#bran**

[him-e]

The moment they mentioned Bran the broken I knew 100% this was George’s ending.He is referred as that in the books but never in the show. Not that D&D would have ever gone for that ending by themselves so I kinda already knew before.At least good or bad they stuck to his vision.Maybe they shouldn’t have who knows.Maybe game of thrones is too big for this kinda of ending but they didn’t take the easy way out.I also love that it has an open enough ending and that not everything is definitive.

Y-yeah, a lot of people were outraged at “Bran the Broken”, because of the ableist implications, but I was just like,,,,,guys,,,,,it’s a book nod? it’s how Bran thinks of himself, although bitterly (“Is that what he was now? Bran the Broken?”, “He might be the lord in Winterfell while his brother and father were gone, but he was still Bran the Broken”, “Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought”, “Bran, he said sullenly. Bran the Broken. Brandon Stark. The cripple boy. The Prince of Winterfell.” “What was he now? Only Bran the broken boy, Brandon of House Stark, prince of a lost kingdom, lord of a burned castle, heir to ruins”, etc.), AND it has a nice ring to it, because it is reminiscent of Bran the Builder, the founder of House Stark, the first king in the North, who built Winterfell and the Wall.

(really, the way the word “broken” is so strongly associated with Bran in the text and the fact that he often thinks of himself as “Bran the Broken” in a self-deprecating way have “FORESHADOWING” written all over it, and long before this finale a lot of people thought it had good chances to become an actual title for Bran)

And yes, I don’t think d&d would go for such an ending, and especially for a King Bran ending (when was the last time they cared for Bran?), on their own accord and IN SPITE of what GRRM told them. The easy way out was give the audience a final season entirely focused on the abundantly advertised war against the White Walkers, with maybe some edgy betrayal and shocking plot twist and horrid main character death here and there. What they did, for better or worse, was NOT the easy way out. So I think there’s Martin behind this.

[him-e]

Hi! Hope you are doing well. How do you think, will Bran become unemotional in the books too or is that a show-only thing? Do you have any predictions for his story in the books and/or the show?

The problem with the show is that it generally handles character development with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, either exaggerating it for extra shock value, or oversimplifying and stripping it of its complexity and nuances. 

In particular, it tends to use “ruthless and emotionless” as the default to signify “this character who used to be sheltered and naive has gone through a lot of shit and has now toughened up and accepted his/her heroic responsibilities”. This is evident with Arya and Sansa, but also with other characters like Dany, who started the series as “too” innocent and naive or in a position of “feminine” powerlessness and “softness”, which needed to be ‘’’’’’beaten out of them’’’’’. On the other hand you have characters like show!Jon who seem to embody a more masculine and therefore inherently admirable paradigm of compassion and kindness, who no matter how many times they fall are never forced to lose their integrity or reevaluate their moral compass (despite having gone through equally psychologically devastating shit—in Jon’s case, he was literally murdered and then brought back to life, none of which seems to have left visible or permanent consequences on his personality).

Back to Bran, I think he belongs to the first tier. The problem with his depiction is not the “what”, but the “how”. I’m fairly certain Bran’s training montage with Bloodraven AND his enormous powers will have consequences on his personality in the books too. For one thing, GRRM isn’t the type of writer who glosses over the cons of having too much power, and also, he has already abundantly set up those consequences with Bran breaking the unwritten laws of warging. First and foremost, his warging Hodor—as per Haggon’s rules in Varamyr’s pov, warging another human is a big no no. It’s unclear what happens if you do, but one must assume nothing good for your soul. Bran is also spending more and more time inside Summer, to the point that he’s starting to lose sense of where he ends and Summer begins. This is another thing that can easily escalate into losing one’s humanity (whatever you mean by that: your compassion? Your identity? Your rational reasoning? Your ability to love? Your boundaries? Your limits? All of the above? etc.). And finally, he has feasted on human meat, both in his wolf and human form (ADWD: No flesh had ever tasted half as good, he thinks while warging Summer and "devouring the choices bits” of a few corpses of men of the Night’s Watch that Coldhands killed and left behind. Then he suddenly comes back in his human body to discover that Meera and the others are having some *pig meat* for dinner that Coldhands supposedly found somewhere. The entire passage is pretty disturbing, and implies that Bran (and Jojen) realize that it’s no pig meat Coldhands brought to them, but a human body, one of those that Bran-as-Summer had fed on minutes earlier). 

And he hasn’t started delving into the full brunt of his greensight powers YET. Once he does, I’m fairly certain he will come back as… different—certainly different compared to how his siblings remember him. I don’t think the show is wrong in that respect. But I also have no doubt the book depiction of his *otherness* will be infinitely more nuanced than him acting like a blank-stared robot with an obsolete social skills database. Since the show is also known for merging storylines, I wonder if some of Jon’s post-resurrection characterization was conflated with Bran’s, too. As I mentioned earlier, show!Jon’s compassion and kindness is treated as untouchable and never challenged by the narrative because he is one of those characters who are mouthpieces for the show’s moral thesis, so he *can’t* “lose himself” the way other characters do. So it’s possible that some of his “undead” narrative arc was transferred onto other characters, like Bran (and Arya, and maybe even Sansa).

[sansalayned]

Sorry I'm totally lost here, but what happened to bran? He just disappeared?? Or maybe I just don't remember..

Hi! :)

Technically, he’s on the Children of the Forest cave he and Meera and Hodor arrived at in the season 4 finale. In the books, he’s training to better his abilities as a greenseer with Bloodraven. We are left to think he’s doing that in the show as well, but off screen.

He won’t appear this season because D&D considered this plotline boring (unlike the alternatives they have offered). Presumably, he’ll come back in season 6, completely trained.