Editor's note: There are spoilers about the Battle of Winterfell ahead. The first two episodes of Game of Thrones’s Eighth season were full of reunions—Arya and Jon, Jaime and Tyrion, Brienne and Jaime and Tormund. The season’s third episode, “The Long Night,” contained the longest battle sequence ever committed to film, so there was a lot less time for chummy catchups. But one character did return: Red Priestess Melisandre. While Jon, Dany, and Ser Davos all saw Melisandre last season, the Red Priestess bumped into Arya for the first time since season three, when Melisandre came upon Arya, who was then being held for ransom by Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr. Beric and Thoros sold Gendry to Mel, and when Arya protested, Melisandre grabbed her face and stared at her. "I see darkness in you," she told Arya. "And in that darkness eyes staring back at me. Brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes you’ll shut forever. We will meet again.” Of course, they did meet again—during the Battle of Winterfell. "You said we'd meet again,” Arya reminded Melisandre, before recalling her prophecy: “You said I’d shut many eyes forever. You were right about that, too.” “Brown eyes, green eyes—and blue eyes,” Melisandre replied, smiling at Arya slightly. Melisandre changed up the order of the eye colors listed, of course, as Arya was soon to close one very important pair of blue eyes . This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. As wights threatened to break down the door to the room in which they were all taking cover, Melisandre asked Arya a final question: “What do we say to the god of death?” It was yet another callback—Arya was already asked that question way back in the show’s first season, while being trained in sword fighting by her King’s Landing “dancing master” Syrio Forel. Arya replied just as she did way back then: "Not today." This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io<doc-sep>Now that Game of Thrones’ Battle of Winterfell has been won, the biggest question heading into the second half of season eight is which characters have green eyes? Melisandre set the green-eyed goose chase into motion in episode three, “The Long Night,” when she gave Arya Stark a much-needed pep talk during the undead’s siege. The Red Witch referenced their season three encounter, when she saw Arya’s future and declared, “I see a darkness in you. And in that darkness, eyes staring back at me: brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes you’ll shut forever.” Arya confirmed to Melisandre that since they last met, she did indeed shut some people’s eyes forever (translation: yes, she killed people). Specifically, she nodded to having killed a character with brown eyes — likely Walder Frey, whom she killed in the season six episode “The Winds of Winter.” But at the time of Arya and Melisandre’s mid-episode chat, she hadn’t dispatched any notable green- or blue-eyed beings that she could recall. Of course, that changed by episode’s end, when Arya killed the blue-eyed Night King, destroying his army of the dead and saving the forces of the living. So now it seems that Arya — who already has some of Game of Thrones’ most vaunted kills under her belt — has at least one more to pull off. She’s theoretically destined to ensure the demise of a character with green eyes. And it just so happens that Cersei Lannister, a villain on this series and the current occupant of the Iron Throne, happens to have a pair of sparkling emerald green eyes, both in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels and on TV. The “green eyes” theory that Arya will kill Cersei, explained Fans’ sudden interest Arya killing someone with green eyes stems from a new interpretation of Melisandre’s previous revelation. Before “The Long Night,” when Melisandre told Arya in season three that she would go on to shut brown eyes, blue eyes, and green eyes “forever,” fans wouldn’t have been wrong to interpret Melisandre’s statement as a reference to Arya’s then-future training to become a face-stealing assassin. It was certainly plausible that the different color eyes she referenced were just a general nod to the many people Arya would eventually kill. But in the context of “The Long Night” and the Battle of Winterfell, the “blue eyes” that Melisandre mentioned could just as plausibly refer to those of the White Walkers and the Night King himself. Arya’s dispatching of the Night King now makes it seem that instead of a more general “Arya will be responsible for many deaths” foretelling, Melisandre’s season three vision corresponds to the deaths of three specific people with different eye colors. Arya’s two biggest kills to date have been the brown-eyed Walder Frey, the man behind season three’s Red Wedding, which brought about the deaths of Arya’s brother and mother; and the blue-eyed Night King. And when you take into account that there’s a startling lack of villainous main characters left on Game of Thrones (Cersei’s brothers Tyrion and Jaime have allied with the forces of the North for now), and how Arya and her sister Sansa have vowed to exact revenge on those who’ve betrayed her family, green-eyed Cersei Lannister seems ripe for Arya’s last big kill of the series. But there’s another prophecy about Cersei’s death Since Game of Thrones’ first season, Cersei Lannister and her family have inflicted so much pain on the Starks. A combination of Cersei’s plotting and the behavior of her terrible son Joffrey resulted in the death of Ned Stark and the exile of Arya and Sansa (which led to Sansa’s abuse at the hands of Ramsay Bolton). Cersei’s father Tywin orchestrated the Red Wedding. It was her brother Jaime who pushed Bran out of a tower window in the very first episode, an accident that left him paralyzed. Arya killing Cersei would bring satisfaction and symmetry to the series, as Cersei and the Lannisters haven’t really met proper payback from the Starks. But it would also interfere with another prophecy. Martin’s novels and Game of Thrones have both introduced a grim prophecy from a witch named Maggy the Frog. During the show’s fifth season, Maggy tells Cersei that she will have three children with gold “crowns” and “shrouds,” which has been interpreted by many to mean three blond children with her brother Jaime, and three golden burial shrouds since they would be of royal blood, as the assumed offspring of Cersei and the late King Robert Baratheon. Viewers of the show will recognize that part of this prophecy has already come true onscreen with the deaths of Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen. But the deaths of Cersei’s children aren’t all that Maggy foretold. Maggy also explained how Cersei would be ousted from power. “You’ll be queen, for a time. Then comes another — younger, more beautiful — to cast you down and take all you hold dear,” Maggy said. Maggy’s prophecy can be interpreted in all kinds of ways, but usually the description of “younger and more beautiful” has been associated with Sansa or Daenerys Targaryen (or even Margaery Tyrell before her death) rather than Arya, who has been routinely depicted as the Stark family’s kid sister turned tomboy turned adept killer. There’s also the matter of “all you hold dear,” which, when we’re talking about Cersei, seems to be either the Iron Throne or her one true love, her twin brother Jaime Lannister. And now that Jaime has deserted her and sided with her enemies, power is all she has left. That leads us to one final suspect in the “younger and more beautiful” category: Jaime himself. Though Jaime and Cersei are twins, he’s younger than her, considered pretty hunky, and is pretty angry with her for not sending troops to the North. Is he possibly mad enough to kill her? (Additionally, in the books, Maggy actually tells Cersei she will die at the hands of “the valonqar,” which is Valyrian for “little brother,” lending some credence that Jaime or even Tyrion could kill her, but Maggy did not say this in her scene on the show.) None of the details from Maggy’s prophecy align with what we know of Arya, with one exception: Arya can steal faces. Though we haven’t seen her do it in a while, Arya could kill Jaime, steal his face, and then kill Cersei — which would be totally wild and require Arya turning on Jaime. But it’s something I would absolutely be here for. And in a roundabout way, it would fulfill both prophecies. But we might be getting ahead of ourselves. For starters, Daenerys Targaryen might have green eyes too, at least on TV (in Martin’s books, they’re violet). And who’s to say there won’t be a falling-out between Dany and the Starks as more people learn of Jon Snow’s true parentage? Further, Game of Thrones’ final season has already shown that prophecies may not always come to fruition, as Melisandre believed in season seven that Dany or Jon, not Arya, would be the one to kill the Night King. However, she also acknowledged this precise uncertainty. “Prophecies are dangerous things,” Melisandre said at the time, warning that they aren’t always clear or what we believe them to be. And if I were Cersei, I would hope that Melisandre was right about that, and not about her green eyes being shut forever.<doc-sep>This post contains spoilers regarding the third episode of Game of Thrones’ eighth season. Right before Game of Thrones’ epic Battle of Winterfell in “The Long Night,” Lady Melisandre — Westeros’s most mysterious, crimson-wearing magic wielder — returned after a departure early in season seven. In the episode’s opening minutes, Melisandre arrives seemingly out of nowhere and blesses the Dothraki arakhs, setting them ablaze before they take on the White Walkers. Later in the episode, she sets the trench around Winterfell ablaze with her magic, helping hold back the hordes of wights and White Walkers and aiding the living’s retreat. Finally, at the end of the episode, she dies, collapsing into the snow. Melisandre’s appearance marked a stunning return and final chapter for the character, who has been one of the most morally beguiling and odder individuals on the Game of Thrones roster. It was also a callback to her fidelity to a prophecy called “The Prince That Was Promised,” which foretold the rise of one true savior who now seems to be Arya Stark. Melisandre knew how important Daenerys, Jon, and Arya were to defeating the Night King — and showed up to support them The most curious thing about Melisandre, a.k.a. the Red Woman, is how little we know about her. But what little we do know is super important: She is centuries old, and her mission on Game of Thrones was to find the savior who would defeat the Night King. In the show’s season six premiere, “The Red Woman,” it was revealed that Melisandre was actually much older than she appeared. Thanks to a magic crimson amulet she wore around her neck, Melisandre looked like a glamorous 30-something-year-old woman (the actress who plays her, Carice van Houten, is 42) but when she took it off, we could see she was fully elderly. According to a 2012 interview with van Houten, “she’s way over 100 years” old; indeed, showrunner David Benioff said during the season six premiere’s “Inside the Episode” aftershow that Melisandre is “several centuries old.” At the end of “The Long Night,” Melisandre takes off her amulet once the Battle of Winterfell is over and the army of the dead has been defeated. The red gem in it dims. And as that happens, Melisandre reverts to her true centuries-old form, with her mission accomplished, her watch over, and her magic used up, and accepts death. Arya seemingly disrupts Melisandre’s “Prince That Was Promised” prophecy Another thing we know about Melisandre is that she possesses magic and is a devout follower of the religion known as the Lord of Light. In that religion, as depicted both on Game of Thrones and in the books on which it’s based, there’s a prophecy called “The Prince That Was Promised” that tells of a savior (who will be the reincarnated hero Azor Ahai) who will save the living from the Long Night, a.k.a. the Night King and his unstoppable forces. George R.R. Martin’s novels flesh out the “Prince That Was Promised” prophecy and its mythology much more than the show has done, but it’s important to treat the show’s depiction — which is a little more vague and succinct about who will save the living from the Night King — as a separate entity mainly because the show has bypassed the books. And throughout the show, Melisandre has followed who she believes to be that prince or princess — beginning with Stannis Baratheon, and then after his death, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. In Game of Thrones’ seventh season, Melisandre visits Daenerys, to tell her about how she believes Dany and Jon are key to this prophecy. “The Long Night is coming,” Melisandre tells her. “Only the prince [prince or princess, according to Missandei’s translation] who was promised can bring the dawn. … I believe you have a role to play, as does another — the King in the North, Jon Snow.” However, it’s not actually Dany or Jon who ended up killing the Night King. That honor went to Arya Stark, not long after Arya had her own strange encounter with Melisandre. Back in Game of Thrones season three, Melisandre and her gang run into Arya, Gendry, and the Brotherhood Without Banners. Melisandre “buys” Gendry from the Brotherhood because she believes his blood is key to helping Stannis Baratheon. But Arya won’t let Gendry go without cursing Melisandre. It’s then that Melisandre looks into Arya’s eyes and tells Arya that she sees death in her future. “I see a darkness in you,” Melisandre tells Arya. “And in that darkness, eyes staring back at me: brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes you’ll shut forever. We will meet again.” This encounter has long been interpreted to serve as foreshadowing of Arya’s future turn as an adept assassin. But in the context of the Battle of Winterfell, the “blue eyes” that Melisandre mentioned now seemingly refer to those of the White Walkers and the Night King himself. Melisandre and Arya revisit that season three moment when they meet during the Battle of Winterfell, and Melisandre gives Arya a pep talk, reminding her of the “blue eyes” detail. The episode also sees Beric Dondarrion, who is a devout follower of the Lord of Light, sacrifice himself so that Arya might live. All of this — Beric’s sacrifice, Arya killing the Night King, Melisandre’s pep talk and eventual death — seemingly signals that Arya could be the reborn savior that the prophecy was centered on. But it’s not that simple. “Prophecies are dangerous things,” Melisandre told Daenerys in their season seven encounter, warning that prophecies are never crystal clear and often not what they seem. And unfortunately, as she appeared to die for good at the end of “The Long Night,” she will no longer be around to further advise on what the future might hold.<doc-sep>
Game Of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3, The Long Night was a really long episode and was a gift that kept on giving. This episode confirmed what many fans had been saying since a long time; Arya Stark is the baddest character of them all. After successfully skewering the Night King and his frosty lieutenants and wights by extension, Arya seems to have closed down one long-lasting storyline of the series in one fell swoop, or rather, jab. Shocked? The Red Priestess might just have prophesied this back in season three. Oh yeah, Melisandre came back by the way, for one last hurrah. In season three when Melisandre runs into Arya, Gendry and the Brotherhood Without Banners, she tells Arya, “I see a darkness in you, and in that darkness, eyes staring back at me: brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes you’ll shut forever. We will meet again.” Arya’s shut a lot of eyes since then, and as the episode showed, the blue eyes that Melisandre was talking about belonged to the Night King. Melisandre and Arya have a final encounter in the latest episode after Beric sacrifices himself to save Arya, which Melisandre would have us believe was Beric’s purpose all along. Melisandre drops a gentle reminder which is a throwback to Syrio Forel’s favourite quip; “What do we say to the god of death? Not today.” In this context, one can presume that the “god of death” is the Night King. Arya then sprints off to shish kebab him. All of this seems to point to another prophecy; that of Azor Ahai or the Prince Who Was Promised. According to the prophecy, a saviour who is the hero Azor Ahai reincarnated will “lead the people against darkness” with the flaming sword Lightbringer. If we were to get literal, parts of the prophecy don’t add up to Arya being Azor Ahai, but past events would show that it’s the very nature of prophecies; they don’t pan out as precisely as they were foretold. Melisandre initially thought Stannis Baratheon was the Prince That Was Promised (lol, what?) before moving on to Jon and Daenerys. But now, Arya seems like the most likely candidate. What do you think?