Game Of Thrones Season 8 Breakdown: What 'The Bells' REALLY Means

2. Is Arya Gone?

What you think of Arya's future in this sh depends on how you interpret her final scenes and the ethereal horse imagery in there. There are basically three interpretations to consider.

The first is that Arya is dead and the horse is her dying vision. The second is that the horse represents freedom and is tied to the Hound's fate and everything she experiences during the decimation of King's Landing. Essentially, that sequence acts as her deprogamming from the moment Sandor tells her to turn away through to her discovering the dead mother and daughter and her riding off at the end is the symbolic conclusion to that revelation. In either of those cases, you could reasonably expect that to be the end of Arya's story - after all, she did tell the Hound she didn't plan to return to Winterfell.

But then there's the third interpretation, which seems to be the most popular, that suggests that the appearance of the horse fits with the idea of Arya as the real harbinger of death who will deal with Dany just as she did the Night King. According to that theory, the fact that the horse is white is no mere accident: it's a call-back to the Book Of Revelation's description of Death himself:

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on it was Death."

Arya's insistence that she can't go back combined with her extensive training at the House Of Black And White (where it could be argued she was shaped to be a Chosen One of sorts) would certainly fit with her taking on that role. She also saw exactly what Dany's massacre meant to the people of King's Landing in an even more pronounced way than Jon did because he was still fighting for his life - if there's anyone best suited to enacting revenge on their behalf it's her.

Again, the beauty of this show is that at least two of those suggestions are very possible and so is the fourth mystery answer that nobody is predicting.