Jaqen was certainly in the dungeons while Syrio was teaching Arya, excepting the possibility of face-switching. It’s likely they were two different people and Syrio is dead. Jaqen, however, is alive and brimming with tricks.
Why Didn’t Arya Kill Someone Important?
After Jaqen H’ghar offers to kill three people for her, Book Arya considers her options for a few days . She finally names Chiswyck, who led a gang rape. When the habitually cruel understeward strikes her, Arya names him, and his dog appears to tear out his throat. While considering a third name, Arya realizes she likely should have picked more powerful people. Her third name in book and movie is a clever trick – she names Jaqen in order to force his aid in saving her life. In the book, he helps her free the Northmen in the dungeon and stage an uprising.
Show Arya first names the Tickler, who has tortured many innocents, and nearly killed Arya’s friend Gendry. Clearly the world would be better without him. In the following episode, she names the guard about to betray her to Tywin – this is treated as an emergency. When Tywin rides out, she insists that he must be killed right that instant. When told that is impossible, her next request is to allow her escape – perhaps she means to kill Tywin herself. When she names Jaqen to compel his help as she does on the show, h e arranges an escape for her and her two best friends, though without the massive revolt.
In season three, Gendry asks the question most fans are dying to know – why didn’t she name a major player? She could have ordered the death of Tywin, Joffrey, someone who mattered. Even her first “test case” could have been someone important.
On the show, Arya is rushed, and in the books, she feels she’s been foolish in her modest choices. Besides that, the answer is complex. Arya is in fact a child – she knows the players but not the finer points of the war. Would killing Tywin help Robb? Possibly. But Robb is currently winning against the Lannisters, and if Tywin were taken out, someone worse, like Mad King Joffrey might get charge of the army. Besides, Arya has a sense of fair play and Tywin hasn’t hurt her – in fact, he’s been kind to her and to her friends. He’s not on her personal attack list.
Nonetheless, Arya fingers a knife and stares at Tywin’s bare neck on the show, wondering if she should – she can fight her own battles without the Faceless Man to help her. Certainly, Arya could have made her third name a deadly strike at someone like Joffrey, sacrificing herself in her brother’s cause, but she’s a survivor. Though she whispers names to herself at night, of those she intends revenge against, she appears to want to kill them herself. In fact, in the book, she’s the one to kill the Tickler, as she stabs him repeatedly and sarcastically demands to know where gold and jewels are kept. Many fans were disappointed that scene won’t take place. On the show, she says:
“Show me how – I want to be able to do it too,” she tells Jaqen.
“If you would learn you must come with me...The girl has many names on her lips: Cersei, Joffrey, Tywin Lannister, Ilyn Payne, the Hound. [In the book, she doesn’t repeat Tywin’s name, and she has several more minor characters on her list] Names to offer the red god. She could offer them all…one by one.
“I want to but I can’t. I need to find my brother and mother…and my sister.” (2.10)
Arya wishes her enemies dead, but at her own hand, not that of a disinterested assassin. Only her need to save her family comes first. Once her family is taken care of, however, she holds the coin that will take her to train with the Faceless Men and see everyone who wronged her dead.
Like the Brotherhood Without Banners, Arya seems to have appointed herself a champion of individual justice: Long after everyone has forgotten a single butcher’s boy, killed on the king’s
R.E. Blake, Russell Blake