The connecting record
shownGame of Thrones
Arya Stark killed The Night King in Game of Thrones.
Caught by the knife hand and the throat, held clear of the ground, she lets the dagger drop out of one grip into the other and puts it into his chest. He comes apart into ice and every Walker and wight standing goes with him.
What each of them is ranked on
The killer · Arya Stark · rank 17
Cat of the Canals
Fought Brienne of Tarth to a standstill in the Winterfell yard and finished with a blade at each other's throats, having lost Needle mid-bout and switched to a dagger without dropping a step. That is the one occasion anybody puts her in front of a ranked fighter who is awake, armed and trying, and it is why she stands at the head of this tier instead of the foot of it. The rest is killing rather than fencing: a stableboy with a pitchfork, a torturer stabbed from behind with his own knife, a deserter in a Braavosi canal, an old insurance seller poisoned through a coin he tested with his teeth. The two versions do not even agree about who did what — the novels leave her the squire and the Tickler at the inn and give Polliver to the Hound, while the series has her cut Polliver's leg from under him, take Needle back and put it through his throat. Then the Night King, one thrust, one continuity, and the largest single act anyone this far down the ladder performs. She is also the only fighter on the page whose best hour may not have happened yet.
shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 22 (Arya II)
Eddard Stark gives her the sword back and hires Syrio Forel, who throws her a lead-weighted wooden blade she cannot catch and spends four hours letting her fail to strike him.
shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 50 (Arya IV)
Kills a stableboy who grabs her arm in the stables during the purge of House Stark, putting Needle through his belly.
shownA Storm of Swords · ch. 74 (Arya XIII)
At the crossroads inn she stabs the squire in the belly, kills the Tickler from behind with his own dagger while repeating his questions back at him, then recovers Needle from Polliver and finishes the squire.
All 9 citations
statedA Feast for Crows · ch. 34 (Cat of the Canals)
Asked by the kindly man who killed the deserter Dareon, whose throat was cut and whose body went into a canal, she answers with her own name and is blind by morning.
shownA Dance with Dragons · ch. 64 (The Ugly Little Girl)
Kills her first assigned target by slipping a poisoned coin into a shipowner's purse, knowing the old man tests every coin with his teeth.
shownGame of Thrones · S04E01 “Two Swords”
The series gives her Polliver — she cuts his leg from behind, takes Needle off him and drives it into his throat the way he had killed Lommy.
shownGame of Thrones · S07E04 “The Spoils of War”
Spars Brienne of Tarth to a stalemate at Winterfell, switching to a Valyrian steel dagger when Needle is knocked away, and ends with each of them holding a blade at the other's throat.
shownGame of Thrones · S06E10 “The Winds of Winter”
Cuts Walder Frey's throat at his own table after showing him what she has done with his sons.
shownGame of Thrones · S08E03 “The Long Night”
Caught by the throat and the left wrist in the godswood, she drops the dagger from one grip into the other and drives it into the Night King, who shatters.
The victim · The Night King · rank 1
Brought down a dragon with one thrown spear, over a frozen lake, and had the corpse hauled out of the water and its eyes open again before the episode was over. Nothing here is somebody's account of him — the arms on the Hardhome dock and the slaughtered wildlings standing up, a length of the Wall coming apart under blue fire, Drogon covering him in flame and the flame simply going out around him. He ends in the Winterfell godswood with his own blade half drawn and Arya Stark held clear of the ground by the throat, which is an assassination rather than a bout anybody took off him. No chapter is cited beneath this, because there is no chapter: he was invented for the television series and appears in none of the novels, whose Night's King is a Lord Commander of the Night's Watch out of the Age of Heroes and an entirely separate figure.
shownGame of Thrones · S04E04 “Oathkeeper”
Lifts the last of Craster's sons off an ice altar and touches a finger to the child's cheek, and the baby's eyes turn blue.
shownGame of Thrones · S05E08 “Hardhome”
Raises both arms on the dock and the wildlings killed in the massacre stand up as wights while Jon Snow watches from the departing boat.
shownGame of Thrones · S06E05 “The Door”
Passes through the fire the Children of the Forest have set at the cave mouth and kills the three-eyed raven inside.
All 10 citations
shownGame of Thrones · S07E06 “Beyond the Wall”
Throws an ice spear that goes through Viserion's neck and drops the dragon through the ice of the lake.
shownGame of Thrones · S07E06 “Beyond the Wall”
Kneels at the dragon's snout after the corpse is dragged from the water, lays a hand on it, and its eyes open blue.
shownGame of Thrones · S07E07 “The Dragon and the Wolf”
Rides the reanimated Viserion along the Wall at Eastwatch until that stretch of the ice collapses and the dead can cross.
shownGame of Thrones · S08E03 “The Long Night”
Stands inside Drogon's fire at Daenerys Targaryen's command and walks out of it unmarked.
shownGame of Thrones · S08E03 “The Long Night”
Raises his arms in front of Jon Snow and every corpse at Winterfell rises, including the dead sealed in the crypts.
shownGame of Thrones · S08E03 “The Long Night”
Breaks Theon Greyjoy's spear as he charges and drives the broken half through him.
shownGame of Thrones · S08E03 “The Long Night”
Catches Arya Stark's knife hand and her throat; she lets the dagger drop to her free hand and puts it into his chest, and he comes apart into ice.
What this does not settle
One death in one work. It is the only place the record puts these two in the same room, and it is evidence about that meeting and nothing wider — not a general matchup, not a rematch, and not a ranking of its own.
The ladder above it is argued from everything either of them has been shown doing; this page is argued from one citation.
Where the two disagree, the disagreement is the point, and it stays visible rather than being resolved by whichever of them happens to be on this page.