“I see a darkness in you. And in that darkness, eyes starring back at me. Brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes you will shut forever.”

Those were the words that “The Red Woman” spoke to Arya in their meeting last season and it looks like her darkly ominous reading is coming true because Arya got to scracth a name off of her revenge list in the season premier of GAME OF THRONE’s fourth season and she did it in a decidedly cold and calculated manner.

On their way to The Vale so that The hound could sell Arya to her aunt, the odd couple came across a tavern where Arya spied a familiar face: Polliver, the Lannister soldier who took Arya’s sword, Needle and used it to kill her friend, Lommy. So when she charges into the tavern determined to get her sword back (with The Hound chasing behind) we got a pretty tense confrontation with Polliver trying to convince The Hound to join in with Polliver’s men as they rape and pillage their way back to King’s Landing. The Hound finds it impossible to hide his contempt for Polliver or the king Polliver swears allegiance to and after a round of back and forth insults, The Hound engages Polliver and his crew in battle.

The Hound does what The Hound does best…namely delivering very violent deaths to the majority of Polliver’s men but Polliver and one other are in position to turn the tables on the pre-occupied Hound until Arya joins the fray. She bashes a soldier in the head with a bottle, takes his sword and runs him through with it. Then she turns her attention to Polliver; she cuts his legs rendering him unable to get up and takes back Needle. it is then that we got to see the depths of Arya’s darkness as she recites the same words to Polliver that he said to Lommy before driving Needle into the young boy’s throat. Arya then does the same to Polliver and while watching him choke to death on his own blood, Arya has a total look of satisfaction on her face.

 
 
 
 
 
It was a great scene made all the more chilling by the fact that Maisie Williams was able to convey a very unnerving look of icy malice on her cherubish little face. Arya may be the only Stark being completely willing to descend to the depths of her enemies on this show and I love it. It is so rare to see a Stark not being a victim to some force of evil and if Arya becoming a cold, merciless killer is what we need to get some notches in the win column for the Stark’s then so be it.