Sansa Stark. From Game of Thrones season 7, episode 4. Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO.
The Stark family reunion
Can you even imagine the group hug that will happen when Jon gets back to Winterfell given how powerful the only two sisters’ reunion hug is here? In the meantime, Arya has changed her course from killing people in King’s Landing to rejoining her family in Winterfell, fooling even the Three-Eyed Raven aka Weirwood Bran. After an Abbott and Costello-style routine from the guards, Sansa meets Arya in the crypts. It’s a bittersweet moment as the young women revel in the fact that they’re still alive and together again after all these years, while recognizing the path they each took to get there has been painful in multiple ways.
Standing in front of the not-quite-right statue of their father, they exchange past taunts and newfound admiration for each others’ strength. As she told Ed Sheeran, Arya wants Sansa to know everyone on her list will pay, even if Sansa’s reluctant to believe her baby sister is now a cold-blooded killer (though, to be fair, Sansa’s killed at this point as well, though anyone in her situation with Ramsay would have done the same).
Arya and Bran’s reunion is just as strange as his initial meeting with Sansa. He immediately drops all-seeing knowledge about Arya’s whereabouts in recent months and her plans to go after Cersei in King’s Landing, making everybody feel weird about being low-key spied on by their newly-strange brother for a while now. At least in this case, unlike in his uncomfortable exchange with Sansa, he didn’t bring up too sore a subject (aka Sansa’s wedding night with Ramsay).
All three Stark children’s character evolutions in the years since they’ve seen each other in person have been dramatic. Arya has grown from a scared little girl to a confident warrior. Sansa has gone from a shy would-be royal wife to a steely leader. Bran has gone from an overlooked younger sibling in a powerful family to an all-powerful psychic force of supernatural nature. So seeing them all come together and introduce each other to their new jaded but stronger-than-ever selves was a special kind of satisfying for fans.