Will Arya and Jon Reunite In ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7?

Ryan James
TV Game of Thrones
TV Game of Thrones

Way back in the (relatively) happier times of Game of Thrones Season 1, Arya Stark and Jon Snow were thick as thieves. He was, after all, the person who gave her her beloved sword Needle and advised her to “stick them with the pointy end” (‘them’ being any adversaries she may encounter, something she’d eventually have no trouble whatsoever doing. Just ask the Freys).

But since then, they’ve been estranged, with Jon taking the black, eventually becoming Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and Arya following in Jaquen H’ghar‘s footsteps, training to become one of the Faceless Men.

But now Arya is back in Westeros proper, having finally quit the House of Black And White, reasserting that she will never be “no one” and will always be a Stark of Winterfell and resuming efforts to complete her Kill List. Jon, too, is no longer with the Night’s Watch, having been betrayed and murdered by his brothers (he got better).

This fan-made GIF found in a thread on Reddit, however, has us hoping that the upcoming Season 7 will give us one thing we really want; a full-fledged Arya and Jon reunion.

Why We Want Arya And Jon To Meet Again

Game of Thrones is infamous for its unrelenting bleakness. It can be a fairly oppressive and heavy watch at times. Very little light ever seeps through the barrage of graphic murder, sexual assault, brutal, gory battles and general darkness of life in Westeros. Couldn’t we all use a little respite, a brief glimmer of hope from time to time? Especially now that the real world seems to be inching closer and closer to becoming a full-on dystopian hellscape?

The Starks themselves have been put through the wringer like no other family in Westeros, having lost their father, mother, two brothers and 4 of their beloved direwolves (seriously, this show really has it out for those direwolves). Not to mention having yet another brother pushed out of a window and ending up a paralyzed from the waist down, which of course set off the War of the Five Kings in the first place.

And don’t even get us started on poor Hodor

This is why we want, no we need, an Arya and Jon reunion.

A Bright Spot In Troubled Times

Season 6 was a slightly less-bleak-than-usual season for Game of Thrones, which isn’t to say it was all unicorns and puppy dogs exactly. “Less bleak” for Game of Thrones is still pretty dark. But we’re hoping that as the end of the show gets closer (there are only two seasons left, both with a reduced number of episodes) and the various storylines begin to coalesce, we may begin to get some signs of a light at the end of the tunnel in the grim world of Westeros. A reunion of Jon and Arya would go some way towards satiating that desire for some brief (and probably very fleeting) moments of happiness.

That said, a lot has certainly changed for both Jon and Arya since they were last together. Jon joined the Night’s Watch, then fell in with the Free Folk while searching for his missing uncle Benjen, met and fell in love with Ygritte who he would then later watch die, only to become Lord Commander with, let’s just say, mixed results.

Arya hasn’t had it much easier, having to watch her father get beheaded, traveling through Westeros with The Hound (who’s on her aforementioned Kill List) finding out her mother and brother had been murdered at the Red Wedding, journeying to Braavos to join the guild of assasins known as the Faceless Men only to be rendered blind then subjected to near constant beatings and attempts on her life courtesy of The Waif.

They could both really use a break.

How Would Their Reunion Play Out?

Arya and Jon have both been hardened by all the hardships to which they’ve been subjected since that moment in Season 1. Thus it’s easy to imagine they will approach each other with something resembling wariness at first if they should meet again.

But if Jon and Sansa are able to have as satisfying and touching a reunion as they did in Season 6, considering they weren’t nearly as close as siblings than Jon and Arya were, there’s no reason to expect that their reunion would ultimately be anything less than redemptive and joyous.

We’d love to see Jon pull Arya into a tight embrace, perhaps with Nymeria at her side, tears streaming down both their faces and ask her if she’s had to use Needle’s pointy end at all. Imagine all the stories they have for each other. We don’t expect (or even want) Game of Thrones to turn into a fan wish-fulfillment machine or suddenly morph into a touchy-feely heartwarming family show, but we’d really like just this one thing. Just let Jon and Arya have one moment of joy, however fleeting. Do you hear us Benioff and Weiss? Please let Arya and Jon reunite in Season 7. In these dark times, this is what we need right now. It’s what the world needs right now.

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Ryan James
Film geek with (often) questionable taste, recovering (but not really) goth, gamer, horror movie fan, podcast enthusiast, alarmingly clumsy