That's a crazy take because that "pause" IS the whole point.
This is Arya Stark. The girl who watched her father die, who went blind, who spent 3 seasons learning how to become no one.
For her entire arc, she was told: kill your identity, kill your desires, become death.
And the night before the Long Night, the night everyone thinks they're going to DIE, she chooses to be HUMAN for once.
She doesn't want to die a virgin who never lived as Arya. She wants one night where she's not a Faceless Man, not a Stark revenge machine. Just a girl with a boy she grew up with.
Gendry is the only person left who knew her when she was just Arry, the butcher's boy's friend. Not Lady Stark. Not assassin.
It's not supposed to have plot tension. It's supposed to have HUMAN tension. The quiet before the apocalypse. That's why she stares like that.... she's trying to memorize what it feels like to be alive before she has to go kill Death himself.
If you cut this scene, you lose the reason her killing the Night King hits so hard. She had something to live for the next morning.
It's not filler. It's the last breath before the plunge.