It’s a journey that’s been eight seasons in the making, yet there are those online complaining that Arya Stark is a “Mary Sue” and did not deserve the “right” to kill the Night King. Such are the times we live in that fandom’s, particularly male fandom’s, sense of entitlement becomes overbearing. Arya, the woman who was once a girl that eschewed the traditional path laid out for her by even the most benevolent aspects of the patriarchy, proved an iconoclast who could change the direction of history—and it’s still not enough.

Disappointment with finales is nothing new. It is likely impossible to satisfy anyone with an ending years in the making, decades for those who read A Game of Thrones when it was first published in 1996, and when it comes to properties and stories that cultivate devoted, intense fandoms, it might be a fool’s errand. I’ve written before about how fans generally loathe any sort of ending, because it will never satisfy the climax in their heads, and then it also has the audacity to end.. with, like, zero room for speculation about what comes next. So the growing backlash to the final season of Game of Thrones is hardly a surprise. I suspect it will only rise over the next three weeks too. What is a shock, however, is that so many would dismiss Arya’s beautifully complex arc which elegantly built to this moment as fan service, political “virtue signaling,” or worst of all, the use of the “Mary Sue” archetype.

read more: What’s Next for Sansa and Tyrion?

The term “Mary Sue” itself has reached the point of being meaningless. Originally an academic term used by literary scholars, a Mary Sue was meant to describe female characters devoid of much personality, background, or discernable flaws so that the target demographic—likely women—could place themselves in the protagonist’s rose-tinted shoes and live vicariously through her adventures. This of course exists in popular fiction (personally, I would argue Bella Swan is the academic definition of a Mary Sue), but it has been coopted and diluted by politically triggered groups of fandom predisposed to dislike the focus shifting to any major female characters. This most visibly occurred when male fanboys were horrified that Daisy Ridley’s Rey was now the main character of the Star Wars franchise instead of white male characters like Luke Skywalker or Anakin Skywalker. But a larger political subculture that tends to dismiss the achievement of any women, even fictional ones, has latched onto the term as a blanket critique of any female character who is little more than a damsel in distress. These are likely the same online circles that attempted to discredit Katie Bouman’s work on photographing a black hole by suggesting it was actually the main achievement of a man.

Which brings us back to Arya Stark. Like each of the Stark children to survive this far into the Game of Thrones narrative, Arya Stark has endured a dramatic and emotionally rich character transformation by getting exactly what she wanted in the most nihilistic terms. Like a monkey’s paw bedtime story, each of the Starks received a variation on the life they wanted and then lived to regret it. Jon Snow wanted to go on amazing adventures beyond the Wall as a chivalrous member of the Night’s Watch, only to find most of his brothers to be illiterate criminals who hated his privilege, even as a bastard, and the wildlings he went to skewer could be reasonable and even lovable. He also finally became an accepted member of the Stark family after his perceived father and brother were murdered and his sisters abused and scattered to the wind. Sansa Stark wanted to meet a prince and live as a queen in a palace; she got to live at the height of royalty in the Red Keep as a hostage for Prince and then King Joffrey… who tortured and harassed her.