Isaac Hempstead Wright teases Bran’s newfound powers in Game of Thrones Season 6

Yesterday, Entertainment Weekly debuted the first official image from Game of Thrones Season 6: a shot of Bran Stark, last seen in Season 4, sitting on a horse after having gotten a major haircut. Bam:

Now, the magazine has published the interview it did with Isaac Hempstead Wright, who has played Bran for five seasons of the show. Well, four—he sat this last season out.

Speaking of his absence from Season 5, Wright talked about how that came about. “When I first heard the news [executive producers] Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] wanted to have a chat with me, I was like, ‘Oh no!’” he said. “Usually that’s to tell you [your character is] dead. So comparatively, missing a season was like, ‘phew!’ “

There are a whole lot of plotlines to deal with on Game of Thrones, and apparently the producers didn’t want to distract from the others by adapting a storyline that would have consisted mostly of Bran sitting still while he learned how to use his latent powers.“And they’re exactly right,” Weight said. “I would have just been sitting in a cave going, ‘Oh, I can nearly do it now.’”

Instead, the producers took a cue from the original Star Wars trilogy. At the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker is sorta handy with a lightsaber, but has a ways to go before he can be called a Jedi Master. Then, in Return of the Jedi, he walks into Jabba’s palace using mind tricks and ready to slay an entire war party’s worth of bad guys above the sarlacc pit on Tatooine. Apparently, he got a lot of training between movies. That’s what the producers want for Bran (that’s also the analogy they used, because they’re dorks), so we can expect him to begin Season 6 with a firm handle on his abilities.

Bran Starkwalker

And just what do those abilities entail? Those who have read A Dance with Dragons know that Bran is learning to use his greenseeing abilities to peer into the past, present, and future of Westeros by looking through the eyes of the weirwood trees that dot the landscape. Here’s how Wright puts it:

"Previously Bran’s seen tiny glimpses of future or past but never has he been very much in control in the situation. Now we’re given looks into very important events in the past, present and future of this world and Bran is beginning to piece them together like a detective, almost as if he’s watching the show. Equally, he’s now discovering how crucial he could be in the Great War. It’s quite Inception-y."

I’m sure fans have plenty of ideas about what some of those events may be. It’s also intriguing to hear that Bran will discover “how crucial he could be in the Great War.” Bran has been a character in transition since the end of Season 2, after Winterfell was sacked and he started heading north. Considering that Bran’s plotline has been heavily featured in promotional material for the new season, I’m betting this will be the year when he finally reenters the story as a major player.

Entertainment Weekly seems to think so, too. James Hibberd writes that this season is “a game-changer” for Bran, and Wright is very excited about it. When Hibberd asked the 16-year-old actor about his reaction to reading the Season 6 scripts, he described a time when he couldn’t contain himself. “Oh! That’s the best scene I’ve ever done!” he said. “Oh! That scene is even better!”

The final piece of the puzzle is the Three-Eyed Raven, the mysterious figure who’s been appearing in Bran’s dreams and beckoning him north since Season 1. Bran finally met him at the end of Season 4, where he was played by actor Struan Rodger, pictured above. Since then, the producers recast acting heavyweight Max von Sydow in the part, and Wright is characteristically enthusiastic about it. “There are certain lines that you think are almost fillers, like, ‘He’s over there,’ but when Max von Sydow says them, he can make it sound like it’s the most important news you’ve ever heard,” he said.

So that’s where we stand on Bran. You can hear him chatting with the Three-Eyed Raven in the Season 6 teaser trailer.