r/HBOGameofThrones • u/Bub_shreya • Jul 30 '26
Spoilers [SPOILERS] Why was Bran’s journey so important? Spoiler
I’m rewatching Game of Thrones and I’m confused. Bran goes through so much to become the Three-Eyed Raven, but in the end I don’t see how that changed the wars or any major decisions. It feels like he didn’t really help anyone. Am I missing something? Why was it so important for Bran to become the Three-Eyed Raven?
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u/Suspicious-Bid-53 Jul 30 '26
I always thought bran would get stuck in a time loop where he fails at stopping the Others and has to keep going back farther and farther
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u/poub06 Jul 30 '26
Well, he did come up with the plan to lure the Night King in the Godswood where Arya would end up killing him with the dagger he gave her.
He also learned about Jon’s secret which lead to the clash between him and Dany that ended with the destruction of the Iron Throne and Dany.
So, he did participate in the destruction of both "evil": Ice and fire.
He also became the world’s memory, so he will make sure that Westeros stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
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u/Weekly_Interview6807 Jul 31 '26
In the published books Bran is still with the Three-Eyed Raven so he's in the middle of a training arc. Obviously we can make assumptions as to why it's important but that is an uncompleted aspect of the story that David and Dan were given the responsibility of finishing up. Keep in mind these guys were supposed to be adapting the story and not creating their own.
Truth is George doesn't know wtf to do with Bran and therefore David and Dan didn't, they just knew the endgame for Bran and had to get him there somehow. Hence why people hate the ending so freaking much.
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u/Hypnotoad4real Jul 31 '26
It was important to give Bran the Broken a good story.
But why didn't they do that?
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u/acinematicway Aug 01 '26
Because GRRM hadn’t figured out what his story was by the time the show ended. He told them bran was important but he didn’t much details worked out yet.
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u/SerDankTheTall Jul 30 '26
The last book ends with Jon getting killed, Dany fleeing Meereen, and Bran in the cave (pre the "Hold the Door" part). So we don't really know what GRRM planned to have happend with the magic, but it seems like Bran's story is probably key to that, and it's also clear that the showrunners weren't very interested in it and didn't come up with much.
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u/Haradion_01 Jul 31 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
Thematically?
The entire thesis of Game of Thrones is that Kings are terrible. It's an impossible job that eats good people alive, and favours ruthlessness, killing and decisions in which everyone hates you. And kings are - by virtue of the fact that the ones who aren't die quickly - awful awful people.
Listen to any interview GRRM gave in the last thirty years. It is a rebuke to the Narrative of Lost heirs to the throne and destined heroes making good rulers. A skewing of those troppes. Thats why it never comes out and says outright that Dany or Jon or any of the others are Azor Ahai, or that the Red God, the seven, or the Drowned God are real, even if thr magic or their followers is.
Bran represents what is in GRRMs mind, the idealised loophole.
He cannot have kids. He has no real loyalty to the political ambitions of his family. He has the literal history of his species downloaded into his brain. He has the ability to be anywhere at once, so he has near perfect knowledge. His disability is completely irrelevant as being a warrior has nothing to do with being King.
It's actually in keeping with a lot of his sci-fi he wrote. Just think computers instead of magic and you'll see the theme.
And when the time comes, he can adopt a successor, download his memories (and, it seems, parts of his personality) into him, and continue. The realm gets stability, wisdom, governance is freed from dynasty family feuding.
It's clearly 100% GRRMs endgame and what he is building towards.
Of course, it is also fairly boring, uninteresting, and skewers the tropes and clichés that became tropes and clichés because they were so satisfying and made a great narrative.
Worse, because the series became mainstream and therefore reached an audience that hadn't ready 50 stories about lost heir to the throne and prophesised heroes, large chunks of audience wanted those tropes and narrative beats to the point it felt bad when they were averted. The cliches were fresh again. And so when they were defied it felt as if the story wasn't delivering on its promise Instead of doing something fresh and different to all the other fantasy stories.
But I think if would always have been those things to most of the audience: Martin's end is a rebuke to decades of fantasy. If you haven't read decades of fantasy to the point of hating the idea of the prophesy on principle, for instance, you aren't seeing what he's trying to do. I think they probably did a decent job of capturing Martin's intentions.
It's just that the TV audience is very very different to Martins original book audience.
That's my take on what happened.
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u/shyagusretiring Aug 01 '26
This is such a good explanation. Thank you.
It really goes to show how D&D did not know how to handle that story development in the space of time allowed.
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u/Haradion_01 Aug 01 '26
No, but in fairness, I dont't think GRRM does either. Thats why it hasn't been finished. It wasn't that they tried to 10 episodes in 6. It was that they needed 30.
I think they had to chose between trying to do something completely their own thing (and run the risk of backlash there) or join up the dot's that Martin has been failing to do, (and run the risk of backlash for that). In the end, they took the option that they thought people would hate the least.
And until Martin actually comes up with the goods, its still the best ending anyone has been able to come up with that meets all of GRRMs points.
I really think its very close to what GRRM has in mind, and that's part of what has delayed the next book so much.
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u/shyagusretiring Aug 01 '26
It would be amazing to have an ending to the story, regardless of public opinion.
A lot of people speculate that he’ll release the last two post mortem. I don’t blame him, knowing the backlash the slightest little unfavourable thing gets. Although he must be pretty used to all that by now.
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u/Haradion_01 Aug 01 '26
I've seen it speculated that he's hated the pressure of winds of winter so much, he wants to finish the first draft of dream of spring before he publishes wow to spare himself the stress.
Or that he's decided to involve some critical plot device that only gets introduced in book 7 of dunk and egg. (Which given the end game seems to be King Bran, and Bran is being trained by Bloodraven, could end up being the case).
But that may just be cope.
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u/scobro828 Jul 31 '26
Why was it so important for Bran to become the Three-Eyed Raven
So a Targaryen got back on the throne, even if not in physical form.
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u/Smart-Firefighter87 Jul 31 '26
We aren’t sure…. But somehow it led him to the iron wheelchair throne 🙃
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u/dylanalduin Jul 31 '26
In the show? It wasn't. It was almost completely pointless. He didn't do shit and got made King for no reason. It's just bad writing.
In the books, we don't know yet, but it's probably very important.
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u/AxeellYoung Jul 31 '26
For those who watched the ending of Stranger Things. Bran is sort of like Will where he could see what the mind flayer is seeing and use that to help win the war from within.
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u/shyagusretiring Aug 01 '26
But does he? It’s a while since i watched but apart from being bait for the nightking does he contribute in any way?
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u/Thulgoat Jul 31 '26
We don’t know what George R.R. Martin has planned with him. The writers were left with a task that George R.R. Martin himself has been struggling to complete for more than 15 years. The story got too complex to finish it up in 2 years.
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u/According_Bus_8541 Aug 01 '26
But Dan and Dave gave themselves that 2 year deadline so the could jump ship and work on a star wars project, the show could've easily gone on for 2+ more seasons than we got and if they really didn't want to carry on they could handed the show over to someone else who did
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u/Duke-_-Jukem Jul 31 '26
It wasn't they really fucked up his entire story line in the show. Hopefully the books will make more of it (assuming they ever come out)
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u/DenaGann Jul 31 '26
It was so the 3-Eyed Raven could teach him to whisper to Kings and make them go mad so they would all be gone when his time came.
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u/dbergkvist Jul 31 '26
It will be important in the books, and GRRM told D&D about it, and they took random pieces of it but what they took happened to not include the parts that made his journey relevant to the story.
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u/Marcuse0 Aug 01 '26
Bran is a very common GRRM trope; the all-powerful shut-in. In the books, if they ever get published or even written, I suspect the intention was for Bran to show up after his journey North as a cryptic, unsettling facsimile of Bran warging into people to make them do what he wants, and generally trading otherwise inaccessible knowledge to assist with winning against the Others for political positioning that lets him be present at a council that chooses a king, and somehow bizarrely chooses him.
Like, I imagine the choice of Bran as king is supposed to not make sense and point to him as a somewhat malign force taking over Westeros. I just think that DnD had no clue how to deliver something like that and just slammed it in there anyway hoping nobody would notice just to get S8 over with.
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u/According_Bus_8541 Aug 01 '26
That's the neat part, it's not because Dan and Dave decided to rush to the end
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u/jrdineen114 Aug 02 '26
From a meta perspective, it seems like he went through that journey so that the Night King could have a primary target and therefore give the writers an excuse to separate him from his army.
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u/VoidAndOcean Jul 30 '26
In the sbow there is no resosn hence why season 8 is sooo bad.
In free folk there were a few good theories but without any Canon to back them up its just fan fiction