A lot happened in the final episode of Game of Thrones—first and most shockingly, Jon killed Daenerys and was sent back to the Wall. But Sansa was also made Queen in the North, while Bran became king of the entire (now) Six Kingdoms, ushering in a new era of non-hereditary monarchy. But one Stark didn’t end the series on quite as definitive a note—Arya.
Arya first popped up early on in the episode, watching a Daenerys give a frighteningly power-mad victory speech. She warned Jon that Dany would always see him as a threat, and then disappeared until the tribunal, which was held to determine the new monarch. While each of her siblings landed in positions of varying prestige, from Jon rejoining the wildlings through Bran’s unexpected turn as ruler of the whole damn kingdom, Arya decided to just head off into a nameless sunset.
"I’m not going back north," Arya told her siblings before Jon’s departure for the Wall. When Sansa asked where she was planning to head, Arya responded hypothetically, asking “What’s west of Westeros?” She then explained that all the maps stop at Westeros because apparently, with all the sailing around and flying dragons, no one bothered to check into what was going on out there.
So what, exactly, is west of Westeros? Arya has actually brought it up before. In Season Six, when talking to Lady Crane, Arya asks what is west of Westeros. Crane tells her that it could be the edge of the world, to which Arya says she'd like to see.
As we know from George R.R. Martin, the world of Game of Thrones is round and slightly smaller than Earth. In the author's detailed history, some characters have sailed the Sunset Sea to the West, including Elissa Farmen, who discovered three islands on that side of the world. Unfortunately, the rest of that geography is undiscovered.
As the Game of Thrones wiki explains:
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the Sunset Sea is considered vast and uncrossable, though some ironborn claim to have found more substantial land in the far west. These claims are usually disbelieved.
The most famous explorer of the Sunset Sea was King Brandon Stark (the unknown number of his line), who sailed west with the most of the Northern fleet to find new lands and was never seen again. His son, Brandon the Burner, burned the remaining ships in grief and fury. The North has had no significant strength at sea since this time.
Hell, maybe Arya's adventures will provide some content for one of the many inevitable Game of Thrones spinoffs.
This story originally appeared on Esquire.com.
* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
