For eight seasons of Game of Thrones, fans wondered who would rule Westeros when the dust settled. In a surprise late-game twist, it didn’t end being any of the popular contenders — not Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen, nor Sansa Stark or Tyrion Lannister. Rather, it was Bran Stark, the young boy who inadvertently kicked off the wars that would swallow the continent after Jaime Lannister pushed him out a window in the very first episode of the series.
But that’s not the only version of the story we may get. While Game of Thrones has wrapped up, author George R.R. Martin still has two more books to write in his Song of Ice and Fire series: The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. Is it possible someone else will sit on the throne — metaphorically speaking, given what happened to the real one — when all is said and done?
Earlier this week, Metro Online caught up with Isaac Hempstead Wright, who played Bran, ahead of the Q Awards, the UK’s premiere music awards show. (In another unexpected twist, Lana Del Rey won Song of the Decade for “Video Games.” Go figure.) Metro asked Wright how he would feel if Bran didn’t get the throne at the end of the books. “I will be a bit gutted I think,” he said. Still, he admitted that the ambiguity made things interesting.
"What’s nice is the fact the books and the show were able to evolve as their own thing. So George has no obligations to end it in any of the same ways we did. That’s quite cool, you’re going to get two alternative endings to Game of Thrones."
Just for giggles, Metro pressed on who he would have liked to see on the throne other than himself. “It would have to be another Stark I think, Sansa or someone,” he said. Oh? What about Jon Snow? “Urrmm…”
Okay, it sounds like the Three-Eyed Raven is not down for a Jon Snow regime. File a follow-up question away for the convention circuit.
LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 16: Isaac Hempstead Wright attends the Q Awards 2019 at The Roundhouse on October 16, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images)
All that said, if I had to guess, I’d say Bran will end up Ruler of the Seven Six Kingdoms on the page, too, unless Martin makes some big changes, which is possible. While Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss changed a lot of stuff on their way to the ending, Martin himself told them how the series would conclude years ago, and they stuck pretty close to it. Speaking backstage at the 2019 Emmy Awards, they even brought up Bran’s kingship as something they’d been planning for a while. “It was always going to be Bran as the king at the end,” Benioff said then.
Now, that’s not 100% ironclad, but it sounds like Bran’s ascension is one of the major points Martin told them about way back when. But we’ll see.
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As for Wright, he’s gone on to film parts in movies like Voyagers and has talked about going back to school to study neuroscience. But if he sticks with acting, he’s not worried about getting typecast for his work on Thrones. “I think the thing is, it would be mad if you thought you would ever get away from Game Of Thrones,” he said. “It’s massive. For a lot of us it was one of the first things we ever did, so people do strongly associate us with those roles.”
"But it doesn’t faze me because it’s not like it has been something awful we’ve been a part of and it’s hanging over our heads, and we wish we could forget about it. It’s something that is part of history, and is something really cool to have been a part of. Whether or not it makes it hard and we are type cast or whatever, it’s still such a nice thing to be a part of."
Well said, your Grace.
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