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 Necros wrote:
So all of the other Brandons in history are the same Brandon, skipping around through time? So would that make him his own great, great, great, great grandfather?

Well not exactly. He travelled through time, warging into and possessing each Brandon Stark in history and directing their actions.

So he warged into a Brandon Stark who lived after the Long Night and used him to build The Wall. This Brandon would later become known as Brandon the Builder, when he was actually being possessed by Bran at the time.

This does not make Bran literally his own great, great, great, great grandfather, but he did possess the body of his grandfather temporarily.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Necros wrote:
So all of the other Brandons in history are the same Brandon, skipping around through time? So would that make him his own great, great, great, great grandfather?

Well not exactly. He travelled through time, warging into and possessing each Brandon Stark in history and directing their actions.

So he warged into a Brandon Stark who lived after the Long Night and used him to build The Wall. This Brandon would later become known as Brandon the Builder, when he was actually being possessed by Bran at the time.

This does not make Bran literally his own great, great, great, great grandfather, but he did possess the body of his grandfather temporarily.

Bran currenlty seems to lack any motivation to do anything,

Presume the above is "a past" as if he (and likely others) can effect it then past and present is not fixed and they live in a multiverse that allows mutiple universes where history differes.

Time travel is seldom done well sadly.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Bran currenlty seems to lack any motivation to do anything,

Presume the above is "a past" as if he (and likely others) can effect it then past and present is not fixed and they live in a multiverse that allows mutiple universes where history differes.

Time travel is seldom done well sadly.

He seems to be getting to a very Dr. Manhattan like "I exist everywhere in time but can't actually affect time because the things that happen are the things that happen" version of time travel.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Bran currenlty seems to lack any motivation to do anything,

Presume the above is "a past" as if he (and likely others) can effect it then past and present is not fixed and they live in a multiverse that allows mutiple universes where history differes.

Time travel is seldom done well sadly.

He seems to be getting to a very Dr. Manhattan like "I exist everywhere in time but can't actually affect time because the things that happen are the things that happen" version of time travel.

Which we already know to be categorically untrue because we know that Bran went back and nuked Hodor's brain.

but maybe hodor's brain was destined to be nuked by bran going back in time to nuke it? We could nuke our own brains just thinking about it.

 Necros wrote:
but maybe hodor's brain was destined to be nuked by bran going back in time to nuke it? We could nuke our own brains just thinking about it.

If so we should do it from orbit...

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Bran currenlty seems to lack any motivation to do anything,

Presume the above is "a past" as if he (and likely others) can effect it then past and present is not fixed and they live in a multiverse that allows mutiple universes where history differes.

Time travel is seldom done well sadly.

He seems to be getting to a very Dr. Manhattan like "I exist everywhere in time but can't actually affect time because the things that happen are the things that happen" version of time travel.

Which we already know to be categorically untrue because we know that Bran went back and nuked Hodor's brain.

We have never known a non-fried Hodor.

Bran went back in time and nuked Hodor's brain because Bran went back in time and nuked Hodor's brain.

 d-usa wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Bran currenlty seems to lack any motivation to do anything,

Presume the above is "a past" as if he (and likely others) can effect it then past and present is not fixed and they live in a multiverse that allows mutiple universes where history differes.

Time travel is seldom done well sadly.

He seems to be getting to a very Dr. Manhattan like "I exist everywhere in time but can't actually affect time because the things that happen are the things that happen" version of time travel.

Which we already know to be categorically untrue because we know that Bran went back and nuked Hodor's brain.

We have never known a non-fried Hodor.

Not true, in one of his visions Bran saw Hodor as a child in Winterfel before he was Hodor-ized. Hodor used to be called Wyllas, and he could speak.

Maybe Bran, knowing what is going on everywhere because he is the Three Eyed Raven, assisted the Raven in flying faster to Dragonstone.

Or you know, this is a show about a world where Magic is coming back and we should stop assuming that the laws of physics in our world will apply to theirs.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:


Not true, in one of his visions Bran saw Hodor as a child in Winterfel before he was Hodor-ized. Hodor used to be called Wyllas, and he could speak.

We have never known a timeline in which Hodor wasn't Hodor-ized after the point in which he was Hodor-ized. There has never been a reality we're aware of in which Bran went north of the wall with Wyllas for example.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Maybe Bran, knowing what is going on everywhere because he is the Three Eyed Raven, assisted the Raven in flying faster to Dragonstone.

Or you know, this is a show about a world where Magic is coming back and we should stop assuming that the laws of physics in our world will apply to theirs.

Magic is cool, but then use magic - don't just go - "run to the wall and use a raven" - thats laughably bad writing.

We have never known a timeline in which Hodor wasn't Hodor-ized after the point in which he was Hodor-ized. There has never been a reality we're aware of in which Bran went north of the wall with Wyllas for example.

If he can change the past, it stands to reason that mutiple possible pasts and futures exist.

Except that there are no known examples of him changing anything by traveling to the past. Bran only knew Hodorized Hodor, and traveling back in time only resulted in explaining why Hodor was Hodorized and didn't change any reality.

The past already accounted for actions from the future, and we haven't had any examples of something being changed.

 d-usa wrote:
Except that there are no known examples of him changing anything by traveling to the past. Bran only knew Hodorized Hodor, and traveling back in time only resulted in explaining why Hodor was Hodorized and didn't change any reality.

The past already accounted for actions from the future, and we haven't had any examples of something being changed.

Didn't he watch his fathers assault on the tower several times and in one he shouted and was heard which had not happened before or am i misremembering? Also was he not told not to meddle with the past - which implies it can be changed?

 Mr Morden wrote:
Didn't he watch his fathers assault on the tower several times and in one he shouted and was heard which had not happened before or am i misremembering? Also was he not told not to meddle with the past - which implies it can be changed?

He yelled and Ned did seem to hear his yell briefly, but we never saw a version of that past where Ned didn't do that. So as far as we (the viewer) know, Ned always did that because Bran always yelled at him.

From the information we've been provided as a viewer, the version of time travel presented in GoT is a closed loop...everything that will occur because of the Three Eyed Raven's time travel has already happened in the past, thereby forming the events of the present that we're watching. Or if this is really more of a 'branching path' style of time travel, then we're still seeing the branch that sprouted because of all the changes that Bran has already made (and will make).

Either way, nothing that Bran does appears to change anything we've watched...it is implied that his changes are instead what made the sequence of events we're watching.

All I know is there are two things I better see before this show ends:

1.) Bronn gets a castle

2.) I better see some damn ice-spiders the size of dogs. I've seen references to this multiple times in the book and in the show, and yet, 7 seasons in, the ice-spider count is still a hard zero.

I get on a plane Sunday morning. I'll be in Germany Monday morning.

I don't know when I'll get to see episode 7. I'm not a happy man.

 Mr Morden wrote:


Magic is cool, but then use magic - don't just go - "run to the wall and use a raven" - thats laughably bad writing.

What did you want him to do? "Run to the wall, my brother the Three Eyed Raven is a Worg and he will make the raven go faster to Dragonstone. MAGIC IS REAL MORTY!"

Except, Jon doesn't know anything about the Three Eyed Raven and spelling something out like that is just god awful storytelling.

 trexmeyer wrote:
D and D wrote the entire season with the ending of the episode planned from the beginning and it shows. This isn't just rushing. This is them not giving a feth. This is a classic example of valuing the end of the story over the most important part, the journey.

Yeah. The two guys in charge of one of the most watched and most successful shows in the world 'don't give a feth'.

 Ouze wrote:
What was the rush? The Night's King has all the time in the world to sit there and wait for them to freeze to death. I also rather like that he's completely emotionless but YMMV.

D'ya think we'll ever hear him speak?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Well its not entirely implausible. We know that Bran CAN directly affect the past, when he nuked Hodor's brain and called out to his father Ned who heard him on the steps of the Tower of Joy.

The former Three Eyed Raven warned Bran that if he spends too much time in the past, he may lose himself.

EDIT: And as LunarSol brings up, when Old Nan tells Bran about all the stories and legends of all the various Brandon Starks throughout history she tends to confuse and conflate them all into one person. That could also be foreshadowing.

And when the Night King attacks Bran asks who is attacking, and Leif replies "you are" or something to that effect.

I really, really hope the Bran is the "Night King" thing turns out to be false. I'm just really god damn sick of time travel nonsense, and if this theory is correct this'd be one of the worst ways of doing it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
How did he know that sparing Jon would lead to a dragon coming to rescue him? I mean, it's not exactly common knowledge, and how would he know that Daenerys was coming, let alone that she had dragons?

Also the army of the dead attacked before Danaerys arrived, when they realised the lake's surface had frozen solid. When you're using someone as bait it doesn't make much sense to kill them while waiting for the support to arrive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Morden wrote:
If he can change the past, it stands to reason that mutiple possible pasts and futures exist.

The show is running with the opposite of that, where it's touched on time travel. The Hodor story showed Bran changing something in the past, so that it now fit with how things are in the future. It wasn't as if Bran travelled North with a friend called Wylass, who when Bran returned to the past he turned in to Hodor, and then on returning to the future he was there with Hodor.

Man, this is why time travel sucks so bad. In the limited doses we've seen in GoT so far its okay, as a whisper that caused Ned Stark to turn around, or as an origin story for a minor character, but any more than that and it just gets so horrible, so quickly.

I could see the show making Bran and the Night King opposites of the same coin. But I figured at the very least when the Night King touched Bran while he was spying on him, the Night King could of stolen or had events imprinted on him that shows or showed future events.


Hence "wait here for dragons" I mean why else would he just so happen to have dragon slaying ice spears?


Or its all the Matrix. And this has all happened 7 times now since H R R Martin loves the number 7

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:


Seriously thats an actual theory doing the rounds on Youtube now.

At least we can say the Book vs Show crowd has one thing in common, stupid theories.

Well its not entirely implausible. We know that Bran CAN directly affect the past, when he nuked Hodor's brain and called out to his father Ned who heard him on the steps of the Tower of Joy.

The former Three Eyed Raven warned Bran that if he spends too much time in the past, he may lose himself.

EDIT: And as LunarSol brings up, when Old Nan tells Bran about all the stories and legends of all the various Brandon Starks throughout history she tends to confuse and conflate them all into one person. That could also be foreshadowing.

Where this gets confusing to me is that Old Nan's stories are a thing in the books, but not in the show. And the Night King being the first Other/WW is a thing in the show, but probably isn't in the books. In fact, I'm not sure if Bran the Builder has been mentioned in the show either. I'm just not clear how much we can draw on the story in one medium to draw conclusions about the other anymore.

We could see the issue of all the Brandon Starks in history be explained on the show at some point. Or maybe a lot of this will never be explained, and they'll just give us some fire dragons vs. ice dragon mayhem instead. YEAH!


And regarding stupid theories, there are some of those going around. But R+L=J was dead on, and not all book theorizing is nonsense. Martin builds an impressive amount of depth into the books, and there's no question that he's fond of using the POV approach and stories told by characters to force readers to have to piece together what actually happened or the meaning of an event.

It's easy to just handwave and say things like the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree are unimportant. But that story does give readers some insight into Lyanna, even if the identity of the knight forever remains a mystery.

I just figured out how the dragons got there so fast!

That guy ran to get help, but by the time he got there, Jon and the rest were dead. Feeling his brother's death they same way Obi Wan felt the planet explode, Bran went back in time and warged into the raven keerper guy, who actually sent the message to Dany 2 days ago. Thus, she was able to arrive just in the nick of time. They can put all that stuff in the deleted scenes on the DVD.

 gorgon wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:


Seriously thats an actual theory doing the rounds on Youtube now.

At least we can say the Book vs Show crowd has one thing in common, stupid theories.

Well its not entirely implausible. We know that Bran CAN directly affect the past, when he nuked Hodor's brain and called out to his father Ned who heard him on the steps of the Tower of Joy.

The former Three Eyed Raven warned Bran that if he spends too much time in the past, he may lose himself.

EDIT: And as LunarSol brings up, when Old Nan tells Bran about all the stories and legends of all the various Brandon Starks throughout history she tends to confuse and conflate them all into one person. That could also be foreshadowing.

Where this gets confusing to me is that Old Nan's stories are a thing in the books, but not in the show. And the Night King being the first Other/WW is a thing in the show, but probably isn't in the books. In fact, I'm not sure if Bran the Builder has been mentioned in the show either. I'm just not clear how much we can draw on the story in one medium to draw conclusions about the other anymore.

We could see the issue of all the Brandon Starks in history be explained on the show at some point. Or maybe a lot of this will never be explained, and they'll just give us some fire dragons vs. ice dragon mayhem instead. YEAH!


And regarding stupid theories, there are some of those going around. But R+L=J was dead on, and not all book theorizing is nonsense. Martin builds an impressive amount of depth into the books, and there's no question that he's fond of using the POV approach and stories told by characters to force readers to have to piece together what actually happened or the meaning of an event.

It's easy to just handwave and say things like the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree are unimportant. But that story does give readers some insight into Lyanna, even if the identity of the knight forever remains a mystery.

Not saying that all the theories are dumb, I'm just saying both the show and book fans have dumb theories in common. As in both sides are more than capable of dumb theories.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:


Magic is cool, but then use magic - don't just go - "run to the wall and use a raven" - thats laughably bad writing.

What did you want him to do? "Run to the wall, my brother the Three Eyed Raven is a Worg and he will make the raven go faster to Dragonstone. MAGIC IS REAL MORTY!"

Except, Jon doesn't know anything about the Three Eyed Raven and spelling something out like that is just god awful storytelling.

Writing yourself into a corner where you have no viable way of making this part of the story make the least bit of sense is bad story telling - the wirters are paid hell of a lot of money not to do that.

Run to the wall and send a raven was stupid, insulting and pathetic - run back across zombie polar bear infested wilderness, on snow, somewhere I have never been and having passed through snowstorms and the like. Yeah thats good story telling.

This might be a problem for some, but for most of us...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
What was the rush? The Night's King has all the time in the world to sit there and wait for them to freeze to death. I also rather like that he's completely emotionless but YMMV.

D'ya think we'll ever hear him speak?

"I hope not" and "no". It would take a big chunk away from his other-ness. I mean, he's functionally a runaway biological WMD. There wouldn't really be, to my thinking, a reason to speak with a human.

Again, I'm not going to freak out about raven and dragon flight times on their own. It's fantasy...they can take a mulligan here or there. The thing for me is that the contrivances through the entire sequence stack up, culminating in using Benjen as a deus ex machina and discarding him, all in service of ACTION beyond all else. It's possible to rewrite the sequence in a cleaner, less cliched manner that serves the characters better.

If you like the show right now for the dragon action, that's fine and your perogative. But once upon a time, the story was more focused on the relationships between people. IMO.

In a sign that the apocalypse is near, I agree with Morden that the chemistry between Jon and Daenerys doesn't seem *quite* believable right now. And I think that's simply because they haven't had many scenes together in which they weren't only talking 'business'. The actors are fine, but that relationship -- like so many other things in the show right now -- needs more time to breathe IMO.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
What was the rush? The Night's King has all the time in the world to sit there and wait for them to freeze to death. I also rather like that he's completely emotionless but YMMV.

D'ya think we'll ever hear him speak?

"I hope not" and "no". It would take a big chunk away from his other-ness. I mean, he's functionally a runaway biological WMD. There wouldn't really be, to my thinking, a reason to speak with a human.

But what if they got...oh, I dunno...James Spader? They could have him do his Ultron voice. Which of course was James Spader doing James Spader.

 Ouze wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
What was the rush? The Night's King has all the time in the world to sit there and wait for them to freeze to death. I also rather like that he's completely emotionless but YMMV.

D'ya think we'll ever hear him speak?

"I hope not" and "no". It would take a big chunk away from his other-ness. I mean, he's functionally a runaway biological WMD. There wouldn't really be, to my thinking, a reason to speak with a human.

I am always a big fan of the moment of realization when the big antagonist realizes all is lost*. I, for one, would love to hear the NK howl a scream of inhuman contemplation when his final death blow is struck. Oh, I am sure it will happen, but whether he screams or not is the only question for me.

* Star Wars so totally and absolutely blew this with Emperor Palpatine - Richard Marquand should never have worked in Hollywood again after that blunder...

 MDSW wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
What was the rush? The Night's King has all the time in the world to sit there and wait for them to freeze to death. I also rather like that he's completely emotionless but YMMV.

D'ya think we'll ever hear him speak?

"I hope not" and "no". It would take a big chunk away from his other-ness. I mean, he's functionally a runaway biological WMD. There wouldn't really be, to my thinking, a reason to speak with a human.

I am always a big fan of the moment of realization when the big antagonist realizes all is lost*. I, for one, would love to hear the NK howl a scream of inhuman contemplation when his final death blow is struck. Oh, I am sure it will happen, but whether he screams or not is the only question for me.

* Star Wars so totally and absolutely blew this with Emperor Palpatine - Richard Marquand should never have worked in Hollywood again after that blunder...

Eh? The Emperor screams as Vader carries him over to the shaft and throws him in.