Spoilers ahead for Game of Thrones season 7, episode 6, “Beyond the Wall”
Thanks to Littlefinger’s manipulations, Arya Stark is on poor terms with her sister Sansa in Game of Thrones’ latest episode. Afraid that Arya might take an incriminating note back to the Northern lords, whose loyalties spin like weathervanes, Sansa tries to retrieve the note from Arya’s room, and instead discovers a bag with flattened faces. It seems like Arya’s building her own traveling House of Black and White, and making a collection of disguises for herself.
Sansa pulls out one young bearded man’s face, then another face that’s more identifiable as Walder Frey, whom Arya murdered in season 6. But who does the first face belong to? Looking at the different Freys Arya killed in season 6 and the start of season 7, there are several possibilities.
It’s possible (although unlikely) that the face could belong to Ser Meryn Trant. Trant looks older than the face, but they do have similar facial hair. But in the season 5 finale, we saw Arya stab Trant in both eyes while killing him. This face looks uninjured, so that’s a point against it being Trant. However, since the exact magic that goes into preserving the faces is still unknown, it could be possible that a face damaged by fatal injuries could be restored to a healthier-looking form.
Other face-candidates include any of Walder Frey’s sons, including Lothar Frey and Black Walder, whom Arya killed off-camera and baked into a pie to feed Walder before murdering him. Both these men had beards, and because Arya killed them, she presumably has their faces, although both also look too gaunt to be the unknown face. She baked a finger into the Frey pie, but that was a small pie compared to the size of the men, and she certainly could have had faces left over. Besides Lothar and Black Walder, the face could simply be any of the other numerous Freys Arya massacred at the start of season 7.
The unknown face looks peaceful, almost cherubic, and even bears a resemblance to Samwell Tarly. Maybe it’s one of his distant relatives? If it isn’t one of Arya’s kills that we’ve seen, it could be a face she stole from the House of Black and White, or a kill that happened off-camera during her journey from Braavos to Westeros. Regardless of the true origins of the face, Arya will definitely be using it and others like it soon in her murderous mission to destroy her enemies.