The Waif
A pale, ageless acolyte of the House of Black and White, who trains new servants of the Many-Faced God in the arts of the faceless ÔÇö patiently, mercilessly.
A soul born at Braavos, sworn to The Faceless Men.
The fuller tale
Season Six
The Waif hunts Arya through Braavos ÔÇö into a dark cellar where a blind girl trained. Valar morghulis; a girl goes home.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Her face joined the hall (S6┬ÀE8)
The faceless novice who hated the Stark girl hunted her one last time through Braavos ÔÇö into a black cellar, where a blind girl's training and a single candle-cut ended the game. Her face joined the hall.
The showÔÇÖs Waif dies in the sixth season, at the end of the hunt she asked to lead. Having stabbed Arya on the bridge and butchered the actress Lady Crane for sheltering her, she chases her quarry through Braavos ÔÇö a pursuit staged as relentless, machine-like, unbeatable ÔÇö into a bare cellar where Needle waits and a single sword-stroke puts out the candle. The show declines to stage the kill: the next thing seen is the WaifÔÇÖs face, newly mounted in the hall of the House of Black and White, where Jaqen finds it and draws the intended conclusion. Arya beat her where the blind months had made Arya the native: in the dark. In the books the waif lives on in the temple, no manÔÇÖs enemy ÔÇö the duel belongs to the show alone.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
The book Waif is no enemy: she is a small, sad, gentle presence who teaches Arya the tongue of Braavos and the craft of poisons, gives her the story of her own ruined childhood as a lesson in lies, and shows the novice nothing worse than the templeÔÇÖs ordinary rigor. The lethal rivalry, the sanctioned hunt, and the duel in the dark are inventions of the show, which needed Braavos to end in something more cinematic than a curriculum. She is alive in the published books, still serving in the House of Black and White ÔÇö which means the show killed a character the novels may still be using, one of the adaptationÔÇÖs quieter unilateral choices.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.