Are you still reeling from Sunday night’s heart-wrenching Game of Thrones twist? Did you see it coming? Well, if you can believe it, there’s one man who correctly guessed the final twist behind “The Door” years ahead of time. IGN got the scoop about a writer from VentrellaQuest who shared a theory about Hodor with Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin back in 2013.
So here’s how this all went down. The writer, Michael A. Ventrella, apparently approached Martin on an elevator and spoke to the author about a comment he once made about wanting to be an elevator operator:
"I finally figured out why you have a character named Hodor…I was thinking about your comment about wanting to be an elevator operator. It’s clear to me now that ‘Hodor’ is short for ‘Hold the door’."
Martin’s response? He laughed and replied: “You don’t know how close to the truth you are!”
While Ventrella’s catch was impressive, he actually wasn’t the first person to figure it out the mystery behind Hodor’s favorite word. NME did some deep digging and found a tweet from Larry Bartleet who documented a 2008 post in the ASOIAF forums that, while light-hearted, kind of hit the nail on the head.
In 2013, Kristian Nairn was interviewed by Flicks and the City, and was asked how he’d like to have Hodor die…his answer was tragically prophetic. Head to 4:11 to hear it.
Finally, and this is the most interesting thing from the IGN article, the first words spoken to Hodor in Game of Thrones were “Help Bran down the hall.”
My, how those words resonate now. It’s neat to see the Game of Thrones connect Hodor’s final moments on the show back to his first, even if it wasn’t intentional. Hold the door, Hodor, hold the door.