“Not everyone will be happy.”
As always, if you haven’t seen the most recent episode of Game of Thrones, consider this to be your spoiler alert warning.
All hail Bran the Broken, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Six Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
Right now, we’re certain that Bran Stark is pretty happy with himself but surely Tyrion could have picked a better name. I mean, Bran the Broken just sounds like he’s bullying the poor kid!
Anyway, after Daenerys came within touching distance of the throne, Jon Snow’s intervention meant that the wheel has finally been broken. From now on, every ruler of the Seven Kingdoms will be chosen by the senior Lords and Ladies of Westeros.
Surname, birth right, and lineage now mean squat.
However, while a character like Jon, Daenerys, or even Tyrion seemed like a more natural fit for the throne, it’s the Three-Eyed Raven that has won the game of thrones.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Isaac Hempstead-Wright has said that “not everyone will be happy” with the show’s ending.
“It’s so difficult to finish a series as popular as this without pissing some people off. I don’t think anybody will think it’s predictable and that’s as much as you can hope for. People are going to be angry. There’s going to be a lot of broken hearts. It’s ‘bittersweet,’ exactly as George R.R. Martin intended. It’s a fitting conclusion to this epic saga.”
However, after Bran is offered the throne, he says “Why do you think I came all this way?”.
We’ve already discussed what this could mean in terms of the character and potential foresight into the events that unfolded, but in an interview with The Wrap, Hempstead-Wright talked about Bran’s lack of involvement with the plot.
Basically, aside from his role in the Battle of Winterfell, a lot of people felt that Bran was peripheral to the events that unfolded in Season 8.
“It’s interesting how everyone is getting so worked up about the fact that Bran doesn’t do anything. I mean, he’s disabled, what’s he gonna do? Is he gonna jump up and run around, get a sword and suddenly do acrobatics? And his powers as the Three-Eyed Raven basically don’t really allow him to interfere with things that much. I think that’s the very point of a Three-Eyed Raven.
“The reason there is a Three-Eyed Raven who is so weird and so calm is because their job is to observe, it’s not to start interfering with things, and that’s made pretty clear by the previous Three-Eyed Raven who goes, ‘You can’t mess with the past.’ ‘Cause you see what happens when you do, there’s the whole Hodor scene.
“So the Three-Eyed Raven is not a superhero, he’s not there to use some magical super power to come in and save the day. He just sits there, observes and takes things on. So naturally he’s not trying to do anything, he’s not trying to warg into a dragon or do whatever. He just lets things happen because he understands that’s the way it goes,” said Hempstead-Wright.
At first, the actor genuinely thought that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had sent him a joke script but the showrunners weren’t lying. Westeros has a new ruler. Here’s hoping he lives longer than the countless people that laid claim to the throne.
👑🤷♂️
— Isaac.H.Wright (@Isaac_H_Wright) May 20, 2019
