Flashback, Flashforward: What Could Bran Be Seeing in Season 6

It’s not even 2016 yet, and already Entertainment Weekly has dropped a bomb about Game of Thrones Season 6. Not only is Brantree c0nf1rm3d, eleventyone, etc, but Isaac Hempstead Wright is promising us that Game of Thrones‘ first foray into flashback land last season was only the beginning. This coming season, Bran will be making like he’s on Lost, flashing forwards, backwards and perhaps even sideways. All from the comfort of his own version of a Westerosi living room, “like a detective…almost as if he’s watching the show.” Who knew weirwood trees got HBO?

So what could Bran possibly be flashing on about? With certain scenes confirmed as happening this season (which we’ll get to in a minute), we do have some ideas of which direction we may go. But we also have quite a long list of visions that Bran is supposed to see via his greenseeing powers that are listed in the novels. Spoilers and speculation ho!

—-SPOILERS, NOTHING BUT SPOILERS—
—GIMME THOSE SPOILERS, DON’T LET THEM END—

In A Dance with Dragons, we see Bran have several visions via his tree bonded state. In order, they are:

1. His young father praying with a bowed head “…let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them, and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive.”;
2. A girl and a younger boy play fighting with branches;
3. A pregnant woman coming out of the black pool praying for a son to avenge her;
4. A slender girl on her toes kissing a knight as tall as Hodor;
5. A pale, dark-eyed youth cutting three branches from the weirwood and shaping them into arrows;
6. Other lords of Winterfell: tall, hard, stern men in fur and chain mail;
7. A bearded man forcing a captive down on his knees, and a white-haired woman killing the captive with a bronze sickle.

Now, we know that child-aged versions of Ned Stark and his brother and sister were cast this season. So it’s a good chance that a couple of these visions, specifically two and five, are in the offing. Though the first one, of Ned Stark praying that Jon and Robb grow up as brothers, would be nice, it’s also unnecessary. We know Ned wanted them to grow up a family and that Cat never did forgive or forget. The sixth one is also a bit of a throwaway—it would be easy enough to do as part of a montage, but also easy enough to cut. It’s the third, fourth, and seventh ones that I want to see included this season, if nothing else than to confirm what they show.

When I first read them, I assumed that three is Lyanna Stark, having just learned that Robert killed Rhaegar at the Trident, and that four was her and Rhaegar’s first kiss. That’s not to say it’s really what those visions are, it’s just one theory. The final vision, on the other hand, is a total mystery to me. There are quite a few theories floating around as to which past event it is, but considering the promises of futurecasting, perhaps this one is a chilling vision of things to come? I certainly could see Dany wielding an arakh (which Bran would see as a “bronze sickle”), not to mention there are several candidates for the “bearded man” by her side.

Other flashbacks I’ve been dying to see ever since the show began: Melisandre’s visions of Azor Ahai and Dany’s visions in the House of the Undying. The former is unlikely to be shown to us in that format, and the ship sailed on the latter long ago. But that doesn’t mean Benioff and Weiss couldn’t backtrack and/or reassign. Perhaps Bran could see Azor Ahai and the first battle of the Long Night way back during the Age of Heroes? The “all this has happened before/all this will happen again” aspect is too good to be lost. (And wouldn’t it be nice to let TV show viewers understand why the first Brandon Stark all those generations ago felt it necessary to build The Wall?) Pair that with some flash-forward visions of the ending fight coming between the Night’s King and those humans who will stand and fight him, and you’ve got a doozy of a scene for Season 6.

(By the way—so you know how there’s this spoiler about a certain dead character having been seen on set, and that’s the proof we’ve been looking for that they’ll be some Red Priestess Resurrection action this year? What if we’re all wrong, and those are just Bran’s visions of things that never were? /trolling)

Meanwhile, though some of Dany’s visions are now out of date, like the vision of the dwarves playing out the War of Five King’s at Joffrey’s wedding, or the image of Robb Stark wearing his wolf’s head post-Red Wedding, some are still highly valuable clues, as well as insight to all that has come before. “A dying prince with rubies flying from his armor whispering the name of a woman with his last breath” isn’t just the longed-for vision of Rhaegar’s defeat at the Trident; it’s also seriously cinematic. Who wouldn’t want to film that? “A blue flower growing from a chink in a wall of ice” is just a lovely shot, and one that could be reused and remixed in many of Bran’s trippy visions. But the real one that I want Benioff and Weiss to go back for is the following scene:

…a man who looked like Viserys, but taller and with darker eyes, who says to a woman nursing a baby, “Aegon…What better name for a king…He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire”; and when the man’s eyes meet Dany’s, he says either to her or the woman with the baby, “There must be one more…The dragon has three heads,” and he picks up a silver harp and begins to play…

Now, I know that the show has (so far) cut Young Griff, aka Aegon, much to the confusion of book-readers who have to wonder if this is proof that he really is a False Dragon, and therefore unimportant to the main plotline. But this vision of Dany’s has, to me, always been proof that Aegon, though a late arrival to the dragon party, is probably the real deal. And if the show is streamlining his story into something less out-of-the-blue, or at least less convoluted, this would be a good introduction. And hey, who knows—maybe the show could decide that instead of a random extra Targaryen throne claimant, the baby that Ned Stark named after his mentor and father figure Jon Arryn was to be named Aegon if things had gone very differently, and this is a vision of what his birth should have been instead.

But no list of flashbacks would be complete without the twin original sins, as it were, of the Tourney at Harrenhal and the Tower of Joy. Now, we know from filming spoilers that the Tower *is* on the docket this season. That means we have a Lyanna, we have a Young Ned, and we have several important players from that time period cast. How much more would it take to add in some Year of the False Spring scenes interspersed, since those actors are already on the payroll?

As I’ve said before, that story, which is told and retold via memories, myths, and tales over the course of the later books, has been cut because having characters stop the action and recount what happened twenty-plus years ago out of the blue would never work, especially when the show is as jammed for time as it is. (Although I did appreciate the truncated version from Littlefinger last season, not to mention that LOOK he gave Sansa when she tacked on the false ending that Robert insisted on spreading as fact after his victory over the Targaryens.) I want the show to find a way to depict the events of this incident. And if Bran sitting around watching the past on his Weirstation 4 (or is a WeirBox One?) is the way to get to see Lyanna kick some ass as “the Knight of the Laughing Tree,” I’ll take it. Especially if it ends with Rhaegar riding right past his wife and crowning her with a wreath of blue roses, and naming her the Queen of Love and Beauty to boot.

Next: A Search of Ice and Fire now includes the sample Winds of Winter chapters