Game Of Thrones Finale: How Each Major Character Ending Was Setup (& Why They Work)

3. Arya Goes West

"What's west of Westeros?"

That's what Arya is leaving to find out, a departure that finds its origins in a Season 6 conversation with Lady Crane, where she asks the exact same question. But it's also rooted in Arya's entire arc.

Way back in Season 1, when Ned discusses her getting married and becoming a Lady, Arya tells her father: "That's not me." Those three words, in various ways, have come to define Arya's arc. Her entire story has been about 'that's not me', because for so long she wasn't Arya Stark. She was Arry, she was Lanna, she was Mercy, and mostly, she was No One.

Her journey across eight seasons has been driven by vengeance, but built upon a question of identity - she's lost it, discarded it, been confused by it, and figured it out. And what is a search for identity if not a journey of discovery? Now that a girl is Arya Stark, and that vengeance is behind her, what's left but for her to go on discovering? Her direwolf, Nymeria, had to be allowed to forge her own path. So too does Arya. The direwolf was named after Arya's hero, Nymeria the Warrior Queen, who led the Rhoynar west to Dorne after her homeland was conquered by Valyria. There are echoes of that in Arya now choosing to go west as well. That is her.