Ser Bronn of the Blackwater — formerly just Bronn the sellsword — came a long way over the eight seasons of Game of Thrones. Since volunteering to fight for Tyrion Lannister during his trial by combat at the Eyrie, Bronn has ventured to King’s Landing, become a knight, become the Lord Commander of the City Watch, been demoted to nothing, and then been given a seat on the Small Council. Talk about a wild journey.
Throughout all of those transformations, fans have gotten to see different sides of Bronn’s character. We’ve seen him develop relationships with both Tyrion and Jaime, and we’ve gotten to witness his rare moments of decency. However, we’ve also seen him turn on those he once called friends and agree to some pretty dishonorable things for gold. But, as actor Jerome Flynn notes, that’s what makes Bronn such an interesting and well-rounded character.
“He was so beautifully written that I’ve found he’s quite easy to just connect with him in the present and what he had in front of him,” Flynn told The Daily Dot during an interview at Con of Thrones 2019.
It’s true that Bronn is one of the more relatable characters from the series, the result of his self-interested nature and flawed personality. Unlike many of the show’s leads, he never held any grandiose notions of honor or destiny. Bronn merely seized the opportunities he was presented with.
And given that Bronn’s character arc was such a roller coaster, most fans were surprised to discover that he was one of the few people to actually get what he wanted in the end. After threatening Tyrion and Jaime with a crossbow at Winterfell and demanding the land and status they’d both promised him for years, Bronn winds up as the Lord of Highgarden and a Master of Coin on King Bran’s Small Council.
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While some viewers might feel that Bronn didn’t earn the ending he got, Flynn pegged his character as a “revolutionary” whose thinking was merely ahead of the times.
"I think what he did quite a lot of was, he said it in that scene with the crossbow with [Jaime and Tyrion]. He said, who started the families? It was just some bastard who could kill a lot of people. And he recognized that early on. He’s clever and he realized that, in a way, it could be an illusion, this whole idea of highborn and that you could create, make your own highborn. Which is what he did. He realized he could break through, cut through. In a way, he was a revolutionary of his time."
To be fair, Flynn does have a point. Many of the lords and ladies of Westeros did questionable things to maintain their wealth and power — and they weren’t born with the odds stacked against them like Bronn was. Bronn simply played the system to his own advantage. And after all, the opportunists are usually the ones who wind up with happy endings, right?
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