Tony Black on what flights through the past might await Bran Stark in Game of Thrones season 6…
Brandon Stark may never walk again, but he has already begun to fly. Spoilers abound for season six episode two, ‘Home’, of Game of Thrones, in which after a season of rest and relaxation in the Three-Eyed Raven’s cold cave, the long-believed-dead Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) has aged up visibly a couple of years from the plucky crippled boy we’ve followed ever since dastardly Jaime Lannister pushed him out of a tower window in the very first episode. We last saw him in Season Four finale ‘The Children’, after a long, hard-fought battle with long serving guardian Hodor (Kristian Nairn) and allied Meera Reed (Ellie Kendrick) of the Greywater Crannoghmen, surviving the White Walkers to reach the ‘three-eyed raven’ who had guided his visions over the years, looking for meaning and destiny in the fight to help or restore his family. There he met an old man, withered and encased inside an ancient weirwood tree with the mystical Children of the Forest, far beyond the Wall, and was given a promise – one that seems to be bearing fruit given Bran, as of ‘Home’, has the ability to see through time, through Westerosi history. But how? And what might this mean for the series as a whole?
To answer that, or begin to, we need to look a little closer at young Brandon Stark. He’s never been your average child. Born the long deceased Lord Ned and Lady Catelyn Stark of Winterfell, their fourth child, he dreamed as a boy to become a member of King Robert Baratheon’s Kingsguard as a man, a very active and hopeful child. Thing is, Bran happens to possess several magical abilities which cut to the very heart of George R.R Martin’s Game of Thrones lore, and could well allow show runners David Benioff & D.B Weiss a crucial waypoint into exploring truths, legends and off-limits events that will provide key context and understanding of the series’, and indeed books, mythology. Bran for a start is capable of ‘green sight’, also known as ‘The Sight’, allowing him to receive prophetic visions in the form of dreams; over the years, Bran has repeatedly seen the black crow, the ‘three eyed raven’, granting him flash visions which have not only guided Bran far north enough to find his ancient weirwood tree but also the death of Ned, which of course comes at the hand of incumbent King Joffrey Baratheon at the end of Season One, and most enticingly a ruined, snow-filled Iron Throne in Kings Landing, not to mention the shadow of a huge dragon in flight over the city. These could be a mixture of events in the distant past and the coming future, but all that’s clear is Bran has this gift.
He also possesses the important ability to ‘warg’, a term used for those who can transmit their consciousness into the mind of an animal (and sometimes human), to see through their eyes and control their bodies as if their own. Bran is aware he has this ability (unlike his brother Jon Snow, who it’s heavily suggested has more than once unconsciously ‘warged’ into his direwolf Ghost), but as yet he hasn’t trained with complete skill to harness this ability, though he has become adept at entering not only the mind of his direwolf Summer but also the mentally-handicapped Hodor. Importantly, when Bran ‘warged’ with one of the several weirwood trees possessing magical power across Westeros, he was granted the visions mentioned earlier. All signs point to the fact Bran has, since birth, had a great deal of magical potential and the Three Eyed-Raven has intentionally guided Bran through great treachery to become his, essentially, padawan learner. In ‘Home’, we see Bran witness events in Winterfell, roughly around 30-40 years past; he sees a young Ned, roughly his own age, playfully fighting his brother Benjen Stark (who memorably was one of the original catalysts of the Stark’s troubles, given his disappearance beyond the Wall, and has often been widely speculated to one day reappear), and for the first time we see his aunt Lyanna Stark, Ned’s beloved sister. More on her later, because she could be crucial to what Bran is about to uncover. We see the currency of these visions, if just a little, as Hodor gets a name – Wylis, a portly young boy under the care of a younger ‘Old Nan’, and one at this stage very capable of saying more than just ‘Hodor’. How did he become the damaged man he is? Perhaps Bran will find out.
Let’s take time out for a moment though to look at the Three-Eyed Raven, now played by the legendary Max von Sydow (in a wonderful piece of casting), because we’ve not seen much of his deal yet and he too could end up being of great import. Fused inside the biggest weirwood we’ve ever seen, he seems to have powerful magical abilities, including appearing as a crow inside Bran’s own mind as almost a ‘spirit guide’. He appears to be extremely old and is a pale, skeletal figure presumably only kept alive by the magic in the tree, and the care of the mystical Children who live with him. A big implication, given his rotted black clothing, is that he was once a man of the Night’s Watch and though the TV show hasn’t (yet) made this explicit, Martin’s books suggest he is likely one Brynden Rivers, aka Bloodraven, a key figure in the Blackfyre Rebellion a century or more before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire, and a bastard son of King Aegon IV Targaryen (also the brother of lovely old Maester Aemon, no less). The lore Martin creates here is well worth exploring in greater detail but the crux is that Bloodraven (a name that surely can’t be coincidence) ended up ultimately a very successful Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch before he went ranging beyond the Wall and never returned. If they are one and the same, what happened to him? Did he learn of the terrible threat of the White Walkers to the realm of men? Did the Children perhaps save him from a terrible fate, alerting him to his own magical abilities? Did he see coming the second Long Night, the battle against the undead, and give up his life to finding the right person to save everyone from it? We undoubtedly will never know any of this for sure. All we do know is that he believes Bran, and Bran’s power, is of vital importance and he has watched the Stark’s their entire lives. But why?
In my previous article concerning Melisandre and her own destiny, I discussed the long-held probability that the seemingly deceased Jon Snow is the prophesied Azor Ahai reborn, “The Prince That Was Promised”, and the end of ‘Home’ suggests there may well be something to this prophecy after all. A key factor in that said prophecy concerns Jon’s lineage, arguably the biggest mystery in Game of Thrones and one Martin has spent two decades suggesting isn’t quite as clear cut as Ned Stark had us all believe. Bran seeing Lyanna Stark suggests, as do a few brief moments witnessed in the Season Six trailers, that through him we may see the truth of Jon’s parentage resolved over the coming weeks. The theory being that Lyanna was infact the real mother of Jon Snow, making him a legitimised Stark and heir to Winterfell and the North, and his father was secretly Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. The major political events that preceded Game of Thrones were the long fallout from ‘Robert’s Rebellion’, the major uprising by Robert Baratheon against the ‘Mad King’ Aerys Targaryen which crushed their dynasty after centuries of rule. Rhaegar was Aerys’s son, heir to the throne, and was infamously killed in battle by Robert. The rebellion, crucially, was primarily triggered by Lyanna’s kidnapping by Rhaegar, who was madly in love with her (as was Robert, who she was set to marry). She was stowed away in the Tower of Joy, within the Red Mountains of Dorne, where Ned led a rescue party to save her. What happened there has always been unclear but when Ned returned to Winterfell, Lyanna was dead & he had fathered the illegitimate Jon seemingly by a woman named Wylla, who Jon never met. Convenient, eh?
The trailers suggest strongly we will be seeing the Tower of Joy rescue. If this is the case, it can only be through Bran’s visions. Bran couldn’t understand why the Raven would show him his father, uncle and aunt happy as children in Winterfell only to snatch it away, but was he doing this to remind Bran of how much Ned loved Lyanna? Will the next vision see Bran observing the rescue and the events that really took place? Namely Lyanna’s death, in childbirth, bearing Jon Snow after being raped by Rhaegar, and forcing Ned to promise (as we saw Ned dream of, without any details) that he would raise Jon as his own, afraid Robert Baratheon may kill him if he knew he was a Targaryen, just as he tried to kill Daenerys & Viserys Targaryen before Lord Varys smuggled them across the Narrow Sea. If this is true, why would the Three-Eyed Raven need Bran to understand this? Why is it important to know that Jon is secretly of Targaryen blood? That goes back to the prophecy, which states “The Prince That Was Promised” would be of Targaryen blood. If Bran has the knowledge to inform the newly-revived Jon that he is technically not only heir to the North but also the Seven Kingdoms, can he convince him that he is also the man destined to defend the realm of men from the Long Night to come? Given Jon already knows of the White Walkers and their threat, he wouldn’t necessarily take much convincing. Bran understanding Jon Snow’s birth may be the key to unlocking his future, his destiny, and the future of all Westeros.
Quite what else Bran may yet see is unknown, but it’s very exciting as a viewer. Game of Thrones, through this character, now potentially has the chance to explore some of the most fascinating pieces of lore in Martin’s expansive, amazing mythology he created for the show, with millennia of history on offer – not to mention the fact Bran could maybe even flash-forward, witness the future, and give us a tantalising look at what’s to come as we enter the final furlong. After years of being a slightly tedious character with no clear path, Bran has all at once become the gatekeeper of Game of Thrones‘ secrets, and maybe it’s most exciting character this season.
Tony Black is a freelance film/TV writer & podcaster & would love you to follow him on Twitter.
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