You didn’t notice the weird shift in later series to women being in charge of everything, male characters becoming increasingly dumb and weak willed, identitarian views on anyone not white seeing white people as instinctively hating them, general lack of depth and subtlety in characters that had before hand been subtle, intelligent manipulators with personal interests instead of vague one dimensional archetypes?
Don’t get me wrong, it was no where near as brazen as it is these days, and far from the biggest reason the show shat itself to death in the final series, but I mean Aria’s super human murder spree and completely unearned killing of the Night King alone kind of scream progressive politics getting prioritised over good writing.
You talking about Game of Thrones or the latest Star Wars films?
[SPOILERS warning for anyone who hasn't watched the Game of Thrones show.]
At any rate, the reason they stupidly had Aria kill the Night King was the fact that if she hadn't kill him, her entire character would turn out to be pointless. Aria was supposed to avenge the Starks - her family - because of the treachery of various individuals. However, Martin (and the HBO writers), basically killed all of them and denied her the kills.
Joffrey Lannister - murdered by Olenna Tyrell
Cercei Lannister - killed by the 'rocks fall, everyone dies' trope
Tywin Lannister - murdered by Tyrion Lannister
The Hound - killed by the Mountain who was killed by the Hound (not that she would kill her only friend, but …)
And about the ones she did kill?
Walder Frey - kills him at a point when he's utterly irrelevant to the plot and doesn't matter whether he lives or dies
Meryn Trant - kills him at a point where the audience wouldn't spare a single fuck
Polliver - who? exactly.
Rorge - who? exactly.
and the list goes on with characters who earn a who? and huh? from the audience.
Bottom line: Since Aria was hyped to be one of the most influencial characters in the show, the writers had to give her a non-earned kill in a pitiful attempt to make her arc not fall flat on her face. Which it does, but anyway.
They built up this rivalry with John and the Night King, without any payoff. Hell, even Daenyris could've claimed the kill after seeing the Night King fly around with her undead dragon as his personal boy toy, but no ... they had to give the kill to Aria in order not to be completely useless in the story.
So I think this is less about female empowerment and more of a 'we fucked up, how do we salvage this' kind of thing.