Rate 6x08

Arya was used to fighting blind (she wasn't the best though) whereas the Waif presumably wasn't

Jaqen made Arya blind as a punishment for killing Trant. It's probably not something every trainee goes through.

Arya stabbed for shock!factor apparently. I was thinking the same thing last night about Braavos. The whole point was so she could go back to Arya? She was always Arya. We would have been in the same place if she never went at all. That's what I think, anyway.

Riverrun was so Jaime could do something and Sansa wouldn't get more soldiers for our Save the Day moment next week.

Can't explain Tommen he's a lost cause.

Biggest waste of time was Tyrion's scene imo.

Aye, I agree. Bravos seems like filler to give Arya something to do before she reunites with the family. I doubt she would ever become a faceless man in the books or the show, and frankly that whole Arya assassin stuff has always bored me. It pretty much made her character just soley obsessed with killing a few people.

There was more depth to the character than that.

Arya's stabbing retroactively was made worse. It was purely for shock. I don't oppose Arya acting cocky in 607. Teenagers are stupid, that made sense to me. She's not immune from that, but if they wanted to injure her, they should've have the Waif cut her arms up or some other part of her body that she could still believably run and jump with. They're making her into a bit of a super hero, and I hate that they're doing that to one of my favorite characters because that's the kind of shit that most people roll their eyes at.

Sooooooo underwhelming. I had so high expectations and I was left disappointed. The writing was quite inconsistent in this one and felt really great at one moment and then utterly ridiculous at another moment. So annoyingly sloppy that my inner showbasher is trying to take control of me again. I wanted to give it a 7, but the acting was so great that I will generously give it an 8.

+++ I felt that the acting was superb this episode and saved some of the really sloppy writing this episode. Special mentions to Jaime, Edmure and Arya
+ Riverrun was AWESOME. (minus the part where the Blackfish was killed) If Blackfish had escaped, this would have been one of the best storylines in the entire series. But the ending was disappointing and underwhelming The acting, the visuals ..But what was the point? Since we have no LSH, does the RL even matter? Why bring back Blackfish? Jaime's not gonna break up with Cersei, is he?
+ Varys and Tyrion farewell. Great scene.
+ St. Tyrion made a colossal mistake.
+ Maisie Williams
+ Sati's going to hang me for this. But I actually enjoyed the brotherhood without banners.. they still need a reason to have them back.
+ Sandor was great again. He's changing slowly but surely.

+/- Meereen. It was nice to see Tyrion, Grey worm and Missandei joking and so on, but it still felt a bit unimportant.
+/- KL was meh. The Mountain finally doing something, but it ended way too quickly. Tommen betraying his mother. Shit is going to go down. Yeah, it was okay.

- Northern rallying is over already. REALLY?!
-- Arya vs. Waif ended up being really silly. She was stabbed in the gut and it had nearly no consequences? The most obvious plot armor ever. Maisie's acting was good against this one hell of a sloppy villain whose motivations are unknown. She had this cheesy " arrogant disney villain smirk" on all the time and the stuff what she said? Sigh.. Doing stuff only for shock value is really cheap. Surviving stabs like that is one thing, but fighting and running with those deep wounds? Nah, even Hugh Glass couldn't have done that. Pathetic. This left a really bad taste from the Braavos story line.
--- Killing the motherfucking Blackfish. What point did he serve? He came back for 2 episodes and died offscreen. Outrageous. It's so annoying to see these great fighters die offscreen and for nothing. Greatjon is another example.
----- Daenerys doesn't feel a part of the GoT universe anymore. Another extremely cheese scene what felt so floppy. This season is going to be raped with ex machina's.

Yeah, after rewatching and listening to many different arguments I decided to change my 9 to an 8, more like a rounded up 7.5 honestly. Arya's stuff was as terrible as Dorne, with not only terrible execution but also terrible writing. It doesn't affect my score that much because it was the combination of her scenes in this episode and in the previous one that sucked so bad. Getting stabbed served absolutely no purpose to the story, in fact it only made things worse. Why not just give her a deep cut in the arm or something if the purpose is to make her bleed enough to leave a trail of blood? Looks like it was indeed done just for shock value.

There's also the fact that the Faceless Men institution doesn't make any sense. Why does Jaqen says Arya is now "No One" after killing the Waif? How could Arya sneak into the HQ of a guild of magical assassins, leaving a trail of blood behind here, without anyone noticing (where is everyone else btw?)? Why is the Waif so comically evil, behaving like Ramsay and shit? Why does she have an awful personality and is able to hold grudges if she's supposed to be a FM? Why is she such a terrible assassin too?

Like Envie said before, this subplot does play a role in developing Arya's character evolution, but nothing about Braavos and the Faceless Men makes sense.

Anyway, Braavos, Tyrion/MS/GW and Blackfish's offscreen death were the only things that sucked in this episode. Everything else was pretty good IMHO. I feel really bad for our LSH fans for not getting LSH, but I really enjoyed the BwB/Sandor scenes and I'm glad to see them again, even Beric.

I think the issue with a trip to Castle Cerwyn is how close it is to Winterfell. Heading there from Stannis' camp would have taken Sansa straight past the place she should be actively avoiding, unless she went out of her way to go far around it. The problem then becomes that Jon could have been right and she could get caught in a terrible storm. I agree that it would obviously be nice to have more men  but I do like the in-fighting between Sansa and Jon. Neither really know how this whole thing should proceed and I loved how their argument was coupled with the soldiers and Davos fighting behind them.

I agree with you on the stabbing part being super unnecessary and stupid. But a few thoughts on the bolded paragraph. The Waif was not No One yet. She was an acolyte and thus still in training. She was clearly way too emotional and seemed to be jealous of Arya on multiple occasions. She probably was afraid of Arya being better than her. That's why the Waif was able to hold grudges. She was not No One. I don't think she was a terrible assassin as much as she was arrogantly enjoying the shit out of chasing Arya. In fact, she was so arrogant that she didn't even foresee that Arya could be leading her into a trap. Arya had the advantage in the dark, because the Waif had never learnt to fight blind.

Also, one could argue that Jaqen tested both Arya and the Waif. He is not stupid. He knows about the Waif's personality, that's why he told her to not let Arya suffer. But the Waif didn't listen to that, because of her arrogance. And that's important for Jaqen to know, because arrogance is not a trait a FM should have. You have to keep in mind that the Waif was also still in traning as I mentioned.

Jaqen said Arya is No One, because that's what he falsely believed. He believes that only someone who is truly No One and not emotional and arrogant could have done that, could have been able to kill the Waif. But he is wrong. That's why he looks surprised for a second when Arya says that she is Arya Stark of Winterfell. He didn't expect her to say that. He didn't expect that Arya Stark would be able to kill the Waif, but she did, so she must be No One. Well, you are wrong, Jaqen.