Tony Black counts down to Game of Thrones season 7…
“You will never walk again… but you will fly…”
These words capped off a four season journey for Brandon Stark, the youngest son of Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, in which he went from crippled young boy to a powerful, magical seer in the making. Game of Thrones has always been a show about the return and resurgence of magic and supernatural power but none of the show’s main players have encountered this more potently than Bran.
When we first saw him, Bran was a happy young boy, a potential future Lord of Winterfell, running around the castle into everything, much to the amusement of his brothers Jon & Robb, and their ward Theon. Bran’s adventures across Winterfell lead to a life-changing moment when he witnesses a visiting Queen Cersei and her brother Jaime Lannister having a tryst in one of the castle towers. Jaime, to cover up their incestuous secret, pushes Bran out of the window, intending him dead.
Bran nonetheless survives and soon discovers he is crippled from the waist down, unable to accompany father Ned when he heads off to King’s Landing, or later Robb when he leaves Winterfell to fight the War of the Five Kings. Bran is left with kindly Maester Luwin and what looks like a depressing future, one where a shadowy assassin tries to kill him while unconscious, only for him to be protected by his direwolf, Summer.
Bran nevertheless is treated with kindness by a visiting Tyrion Lannister, who gives him a specially made saddle he can use to ride horses. While on a ride, his party including Theon are attacked by Wildlings attempting to flee South. One of them, Osha, is captured and pledges her loyalty to the Stark’s. She soon becomes friendly with Bran, who confides in her about strange dreams he’s experiencing involving a three-eyed raven, and omens of danger surrounding Winterfell.
Danger soon arrives in the form of a traitorous Theon, leading a force of Ironborn warriors from his house, who intends to use Ned’s execution in King’s Landing and Robb’s absence to seize Winterfell for the Ironborn, proving himself in the eyes of his father, King Balon Greyjoy. Theon shows cruelty to the residents of Winterfell, killing Maester Luwin much to Bran’s devastation, and forcing Bran to escape with the help of Osha, Bran’s younger brother Rickon Stark, their direwolves and Hodor, a gigantic middle aged man with learning difficulties, who only ever says the word “hodor”, much to everyone’s confusion.
As Theon murders and flays two innocent farmboys which he passes off as Bran & Rickon, at the urging of Luwin before he does, Bran and his crew make further north for Castle Black, to try and seek help from Bran’s brother Jon, now in the Night’s Watch. On the journey, they meet Jojen & Meera Reed–children of the crannoghman Howland Reed, an old friend of Ned Stark–and Jojen possesses the same ability to see into the past and future as he claims Bran does, telling him he is a ‘warg’ with the ability to possess the mind of animals.
Jojen has also seen the three eyed raven in his dreams and though Osha doesn’t trust them, Bran is convinced they need to find the source of these visions beyond the Wall. Hiding in an old windmill in the Gift, a stretch of land near the Wall gifted to the Night’s Watch long ago by the Starks, Bran sees Jon coming into violent contact with the Wildlings. Warging into dire wolves Summer and Shaggydog, Bran manages to help Jon survive the attack and subsequently, knowing Osha won’t go back beyond the Wall, makes her take Rickon & Shaggydog to safety with House Umber, knowing their loyalty to the Starks will mean he’s safe. After an emotional goodbye, both brothers go their separate ways.
They stay in the haunted Nightfort, an abandoned Night’s Watch castle, where they come into contact with Samwell Tarly and his Wildling paramour Gilly, both heading for Castle Black from escaping beyond the Wall. Sam, realising who Bran is, offers to take him to Castle Black but Bran needs to continue on beyond the Wall. Sam shows them a secret passage to travel through and gives them obsidian blades he earlier used to kill a White Walker.
Bran & the group pass through beyond the Wall and finally, reaching a heart’s tree which connects to the magical seer power he’s tapping into, gets a sign of where he needs to go to find the raven, not to mention a series of visions which show portents of the future – including the shadow of a dragon flying over King’s Landing and a burned out Iron Throne, the chamber covered in falling snow. Soon finding rest near Craster’s Keep, they become embroiled in new danger.
While warging through Summer, Bran sees Jon’s dire wolf, Ghost, has been captured and before Summer can help him, his discovery leads all of Bran’s group being captured by Karl Tanner, a renegade Night’s Watchman who killed Lord Commander Jeor Mormont and took the Keep for himself, with a group of other savage renegades. Hodor is tortured, Meera almost raped and Bran is about to give up his identity when Jon arrives with a Night’s Watch force to take back the Keep.
Bran is saved by Locke, one of Jon’s men, who is secretly working for Roose Bolton who has by now seized Winterfell and is looking to destroy the Stark heirs. Bran manages to warg into Hodor and through him, Locke is killed, with Jon never realising his betrayal. He never reunites with Bran either, Jojen warning him they’ll never find the raven if they go with Jon back to Castle Black. Bran reluctantly presses on with Jojen, Meera, Hodor and Summer further north. At last, they see the magical tree the raven has been guiding them toward for a long time, but danger again lies in wait.
As they approach their destination, Bran and the party are suddenly attacked by wights, the reanimated dead by the White Walkers. They manage to kill Jojen before Bran and the others are rescued, to their amazement, by the Children of the Forest – long believed extinct as the most ancient and mystical inhabitants of Westeros, some even believing they were the first race ever to exist. The Children use powerful magic to destroy the wights, who cannot pass into the caves beneath the tree, and Jojen fully sacrifices himself to get Bran to where he needs to be.
Inside the cave, Bran finally meets the Three-Eyed Raven who has spent so long guiding him, a wizened old man inside the roots of an ancient tree, who imparts those mysterious words to Bran. We don’t see any sign of the young Lord across the fifth season but then at the beginning of the sixth, we realise Bran has already spent a significant time being ‘trained’ by the Three-Eyed Raven in just the power he is capable of.
Bran, with the Three-Eyed Raven, begins to learn crucial information about the true history of Westeros and his family. He sees a young Ned Stark in Winterfell, with his long dead aunt Lyanna, and a young Hodor who’s name is Wylis. Bran witnesses a battle at the Tower of Joy in Dorne, a battle he had heard about many times growing up from Ned, in which he fought and killed Ser Arthur Dayne aka the Sword of the Morning, the best sword fighter in the Seven Kingdoms who was one of Rhaegar Targaryen’s men.
The truth is a little different – Ned’s party, at the Tower to bring a captured Lyanna home (her abduction by Rhaegar having triggered Robert Baratheon’s rebellion which led to the fall of the Targaryen’s), are killed by Dayne & just as Ned is about to be, Howland Reed stabs Dayne in the back before Ned finishes him off. Bran calls to his father & Ned almost seems to hear him across time before the Three-Eyed Raven stops Bran discovering what Ned does next as he runs into the Tower. It’s when Bran pushes his powers too far that he falls foul of the real enemy in the North.
Bran is taken back to antiquity, to the age when the Children of the Forest battled the First Men, and sees how the White Walkers were created; when a First Man was stabbed with dragon glass and turned into a White Walker. Later, warging without the Three Eyed Raven, Bran sees a vast army of wights & the four White Walkers on horses before the same First Man turned by the Children, the Night’s King, sees Bran and touches his arm, leaving a mark. The Three Eyed Raven realises a connection has been made & the White Walkers can now enter the cave & will be coming for them.
While Bran and the Three Eyed Raven are at Winterfell in the past when Ned is young again, the White Walkers attack the cave. Meera makes Bran warg into a terrified Hodor to help them escape but he wargs into the young Hodor, Wylis, and creates a tragic paradox loop in time; as the Night’s King kills the Three Eyed Raven & Summer is butchered by wights, as Leaf the last of the Children sacrifices herself, Meera & Hodor get Bran out of a door which Hodor holds secure as they escape. In Winterfell, young Wylis shouts “hold the door!” as Hodor does just that, his mind slowly becoming a command in the form of ‘hodor’ predicting his own eventual death. Hodor is torn apart by wights as Bran & Meera escape into the icy night.
Alone deep beyond the Wall, with wights on their tail, it looks like Bran & Meera are done for. Bran is now locked in a warg, downloading events past and future – images he saw before plus Jaime Lannister murdering King Aerys Targaryen & stores of wildfire under King’s Landing. He finally snaps out of it when they are rescued by a mysterious cloaked man in black who eventually reveals himself as Uncle Benjen Stark, who disappeared ranging beyond the Wall years before. Killed by the White Walkers, he was resurrected by the Children of the Forest as a ‘living wight’, unable to pass beyond the Wall due to powerful magic sown into the ice.
Benjen takes Bran & Meera as far to the Wall as he can & Bran communes with a sacred heart tree, knowing he must continue to download the knowledge meant for him as he becomes the new three-eyed raven. The visions take him back to Dorne, to inside the Tower of Joy, where he witnessed Ned reaching a dying, captured Lyanna as she gives birth to Rhaegar Targaryen’s illegitimate child, she making Ned promise to keep this boy safe and secret before she dies. Bran seems to understand what we do – his supposed bastard brother Jon Snow may be half-Targaryen & heir to the Iron Throne.
What will he do with this information? Will he return to Winterfell, newly liberated by Jon, now King in the North, and make his brother (or rather his cousin) aware of his true lineage? If he does, will his connection to the Night’s King make Bran the key to them being able to cross the Wall and invade the realms of men? Bran could be among the most crucial players as the game reaches its conclusion.
Game of Thrones Season 7 begins Sunday 16th July.
Tony Black
