Game of Thrones: Bran Stark Speaks

What is The Future For The Surviving Male Stark Heir?

♦Game of Thrones Season Six started on HBO in the US on 24 April and on Sky Atlantic on 25 April in the UK, and this week our friends over at the Hollywood Reporter chatted to Iasac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark) about returning to the show and what’s next for the characters. Warning: Major spoilers from episode 2 ahead

It’s a hard lesson to learn, but Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) is doing his best, training at the knee of the mystical Three-Eyed Raven (Max von Sydow). The eldest surviving Stark son (not counting Kit Harington’s recently resurrected Jon Snow) returned to Game of Thrones in the second hour of season six, “Home,” an apt title considering it’s Bran’s homecoming after 11 episodes spent offscreen.

In his return to Thrones, viewers learned firsthand that Bran’s skills now involve the ability to witness events from the past. He walks through the courtyard of Winterfell, watching his father Eddard and uncle Benjen sparring as young kids. Soon, another figure joins in: Bran’s aunt Lyanna, one of the most pivotal players in recent Westeros history. (Her kidnapping at the hands of Rhaegar Targaryen incited Robert’s Rebellion, and there may be more to the story.) Even a young version of Hodor appears in Bran’s Winterfell flashback, albeit under the name Wylis, speaking in full sentences — a reveal that begs the all-important question: “Hodor?”

Bran wishes to stay in this world of the past, but the Three-Eyed Raven pulls him back to reality, warning him not to drown in the sea of visions. The young warg replies: “I wasn’t drowning. I was home.”

In order to learn more about what to expect from Bran’s visions moving forward, The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Wright to discuss his highly anticipated return to Thrones.

Bran has been absent from the show since season four. What did you shoot on your first day back for season six?

We shot that scene you saw last night, the one in the courtyard. That was the first scene back for Bran, and my first scene back as well. It was a little daunting because I hadn’t been there for a whole year. I had done some animated projects, but only voiceover, so I hadn’t been on a film set for a whole year. Coming back onto the Game of Thrones set and seeing it become this massive phenomenon from afar, almost, was pretty scary to come back to. I felt like I almost had forgotten how to act. There were a couple of takes where I went, “Ugh, that was really, really bad.” [Laughs] I got it together by the end of the day, I think.

Your first scene back on the show mirrors one of the first scenes ever on Game of Thrones, with the Stark children training in the Winterfell courtyard. Here, Bran witnesses young versions of his father and siblings. Did it feel at all like a flashback to your own life?

Yeah, completely! Seeing that young Ned Stark training was really not dissimilar to a lot of the scenes Bran had in the pilot. There was one scene we shot in the pilot that didn’t make the final cut, of Bran and Tommen having this little practice fight in the courtyard. It really reminded me of all that. It was so sad to be back on the Winterfell set, thinking about everything it’s been through — not to mention the fact that Ramsay (Iwan Rheon) is now bloody wrecking it.

It’s a pretty stark contrast, no pun intended, when you see Bran and Winterfell the way it was versus Ramsay and Winterfell the way it is now.

Exactly. It’s quite a nice juxtaposition to remind us how fast and far things have come since the happy days of those first episodes. We’ve come a long way.

Bran has come a long way, too. He’s shown glimpses of visionary powers in the past, but as of season six, he’s reached a new level.

Bran’s been waiting for years to use this power. It’s been hinted at throughout all the seasons, but he hasn’t had much of a chance to dedicate himself to it. Every time he starts to do something interesting with it, he’s put in jeopardy again; he has to run away, save himself, or watch someone get killed. What’s nice about Bran this season is he’s in a safe space now. He’s in the cave with no one coming to get him, and he can just sit down with this master of tree magic and totally envelop himself in his magical powers. The nice thing also is that Bran’s not suddenly the master of these powers. He still has a lot of learning to do, and we’ll see as the season goes on that he still has a few very valuable lessons to learn. But it’s nice to see him doing some cool things with the power at last.

How much of a game-changer is Bran’s ability to view the past, not just for him as a character, but for the show’s narrative moving forward?

I think the present state of Westeros is really dictated by the past and the future. The future being we know things are going to kick off any second now with Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) or the White Walkers, or something’s going to come and shake things up. But we still have a whole past element to explore. The whole story of Jon Snow’s parentage, or whatever — so many things that can be game-changers in the way the story runs. I think with Bran, that’s where he can come into it.

Read the whole article here

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/game-thrones-season-6-spoilers-889343