Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Bran Stark) is returning to Game of Thrones after a year-long absence for the show’s sixth season, and he’s making up for lost time by getting out there in the press. Hempstead-Wright dropped some pretty big knowledge bombs in a recent interview with Loaded, but first let’s hear about what he did with his year off.
"It was a shame not being in season five, but it was the right time for me to take a year out. I hadn’t done any acting in that whole year out, so it was quite a shock to the system to go back on a freezing cold film set. Once I was back into it, it was great fun."
Let’s hope that Hempstead-Wright’s time off hasn’t rusted his skills. Also, even though the actor could probably ride his Game of Thrones notoriety into a career, Hempstead-Wright is determined to attend college, probably to study music. “I don’t doubt you’ll see a single from me,” he said. Well, he wouldn’t be the first one.
Okay, now on to the Season 6 teases. According to Hempstead-Wright, Season 6 will start to answer questions fans have had for a while.
"You’ll see things in season six that have never quite made sense before – and now it will all start to tie up. Stories all start to come together to make sense. I know we say this every season, but this series sees everything get bigger and bigger and bigger."
Hm…now what could he be talking about?
BEGIN SPOILERS AND SPECULATION
Fans who have been paying attention to the behind-the-scenes goings on can probably guess what Hempstead-Wright is getting at here. If things progress as they do in A Dance with Dragons, the Three-Eyed Raven will teach Bran to use his latent greenseeing abilities, which allow him to appear into the past, present, and future of Westeros. Moving into speculation territory, many fans expect Bran to peer into key moments in the country’s past and learn things that affect current characters. The main question Bran should be able to answer: who are Jon Snow’s parents?
On-set reports have it that the Game of Thrones crew filmed material at the Castillo de Zafra in Spain last year. The Castillo is expected to stand in for the Tower of Joy, a key location where a young Ned Stark and his fellow soldiers fought and killed three knights of Aerys Targaryen’s kingsguard towards the end of Robert’s Rebellion. The knights were guarding Ned’s sister Lyanna Stark, whom crown prince Rhaegar Targaryen had kidnapped at the start of the war. Unfortunately, after Ned and company felled her guardians, Lyanna died. Later, Ned came home to Winterfell with a baby he claimed was his bastard son Jon Snow.
All that is common knowledge. But in Season 6, fans expect Bran to fill in some of the details. Through the use of his newfound powers, Bran is expected to learn that Rhaegar didn’t so much kidnap Lyanna as run away with her, that she died in childbirth, and that the baby Ned took home was her’s. The father? Rhaegar Targaryen.
When Hempstead-Wright talks about “stories” that “start to come together,” this is the particular story that comes to mind. But it could go deeper than that. Some fans think that the Three-Eyed Raven (Three-Eyed Crow in the novels) has been using his own greenseeing powers to subtly effect events throughout Westeros for years, and it’ll be interesting to see if the show gets into that.