Bros, let me first get the obligatory ‘SPOILERS AHEAD‘ warning out of the way, but if you clicked this post to read the end-all-be-all of Game of Thrones theories then I would hope that you were expecting some spoilers. You at least need to be caught up through most of this season because this particular Bran Stark Game of Thrones theory focuses in on him, and not the other crazy Starks happenings from this past Sunday’s episode….So let’s get started, shall we?
I’ll just add this Bran Stark picture here as a buffer for those who want to avoid spoilers, meet me on the other side for the MOTHER OF ALL Game of Thrones theories.
Alright, theory time.
So this started gaining traction about two weeks back, just after the now infamous ‘Hold The Door’ scene during which we saw Bran Stark essentially travel through time and warg into Hodor back when he was a child, causing adult Hodor to only be able to speak the words ‘Hodor’ which was an amalgam of ‘Hold the door’. From there one person threw out the idea that Bran, who can warg his greenseer way through time and space, is actually the voices in the Mad King Aery’s head, and thus is also the source of the Mad King’s insanity.
After that this theory takes a dive into the deep end, and unlike most theories that leave you skeptical this one actually seems very, very plausible, and it has ALL OF THE IMPLICATIONS for the future of this series as it could mean that Bran Stark is the master key to everything.
Once we know that Bran can travel back in time and influence the future, it opens a whole world of possibility. Take this theory, from an anonymous message board user:
You know it’s true. Bran will go back in time to build the Wall, and when people will ask the guy’s name, he’ll just say “Bran.” Thus, Bran the Builder, who will be the inspiration for his name when he’s born in the present time. He’ll be the one who’ll establish, in the past, that there must always be Starks at Winterfell, because he must ensure that he comes to exist in the present.
For those not up on your ancient Westerosi history, Bran the Builder) lived 8,000 years before the present moment, one of the invading First Men and the founder of House Stark. He built Winterfell, and the Wall and possibly Storm’s end.
So this theory implies that Bran the Builder, Bran the Breaker, Bran the Muffin, and Bran Stark are ALL THE SAME PERSON. Once we accept that it’s almost as if George RR Martin’s been trying to tell us this the entire time. Here’s a passage from the first novel:
“I could tell you the story about Brandon the Builder,” Old Nan said. “That was always your favorite.”
Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and some said the Wall. Bran knew the story, but it had never been his favorite. Maybe one of the other Brandons had liked that story. Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if he were her Brandon, the baby she had nursed all those years ago, and sometimes she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by the Mad King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long, Mother had told him once, that all the Brandon Starks had become one person in her head.
And another, this one comes from Clash of Kings:
To me this is one of the biggest revelations in Game of Thrones history. If we are to believe that the show is willing to go down the ‘time travel’ path, which they’ve essentially already done, then we need to go back to the books and pour over every mention of someone named ‘Bran’ since Day 1.
He’s the beginning, the middle, and the end. If this theory holds true then Bran Stark is everything, it also means we should either be extremely terrified for his future in The North with the Night King closing in on him, or we should be extremely excited for Bran’s own revelation that it has been him all along, that he is the Bran of yesterday, Bran from Old Nan’s stories, because it will be that moment that Bran Stark realizes he holds ALL of the power.
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Anyways, if you want to read up more on this you can click over to PasteMagazine.com and/or Reddit.