Warning: this post contains major spoilers for Game of Thrones  and Avengers: Endgame.

Harry Potter. Buffy Summers. Luke Skywalker. Jon Snow. These icons of page and screen all have one thing in common: They're the "Chosen One," ordained by birth to be special, in the tradition of Greek mythology. Also in this tradition, the Chosen One is a tragic hero. Huge, cosmic significance, enviable talents and a loyal band of followers, yes, but the trade-off is a life fraught with the death, trauma and the weight of the world solely on their shoulders. With great power, comes great responsibility -- you know how it goes.

It's a trope that's endured for so long because it taps into our innate desire for fiction to offer the things we don't get from our real lives, that the world isn't just a confusing mess of random events, but one given order and reason by the structure of destiny. Destiny loomed large over Game of Thrones as the show entered its eighth and final season, finally gathering all of its remaining, estranged players into one place, and putting Jon on a direct course to fulfill his own, personal destiny. Only, when the moment came... Jon failed.

Enter Arya Stark. Perhaps not the hero we thought we needed, but definitely the one we deserve.

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As the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, Jon Snow is the physical embodiment of A Song of Ice and Fire and, as such, strongly hinted to be to the prophecized hero, Azor Ahai. Jon and Arya have much in common: a shared sense of disconnect to most of the people around them, a hard-wearing spirit and a complex relationship with their identities. However, Jon’s path has always has been guided by the hand of fate, from the circumstances of his birth to the divine intervention that brought him back to life. While he is intrinsically a good-hearted man and proven war hero, like all preordained heroes, there’s less dramatic tension in knowing that the cards are always stacked in a character’s favor. That’s what makes Jon a compelling hero to those around him, but not necessarily for us, the audience. Every step in Jon’s journey, no matter how much he dragged his feet, has been towards embracing inevitability. Arya’s has been the exact opposite: unexpected and full of surprises.

Arya has suffered in much the same way a traditional "Chosen" hero would. Except that losing her parents didn't send her down a clearly-defined heroic road, but rather, into the wilds of the unknown. Her survival was dependent on her own ingenuity -- flouting gendered and societal traditions, and acquiring mentors who weren't necessarily "good," or "bad," or even "wise," and using (or ignoring) their lessons to transform herself.

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Arya in Game of Thrones The Long Night

From Ned Stark, Arya learned that rigid moral fortitude, while admirable, will earn you nothing but your neck on the executioner's block. (If only Jon had heeded this same warning in Season 5.) Despite Ned indulging his daughter's interest in combat, he also inadvertently nurtured the first seeds of her social discontent by telling her that she was "destined" to marry a Lord and bear his children. "That's not me," Arya replies. She repeats this affirmation to her wild direwolf, Nymeria when they're briefly reunited in Season 7, and again to Gendry in Season 8 when she turns down the very life her father told her she was born to have.

From Syrio Forel, the sword fighting master that Ned hired for her, Arya received a fundamental lesson in a style of combat that suited her best, the Water Dance. "It is swift... and sudden!" And, a state of mind: "What do we say to the God of Death? Not today." Both would come to be crucial in the decisive role she played at the Battle of Winterfell.

From Tywin Lannister, who she hid in plain sight from at Harenhaal in Season 2, she learned of the pitfalls of hubris when the fearsome patriarch tells her that the castle's first owner built the fortress to withstand any army. What he didn't count on, however, was an attack from the Targaryans and their dragons. The Targaryans "changed the rules," Tywin surmised, a sentiment that obviously struck a chord with a girl disguised as a boy. Tywin recognized Arya's intelligence. In turn, Arya recognized that it's not just your heroes you should take lessons from, but your enemies, too.

It's no coincidence that Arya aligning herself to "one true God: Death," prefaced her making her first real kill in Season 3 while trapped in the company of her next, and unlikeliest mentor: Sandor "The Hound" Clegane. While the Hound kills senselessly and indiscriminately, Arya chose to mark herself out from him by reciting her "kill list" over and over like a prayer to her new deity. Her would-be victims from then on were chosen through the necessity of preservation or revenge, not anarchically like her amoral captor, who she ended up making an indelible impression on.

Arya and the Hound traveling to the Vale in Game of Thrones

Seasons 5 and 6 saw Arya endure her toughest trials yet. Traveling to Braavos, the home of Syrio, she sought out the face-changing assassin who helped smuggle her out of Harenhaal, Jaqen H'Ghar. Under his tutelage -- and his vindictive subordinate, the Waif -- Arya was far from a model student. Upon failing her first test, she was given a rare second chance, only to fail again. Despite this, Arya still managed to earn the Faceless Men's coveted "no-one" status, which, as a consummate rule-bender, she rejected. "A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell. And I'm going home."

Seasons 7 and 8 saw Arya return to her ancestral home, fully equipped to put everything she'd learned to good use. Using what she learned from the Faceless Men, she was able to avenge her mother and eldest brother. Using the deceptive skills she'd developed in Tywin's company, she was able to outsmart Little Finger. And finally, during the Battle of Winterfell, her bond with the Hound inspired him to find his own inner hero, while she emerged as the master assassin Syrio and Jaqen trained her to be.

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We've looked at why Arya is a more interesting hero than Jon Snow, but what gives her the edge over the show's other great savior figure, and other modern fantasy heroes? For this, let's break down heroism into its two commonly conflicting ideals: anonymity vs. notoriety and cost vs. fulfillment. Both depend on a shifting scale of selflessness and self-worth. Self-appointed Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Daenerys Targaryen, believes herself to be the true "Chosen One" of Westeros, but her commitment to this noble cause is constantly undermined by her need to flaunt herself as such. In other words, Dany is motivated too much by fame and personal gain. With each "good" act, like freeing an enslaved people, Dany adds numbers to her army and another title to her name; a name that gains more and more power with each victory. Anointing Gendry as the new Lord of Storm’s End in "The Last of the Starks," for example, was transparently a performative act of heroism to try and win herself more Northern allies. When it didn’t work, the bitterness around her was palpable. This doesn’t make Dany a bad hero, just a very complicated one.

Notice how, at the same victory party, the "hero of Winterfell" that Dany raised a goblet to (or was it a Starbucks cup?) was nowhere to be found. While the survivors drank and flirted their way through the night, Arya Stark, the slayer of the Night King, was doing target practice by herself, rather than reveling in her newfound fame. That was her first test that night. The second came when the puppy-dog-eyed Gendry came to offer her the enviable title of Lady of Storm’s End, sharing his own victory spoils with her. With a heavy heart, Arya turned him down, choosing instead to accompany the Hound -- one of her old mentors -- into another battlefield; needing no name but her own, and no home but the winding road.

RELATED: Game of Thrones: Daenerys Targaryen May Become the 'Mad Queen'

episode-3-arya-night-king

Following her Big Damn Hero move in the previous episode, these two small parts Arya had to play in the follow-up appear comparatively insignificant. But, they speak volumes about who she's become. How a hero comes back from failure is important -- important enough to be the entire plot of Avengers: Endgame. Less importance is placed for how they react to victory, which again, Endgame also dealt with. Arya’s biggest test of her heroism was killing an "unkillable" enemy, but her commitment to heroism was tested when the option of a comfortable, early retirement with a person she cared deeply for was dangled in her face.

This doesn’t make the MCU’s Captain America -- who gave it all up to be with his wartime sweetheart -- less of a hero. (Steve Rogers had also lived a much longer, time-displaced life.) Steve’s desire to be happy doesn’t make him weaker, it just makes him more human. Most heroes who make use of secret identities and public personas do so because they’re keeping their eyes locked on the light at the end of the tunnel. Most of these heroes are also working to fulfill some kind of preordained purpose that, once achieved, they can finally unburden themselves from the weight of their Chosen One responsibility.

By choosing anonymity over notoriety and cost over fulfillment, Arya cements herself as a hero in the truest sense. Rather than having purpose thrust upon her, Arya chose to pursue it herself, at the cost of much of her humanity. The fulfillment could have been the recovery of that humanity -- a new name, a home, a family and an end to a life of killing. But by this point, Arya’s transformation is too complete.

Having reconciled with her past, risen above the political and social constraints of her present, and secured humanity’s future, Arya’s only reward is the freedom to be herself and make her own destiny.