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In S08E05 of Game of Thrones Sandor Clegane convinces Arya to leave the Red Keep and go home. There is a scene towards the end of the episode, right after Arya escapes the falling bell tower and ends up helping the woman and her child to escape, when Daenerys comes from the background towards them (woman, child, and Arya).

The dragon breathes fire on them, burning everyone - but later we see Arya stand from the ashes, un-burnt, even though she was clearly covered in fire. She proceeds to the white horse, which she rides out of King's Landing.

Why was she not burnt?

Does this have something to do with her killing the Night King?

For evidence that she was hit by the fire: Just look at this. She has clearly been covered in flames.

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    I guess she had a high quality kit of plot armour with her... We'll see in S8E6
    – marstato
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 10:37
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    I think Arya is "round a corner" so out of the full blast of the flames so only gets licked by them. Don't have time to check though.
    – TheLethalCarrot
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 10:39
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    @TheLethalCarrot in other scenes, corners didn't protect though :S
    – JAD
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 10:44
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    @TheLethalCarrot thats what I thought too, but after watching it again I noticed the wall behind her was burnt to a higher level which means she was completely covered..watch it again
    – Edgar
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 10:46
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    @KharoBangdo We have zero reason to believe the Lord of Light actually exists or helped Arya in any way, so no, that's definitely not canon.
    – user91988
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 16:37

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We see Arya stand from the ashes un-burnt even though she was clearly covered in fire... why was she not burnt, does this have something to do with her killing the Night king?

It was simply the camera angle that made her appear to be on fire.

By the time Drogon's flames reached the wall Arya was behind, she was already a couple feet past the corner and nearly lying on the ground. The licks of the flame that appear to be on Arya are really a few feet in front of her; it's simply the camera angle that made it seem like they were on her.

Consider the following series of images:

Sequence of images

but just look at [this]..she was clearly covered in flames

If we zoom in on the wall Arya was behind, although the wall is blackened higher up, it's clearly untarnished by the flames towards the bottom (where Arya was lying down).

Wall behind Arya

Having the flames appear to be on Arya was probably even done on purpose in order to add suspense. Since the scene immediately cuts away from Arya right after this happens, for several minutes everyone is left wondering if she got burnt and/or possibly even died.

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    She was also fortunate to be hiding behind a wall that wasn't constructed of Explodium
    – Mohirl
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 15:40
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    @Mohirl Yeah, it was probably made of the same material of the rock Jon hid behind of in episode 3
    – Sebastianb
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 18:31
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    Reminds me of tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConvectionSchmonvection
    – Cubic
    Commented May 17, 2019 at 11:11
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    ⎨Indeed, what an admirable degree of attention to detail. Nothing less than we have come to expect in this season of GoT.⎬
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented May 17, 2019 at 14:57
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    @BruceWayne I tried adding “sarcastises” but I had to make do with what Unicode offers me. Depending on the fonts you have installed they may look wonky. Put more directly, this answer is obviously nonsense: There’s no such detail. Arya survived despite being engulfed by dragon fire because the directors want her to survive, end of story.
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented May 17, 2019 at 22:29
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we see Arya stand from the ashes un-burnt even though she was clearly covered in fire

You don't see Arya clearly covered in fire. You see Arya obscured by fire, i.e. there is fire between Arya and the camera.

Arya ducked behind a wall (IIRC of an alley). Flames tend to flow (I can't speak to real life but this is how they are shown in GOT), and thus don't quite cut a corner that sharply.

Here's a quick (and dirty) diagram of what I mean:

enter image description here

The angle of the alley acts as cover. The flames that still enter the alley get pushed to the other side of the alley, away from Arya.

The camera does get engulfed in flames. Bad depth perception and reflex leads the viewer to believe that Arya is engulfed in flame, but in reality she is only obscured.

We can argue that people can get burns from being close to a source of heat without touching it (and a dragon's flame would certainly be hot enough), but that's not how it's usually portrayed on TV and in movies. Media tends to stick to the "you burn yourself by touching it" idea, which is not really realistic, but fairly commonly used and accepted as a trope.

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    ""you burn yourself by touching it" idea, which is not really realistic, but fairly commonly used and accepted as a trope" - tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConvectionSchmonvection
    – Wolfgang
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 18:27
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    The dragon fire here in particular also seems to come with enormous amounts of force and not just the heat from flames. Walls don't normally get knocked down by fire nearly instantly, especially note stone walls.
    – TimothyAWiseman
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 20:56
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    Some of the "exploding" or knocked over walls can be explained by trapped moisture being instantly converted to steam by the extreme heat. But that makes it even less believable that a person could be protected by a wall since that much heat would also also explosively boil the "trapped moisture" in the person's body.
    – krb
    Commented May 16, 2019 at 12:55
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    @krb: Cfr the diagram, Drogon doesn't really hit the wall Arya is hiding behind. He's torching the road, not the walls. Arya's wall is mostly protect by the east side wall of its building and the fact that the flames in the alley get pushed south due to momentum. Most damage done to this wall would then be indirect or environmental. And "you don't burn unless you touch it" applies (Convection Shmonvection, as Wolfgang pointed out and linked).
    – Flater
    Commented May 16, 2019 at 12:58
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    Could you re-do the diagram in classic MS Paint with wigglier lines please?
    – Paul D. Waite
    Commented May 17, 2019 at 9:41

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