Is the old Bran Stark really dead? Actor Isaac Hempstead-Wright discusses in detail

August 12th, 5:18pm August 12th, 5:18pm Nidhi Goswami20-year- old unpopular writer with mad fangirl skills.

Game of Thrones season 7 has given us many surprises and it doesn’t look like that’s going to stop anytime soon. One of the major changes this season was Bran Stark’s transition into the Three-eyed raven. He’s gone through an irreversible personality flip after seeing what he’s seen beyond the Wall. The fact that he knows basically everything about everyone has turned the young Stark boy into a completely different person, someone neither he recognises himself nor his family.

This became pretty apparent during the latest episode, ‘The Spoils of War’. Arya Stark finally came home and met the remainder of her family, out of which Bran seemed like the most distant person ever. Not to mention his monotone behaviour when Meera Reed came to bid him goodbye. It was a pivotal scene as we discover that the old Bran Stark is most definitely no longer there in him. Actor Isaac Hempstead-Wright agrees. He discussed in depth about his character’s major changes on HBO’s Making Game of Thrones blog.

“You died in that cave,” Meera Reed had said to Bran before she left. Like us viewers who felt those words were quite accurate, Isaac thought the same.

“Sadly, I think in many ways she was right,” he said. “It’s just this whole idea that Bran has become a much smaller part of the character’s brain, when before 100% 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”

“That said, we’ve been waiting for this to happen since the beginning. It’s Bran’s fate to become the Three-Eyed Raven. That has been his destiny from day one; this is where his story arc has been leading up to from the moment he got pushed out of that tower. So the fact we’re here now is actually a bit of a relief. While he may not be that same character, he now has got a lot more to offer. He’s now an incredibly powerful character now; having all the knowledge in the world puts you in a seriously advantageous position.

But Bran’s not entirely gone, Isaac says. “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.”

Of course if Bran’s as good as a robot, his family reunions wouldn’t have exactly the kind of effect they would on the others. “I think it’s most shocking for Sansa and Arya to see what Bran is like, because they still have fundamentally the same character traits as they did when they were young: Arya is this spunky, fierce girl, and Sansa is this diplomatic lady. But Bran has definitely become somebody they wouldn’t recognize otherwise. [I]t’s easier for Arya to believe what happened to him, because she’s seen that weird side of the world exists.”

“Sansa has only really been exposed to the human side of Game of Thrones. So immediately Arya and Bran have more in common, and they can both accept that what’s happened to the other isn’t completely implausible. Whereas for Sansa, it’s a bit like, “You’re saying you can change faces, and you’re saying you can see everything? Have both my siblings gone completely mad?”

Isaac also talked about how Bran was aware of what he was doing when talking to Petyr Baelish. “Chaos is a ladder,” were his words, directly referring to one of Littlefinger’s conversations with Varys. This obviously took Littlefinger by surprise.

“That was my favorite scene to film this season,” Isaac said. “It was so neat to say something that cool. The fact that Bran heard that line means that he’s gone back and looked through Mr. Baelish’s timeline. His intention is to slightly rattle Littlefinger, to say, in just a subtle, really creepy way, ‘I know what you’re up to.’”

Now that we know everything Bran has seen, it should be interesting to see how significant his role is in the upcoming episodes and the final season of Game of Thrones. You can read rest of the interview over here. For now, it’s time to eagerly wait until episode 5 of season 7, ‘Eastwatch‘. What did you guys think about the changes in Bran? Tell us in the comments below.

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