she wants her original pack, her family, that is why she wants to go to Jon. The books mention that the wolves Nymeria leads are "cousins" and not her siblings. She tried to go from KL to WF just to reunite with her family, she walked day after day, barefooted and starved through a war torn country just to see her mother and brother again, and this guy really thinks that she would just say "nah is not worth the trouble" if she found out that Bran and Rickon are alive? she would do everything in her power to reach them, she wouldn't care that Bran is inside a tree north of the Wall or that Rickon is in Skagos.

Arya wanted freedom to choose her own destiny, that is why she asked Ned if she could be lord of a holdfast. The fact that she likes to explore and run and ride doesn't mean she would be happy as a wolf. And the most important thing for me, Arya wouldn't live through Nymeria, she would linger like some kind of ghost for a few months and then she would disappear.

And I wouldn't say that her relationship with Sandor is one of friendship. Sandor didn't stay with her after the RW just because he is a super nice guy, he wanted to ransom her to Lysa, and even though Arya got to know more about Sandor and wasn't able to kill him, she doesn't feel any sympathy for him either. Sandor is not her best friend.

As I said, I disagree with a big part of what the video says because it's clear the author decided that the mentions about wolves in Arya's chapters means she will literally become one (although we have seen that Westerosi families tend to identify strongly with their sigils) and, to prove his theory, he used a bunch of references from the text, some of which are actually connected to Arya (like her resemblance to Lyanna) and others that so far have nothing to do with her (ADWD prologue).

Is possible that Arya will die before the books end, I know that, but is also possible that she would survive the series, yet almost everyone thinks she is dead already, and that is really annoying.

I really haven't put a great deal of thought into what Arya's role in the endgame might be but I do think he's right in that she'll be sent to assassinate someone important at some point. And I also think he's right to use Mel's "we'll meet again" from ep. 306 as evidence in this case. That wasn't just some throwaway line. Who she would be sent to kill up north, I dunno though. His reasoning for it being Jon seemed kind of silly to me. I could see it having to do with the IBOB though like he inferred. For the sake of maintaining the moral ambiguity of her storyline, I hope it's someone sympathetic she has to kill.

As for whether she lives or dies, I have no preference. Not for any character really. So long as they live or die well, there's no single character of GrrM's who I'd really resent dying too much.

I had to spend a long time as a Stannis fan hearing how he's going to die.
At this point Arya is alive and we are all simply speculating. Arya seems to be surrounded by a lot of death and people have had far too long in George's writing period to speculate about this stuff so literally everything is picked apart and dissected to the gritties detail.
Until we actually know what is going on and the series ends, we have to at least try and debate the possible for everyone. And Arya is one of the main characters. A lot of people expect her to die, but a lot of people also expect Jon to die, Tyrion to die, Dany to die... Etc.
George has never wrote happy endings. Everything has a double edged value to it.