Sullied on Unsullied: Is Arya going to seduce Meryn Trant?

“The Dance of Dragons” was an eventful episode, what with the dragon ride and the child sacrifice and all. Arya’s run-in with her old nemesis Meryn Trant in Braavos, though interesting, got a little overlooked, but the WiC Live team still got around to asking what that run-in portended for the season finale.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR “THE WINDS OF WINTER” FOLLOW

First of all, I think Xavier hits the mark when he predicts that Arya will be the new girl Trant asked for in “The Dance of Dragons” (or, as Trant so charmingly put it, the “fresh one”). The producers seem to be heading toward a loose adaptation of an advance chapter from The Winds of Winter in which Arya, posing as an actor named Mercy, murders Raff the Sweetling, a character who doesn’t appear on the show but who torments Arya enough in the books to earn a place on her infamous death list. In that chapter, Arya seduces Raff (who, like Trant, is attracted to young girls) in order to get him alone, but kills him before anything sexual happens. It doesn’t seem like a big leap to assume that something like this will happen in “Mother’s Mercy,” with Meryn Trant in place of Raff.

The thornier question, implied by Xavier, is whether it will be appropriate for the show to go there. As the team points out, we’ve known Arya since she was a little girl in Winterfell. Even though Arya is older on the show than she was in the books, she’s still a child, and seeing her in a sexual context stands to be very disturbing, especially considering all the controversy the show engendered earlier this year following Sansa’s rape in “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.”

On the other hand, unless the producers take things in a different direction, Arya’s coming scene with Trant will be very different than Sansa’s wedding night. For one thing, if the scene plays out like it does in The Winds of Winter, Arya will kill Trant before the two actually have sex. For another, unlike Sansa, Arya will be in the driver’s seat of this encounter, something Trant will likely learn too late. Finally, while Sansa never had a sexual encounter with Ramsay Bolton in the books, Arya does seduce Raff in Winds, so the producers aren’t running the risk of seeming like they’re sensationalizing the source material.

At the same time, sexualizing a young girl like Arya could expose the show to criticism that it’s objectifying women in order to titillate and shock the audience, rather than taking the time needed to properly address her situation. It’s a bit premature to pass judgment without actually seeing the scene, but much will depend on how the show constructs it. Still, we should know that it’s on its way. When combined with what’s in store for Cersei in the finale, “Mother’s Mercy” promises to be a dark, controversial episode.

• Published on 06/12/2015 at 4:04 PM CDT
• Last updated on 06/12/2015 at 4:17 PM CDT