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Is Bran Stark Still "Alive" on Game of Thrones? The Answer Is Complicated

24/04/2019 - 05:42 PM

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With all the twisty plots and magic on Game of Thrones [1], the one thing that's usually pretty straightforward is death (and there's a lot of it). Either you're still alive and fighting, or you're dead, or you've been turned into a White Walker. There's one character, though, who seems to not quite fall into any of these categories. Bran Stark is clearly still alive, but he's transformed into a being called the Three-Eyed Raven [2], who seems to have swallowed up the Stark boy as he was. So is Bran alive, dead, or something more complicated?

Technically speaking, Bran is still alive, even though his personality seems to have mostly been transformed into that of the eerie, all-knowing Three-Eyed Raven. In season seven, when other characters try to call him "Lord Stark" or some other variation on his old name, he replies, "I'm not, really. Not anymore. I remember what it felt like to be Brandon Stark [3], but I remember so much else now." With all the knowledge of the universe in his mind, it's no wonder that he doesn't have room to just be Bran anymore!

Actor Isaac Hempstead Wright indicated that this is the case [4] in an interview with HBO's "Making Game of Thrones."

"It's just this whole idea that Bran has become a much smaller part of the character's brain, when before 100 percent of his head was taken up with being Bran Stark. Now, that's just one tiny file in a huge system. But certainly, he's almost completely a different character. He acts utterly differently, and really any semblance of personality he used to have has gone . . . There is a flicker of Bran left in him, but really, can you imagine putting the entire history of the universe, every single moment, every single second that ever existed in one person's brain? You'd think it would just short circuit. Bran just becomes this calm, zen character. He's really like a human supercomputer."

While Bran may have been mostly transformed into a completely different character, one thing the Three-Eyed Raven has in common with Bran Stark is that he's still crucial to the story in any form [5]. It was Bran who set the whole story in motion when he accidentally discovered Jaime and Cersei's secret, and it's the Three-Eyed Raven [6] who's sure to be at the centre of the Night King's attack [7] on Winterfell.


Source URL
https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/Bran-Stark-Dead-Game-Thrones-46066591