Spoiler Alerts For Season 8 Episode 4

Last night, I had a realization.

Sansa Stark has become one of my favorite characters on Game of Thrones. I am rooting for her. I am cheering for her. I am in awe of her, too.

It wasn’t always that way.

When we first came to Winterfell, Sansa was kind of a brat. She made me roll my eyes once or twice. I found myself yelling at the television. I found myself getting annoyed that she couldn’t see how horrible Cersei was – I wished she would be more like Arya.

That was then.

Now the Stark sisters are a force to be reckoned with, and although Arya is the champion that killed the Night King, there is a strength that seems to be brewing in Sansa that is silent, strong, and quite possibly deadly.

In Season 8 Episode 4, we see Sansa continue to push back against Daenerys. She challenges Jon’s belief that she should be queen – his belief in Dany isn’t good enough for Sansa – now she wants to know why. Now she wants him to prove it to her. She’s no longer the obedient little sister – now she wants to know the reasons for the actions.

Sansa challenges Daenerys when she wants to send their men back into battle before they are ready. And when Jon finally tells his sisters the truth about his lineage, that he is, in fact, the rightful heir to the iron throne – Sansa does not waste much time in spilling Jon’s secret. She tells Tyrion, who then tells Varys, and it will only spread more from there.

It’s a gutsy move to go against her brother’s wishes, but Sansa does it anyway.

Because, as the Hound aptly points out, she’s no longer the little bird.

She’s an eagle.

Better yet – she’s a harpy eagle.

Sansa might not fight like Arya, but she is keen, she is smooth, and she is a survivor. She has been through hell at the hands of Ramsey and Littlefinger and Joffrey and Cersei. She has been tortured, and beaten, and raped.

Before, she was a teenager with dreams of romance and courtship.

Now, she’s a force to be reckoned with. She is someone who will defend her home, her siblings, and her fathers legacy. We watched her innocence get ripped away from her once – and I don’t think she’s going to let her idea of a happy life die just yet.

In Westeros, and in life, beautiful women can sometimes be treated as if they as stupid. It’s as if nobody can possibly believe that beauty and intellect can coexist within the same human and that in order to be taken seriously, they have to do something to prove their intelligence. Such thinking is exhausting, tiring, and simply foolish.

Sansa reminds us all how foolish such thinking can be.

The harpy eagle is considered one of the world’s most powerful birds of prey, even though it only weighs 20 pounds.

Sansa Stark is arguably stepping into her role as one of the most powerful women of Westeros, even though she doesn’t have a dragon, or an army, or a place on the battlefield.

Power isn’t always about wielding a sword. Sometimes, the greatest power is the thing that you cannot see, a feeling that once untapped, is unstoppable.

Sansa is a force to be reckoned with – and I cannot wait to see what she does next.