The Ultimate ‘Game of Thrones’ Theory: Is Bran the Night King?
One of the Game of Thrones fans’ most popular and long-running theories seems to be on its way to becoming true. Show watchers and book readers alike have suspected Bran of being the Night King for quite some time now. Sure, Bran was kind of the worst for a minute, being an extremely moody and bratty teenager, but now it seems that he may just be trying to save the world on his own. We know that Bran is already the all-seeing Three-Eyed Raven, but is it possible he’s also the icy Night King? We’re about to take a deep dive into this theory so that the next time your GoT-obsessed friend brings it up, you can hit them with some Samwell Tarly–level knowledge.
We’ve learned over the past few seasons that Bran has the ability to warg into other people, take over their bodies, and essentially use them as human puppets. He also has Greensight, which allows him to see way back into the past as well as know what’s going to happen in the future. We’ve seen him have devastating effects on people in the past from this, à la Hodor (RIP). Some people also think Bran warged back into the Mad King, trying to get him to preemptively burn all the White Walkers, but it made him a little crazy instead and he just ended up screaming “Burn them all,” which people thought meant burn all his subjects, and Jaime eventually killed him for it.
So, the whole Bran/Night King theory assumes that Bran has looked into the future and has seen how the war with the White Walkers is going to go. This makes him go back in time to a few different places. First, he goes back and ends up in the body of Bran the Builder, who builds the Wall to keep the White Walkers out. Turns out, he really should have made that thing dragon-proof.
Since the Wall clearly isn’t a permanent solution, Bran then goes back even farther into the body of the First Man that the Children of the Forest capture to turn into the very first White Walker, aka the Night King. At this point, it’s important to remember the warning the previous Three-Eyed Raven gave: “It is beautiful beneath the sea, but if you stay too long, you’ll drown.” Fans think that Bran will spend too much time in the Night King’s body and get stuck there.
Another hint comes while Bran is learning about becoming the Three-Eyed Raven and the previous one tells him, “You’ll never walk again, but you will fly.” Just a few hour-long episodes later, BOOM, the Night King is flying on a dragon.
Bran being the Night King could also explain why the blue-eyed creep is so intently focused on Jon and then lets him get away at the Battle of Hardhome AND when he comes back to steal a Wight to take to King’s Landing. George R. R. Martin has also said the ending will be bittersweet, so could this mean Jon will have to kill Bran to stop the Night King? Only time will tell.
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