Why isn’t Bran in the new teaser for Game of Thrones season 8?

HBO has released a new teaser trailer for the final season of Game of Thrones, and it’s pretty electrifying:

Starks (and honorary Starks) unite! But as stirring as it is to see these family members finally back together, I can’t be the only person to notice that the other surviving member of the Stark family — Bran Stark — is nowhere to be seen. What gives? After all, Entertainment Weekly was happy to reunite the four wayward Stark children in promo shots ahead of season 7:

But that was a magazine spread and this is an official promo for the final season of the show. If we want to jump right to the worst conclusion, might this mean that Bran has a reduced role in season 8, or perhaps that he’ll die?

Obviously, we can’t know for sure what Bran’s absence here means, but I don’t think we need to get quite that gloomy this soon. This promo is about the Stark family reuniting to fight the existential danger represented by the White Walkers, and while Bran remains a part of that family, he’s also part of the something else, something more mysterious and distant that not even he fully understands. As he showed in season 7, he’s somewhat off in his own world now, so maybe he’d feel out of place here.

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Let’s also not discount the possibility that adding a fourth person to a promo would throw off the flow of whatever director David Nutter was going for. Would someone have had to push Bran around in his wheelchair? Are the Winterfell crypts even wheelchair-accessible?

Basically, I don’t think there’s much cause to worry, although I hope we catch a glimpse of the current reigning Three-Eyed Raven soon.

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