Arya Stark, Mary Sue? Not quite.

Following the calamitous events of “The Long Night,” in which Winterfell crumbled in the face of certain death, a number of critics have dismissed Maisie Williams’ character as a Mary Sue, which is to say that Arya is so faultless she strains credulity. Let’s unpack this.

As of this writing, there are 70 episodes of HBO’s Game of Thrones, during which time Arya Stark has trained under the best swordsman in all of Westeros, studied the powerful politicking of Tywin Lannister, trained with the Hound, and literally enrolled as a would-be assassin under the watchful eye of Jaqen H’ghar, a faceless man of Braavos and one of the finest assassins in the land.

Is Arya faultless? Far from it. So why on Earth are people referring to her as a Mary Sue? We imagine it has something to do with her slaying the Night King,...