Gendry might be back on “Game of Thrones” to fulfill a hopeful wish from Season 1
This post contains spoilers from Season 7 of Game of Thrones — as well as spoilers from the pilot, which if you haven’t seen yet is honestly entirely on you. Read on at your own risk.
Remember back in the pilot of Game of Thrones, when we were young and innocent of *all* that was to come, when King Robert Baratheon paid Ned Stark a visit in Winterfell and offered him the position of Hand of the King (which would literally bring doom to everyone)? The two were in the crypts of Winterfell paying respects to Ned’s sister Lyanna, to whom Robert was betrothed before her death, when Robert lamented that his marriage to Lyanna would have made him and Ned blood.
Still, Robert expresses interest in joining Houses Baratheon and Stark.
“It’s not too late. I have a son, you have a daughter, we’ll join our houses,” he tells Ned, referring to Sansa and Joffrey.
Obviously, the pairing between Sansa and Joffrey didn’t work out, but all is NOT lost for the joining of Houses Baratheon and Stark. While House Barathon *supposedly* ended with Tommen’s suicide, we all know one unacknowledged bastard who’s been reading up on his family history — Gendry.
Now that Gendry’s made his grand return to the series, a *lot* of people are hoping that Gendry and Arya wind up together, fulfilling Robert’s wish from Season 1.
We love this idea for many reasons. For starters, the two have such an amazing friendship during the second season of the series. While navigating the world and just trying to stay alive, the two form a really sweet friendship, and Arya even tells Gendry that they could be family. It’s all the more devastating when they’re split up in Season 3, after Gendry is sold to Melisandre by the Brotherhood Without Banners. They were also both struggling to find their places in the world: Gendry just wanted a purpose, and Arya wanted to learn to fight, something they’ve both accomplished by Season 7.
In “Eastwatch,” we learned that since returning to King’s Landing, Gendry’s been secretly embracing the father he never knew, going so far as wielding a war hammer complete with the Baratheon stag sigil. We even got some serious Ned/Robert vibes when Jon Snow and Gendry met for the first time (yes, we know that Ned *isn’t* Jon’s biological dad but he doesn’t).
Plus, it’s becoming more clear that maybe Winterfell isn’t a good place for Arya, who’s been bickering with Sansa and playing a potentially deadly game of cat and mouse with Littlefinger.
Right now, it remains to be seen if both Gendry and Arya will *actually* survive the season and reunite, but we’re hopeful they will. Gendry and Arya always had a good rapport and we think they’d be a (literally) killer pair, reviving House Baratheon together while taking names in the process.
