Dance with Death: Interpreting the symbolism of Arya and the pale horse

In the final shot, the camera starts low with a burning corpse in the foreground; it cranes upward as Arya rides the pale horse in slow motion, galloping away from us along the burning avenue of death and destruction.

The camera continues upward. The sound of the pale horse’s hooves are muffled and low but booming, as if it is traveling into an otherworldy space or time. The sound of the hoofbeats fades away very quickly, replaced by surging music.

In conclusion, you can really go anyway you want with the intended meaning of the pale horse in this sequence. At the very least, it’s a visually arresting and powerful series of shots, one of the most haunting I’ve ever seen on Game of Thrones. It can be the chronicle of a girl and a horse somehow still alive in the aftermath of a dragon-apocalypse, barely able to comprehend the realization that they are still breathing in the middle of a landscape of death, who find one another and make their escape to somewhere else … anywhere else … and perhaps towards Daenerys. Or it can be something else.