Isaac Hempstead Wright plays Bran Stark in Game Of Thrones. Photo: HBO/Jonathan Ford
The Door is one of the most exciting and, at the same time, heart-wrenching episodes of all time on Game Of Thrones. It was in this fifth episode of the sixth season of HBO’s fantasy television series that we learned the backstory of Hodor’s “hodor”. Sob.
We also found out that Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) could warg (enter the mind of another) into someone in the past and change things.
Soon after the episode, new fan theories started popping up on the Internet. One of which is that Bran Stark may very well be the architect behind The Wall, which was created to keep those pesky White Walkers out. After all, that guy – who also founded House Stark – was called Bran The Builder! Coincidence?
In an interview with 18-year-old Wright in London recently, we asked him about the theory of Bran Stark and Bran The Builder being one and the same.
“I’m not entirely convinced by that theory,” said Wright. “The theory I subscribe to is that Bran in the future has kind of been on this sort of deterministic ‘no free will’ paradox, that older Bran – as the Three-Eyed Raven – was coming into younger Bran’s dreams, to guide him to become the Three-Eyed Raven, so he can go back, and so on, and so forth.
“It’s like that scene when Bran is about to shoot the raven and Jojen appears and said he can’t shoot the raven because the raven is you.
“So Bran has to follow this path, this destiny, in order for the world to be as it has to be. And I think the Bran The Builder theory requires too much of playing fast and loose with time. It will get a bit too confusing, it already doesn’t make sense (laughs) like the Hordor paradox. I still can’t get my head around that to figure out how that works. Bran The Builder will break time and space.”
Hmmm… Wright seems to be protesting a little too much eh? Time (no pun intended) will tell.
But speaking of Hodor, just how many times has Wright heard the “hold the door” joke since that episode?
“I don’t get it as bad as Kristian (Nairn, who played Hodor),” he shared with a laugh. “He’s really fed up with it by now.”
Game Of Thrones S7 premieres July 17 at 9am on HBO (Astro Ch 411/431).
