While she surprised many, including perhaps Three-eyed Bran by choosing family over revenge a few weeks ago — I thought you were heading to King’s Landing, he told her — you still have to wonder if her heedless bloodlust and grudges are going to get her into trouble before she figures out how to be a more effective player in this game. Her old beefs with Sansa — you always liked nice things because they made you feel better than everyone else, Arya told her — certainly left her vulnerable to an operator like Littlefinger, who played her like a fiddle.

[Interview: Aidan Gillen on Littlefinger’s Stark Obsession]

A quick(ish) tangent: Some commenters have complained about the protectiveness people express toward the Stark sisters, noting that it smacks of a patriarchal double standard that denies female heroes the approval given to their male counterparts. (Jon kills people and viewers cheer. Arya does it and they wonder if she’s O.K.) I don’t dispute that this cultural tendency exists, but I think there’s more to it with Sansa and Arya.

Whether the writers intended it, we feel closer to the Stark girls than to any other character in this show. With the possible exception of Tyrion, nearly every other player has been victimized by their own flaws or bad decisions, while more nascent heroes like Dany and Jon Snow have from the beginning displayed the distancing stink of destiny. Then there’s Bran, who’s always seemed more like a plot device than an actual person, which is not his fault but makes it hard to burn many emotional calories on him. (Disclosure: I have a longstanding Bran apathy — Branpathy? — that I plan to address as soon aszzzzzz…)

But Sansa and Arya are in many ways the soul of “Game of Thrones.” We met them as callow, half-formed children and saw them taken from their home, because the realm demanded it, and get subjected to a steady diet of persecution and loss. They were set up to be ground down by other people’s ambition, but through a combination of luck and pluck took and inflicted their share of lumps, zigged when others expected them to zag, and found a way to survive, and to reconnect and rededicate themselves to their family.

Concern about their well being, emotional and otherwise, has less to do with paternalism than with our deeper emotional investment. We’ve watched them overcome challenge after challenge and grow into strong young women shaping events. For whom, more than them, do we want this world to be redeemed?