Game of Thrones: Bringing back Bran for Season 6 is like Luke in Return of the Jedi
When it was announced that Isaac Hempstead Wright would not be reprising his role of Bran Stark for season 5 of Game of Thrones, many fans were none too happy. Of course, most people were just upset that along with Wright, Kristian Nairn’s Hodor would also be absent. Entertainment Weekly, as part of their huge Game of Thrones roll-out, interviewed Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and they offered some interesting insight into Bran’s absence in Season 5.
Find out what D&D had to say, after the jump.
Calling to mind the time between Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, David Benioff made a great analogy.
“Like, it would be far less interesting, after The Empire Strikes Back to have an hour-long movie in between Empire and Return of the Jedi where Luke is training. It’s so much cooler to cut from end of Empire to beginning of Return, where he’s become the Jedi.”
Benioff does have a point here. Although, if you polled most A Song of Ice and Fire fans who read the books way before Game of Thrones was even an idea for HBO, most would say they would want to see Bran training…I know I would. However, with only ten episodes a season, and so much story to tell with other characters in different locations, cutting that training makes sense, strictly from the show’s point of view.
Benioff explained further:
“The fact is, even though we’re making changes to the books and adapting as necessary, we’re trying to keep the various storylines the same [as the books] and trying to keep them roughly [chronologically] parallel. And [in season 4] we caught up to the end of Bran’s storyline [in George R.R. Martin’s most recent book, A Dance with Dragons] last year. So if we pushed him forward this season, then he’s way ahead of where the other characters are.”
That reasoning sounds logical. On Isaac Hempstead Wright returning for Season 6, Benioff had this to say:
“I certainly hope so. Unless he goes off to college and decides he doesn’t want to come back”
So do we all. At this point, I cannot imagine anyone else in the role of Bran, so let’s all keep our fingers crossed. Game of Thrones Season 5 premieres on April 12th.
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