[Potential spoilers for Game of Thrones season seven]
A few years ago, the Mythbusters crew tested to see whether cockroaches could survive a nuclear explosion, as they did in the wake of the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their findings, after blasting the insects with radiation: “The results confirmed that cockroaches can survive a nuclear explosion — but only to a point, as none of the critters in the 100,000 rad group made it through.” It takes a lot (or a folded-up newspaper) to kill a cockroach. In that way, they have a lot in common with Littlefinger.
By any measure, Petyr Baelish should be long dead on Game of Thrones. He’s a schemer and a con artist in a world where looking at someone funny will get you killed, but those attributes also make him a master manipulator. (Remember who Sansa looks towards in the season six finale.) Like a cockroach, Littlefinger’s best skill is survival, and the longer he stays alive, the more power he gains. But also like a cockroach, “only to a point.”
Take a look at Arya’s blade in this recent Entertainment Weekly cover.
#GameOfThrones EW cover with Arya Stark @Maisie_Williams pic.twitter.com/e0jFHXJmbM
— reena ⎊ (@rmjsingh1) May 25, 2017
That appears to be Littlefinger’s Valyrian steel dagger, which as he informs Catelyn Stark in George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, “I would have told you that there was only one knife like this at King’s Landing. It’s mine.” So, why does Arya have it? There’s a theory for that (courtesy of Redditor JustACookiecat), and how Littlefinger came to “own” it in the first place.
Breakdown of the dagger’s journey (at least in the books but it’s probably the same in the show):
Littlefinger lost the dagger to Robert Baratheon at the tourney (not to Tyrion as he claims), then it is implied in the books that Joffrey stole the dagger from the king and sent the assassin to kill Bran with it (both Cersei, Jamie, and Tyrion comes to this conclusion). Catelyn takes the dagger and gives it to Ned (who shows it to Varys and LF) and when LF betrays Ned he takes the blade back. When Sansa and LF are in the Vale, it’s mentioned that he has it with him.
If Arya now has the dagger, she would have to either steal it from LF or kill him and then take it. We see her sneaking around indoors in the trailer and looking under furniture, it is possible she could have found it in Baelish’s room in Winterfell. (Via)
The last time Arya and Sansa saw each other was in season one’s “Baelor.” It would be (dark) poetic justice for the reunited Stark girls to, years later, tag-team murder the man who played a role in the death of their father. We’ll find out on July 16, when Game of Thrones returns for season seven.
(Via the Huffington Post)
