At Least One Game of Thrones Star Thought Big Finale Twist Was a Joke

Isaac Hempstead Wright, who played Bran, at first believed that the showrunners have played a prank on him.

"I genuinely thought it was a joke script and that [showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss] sent to everyone a script with their own character [ending] up on the Iron Throne," he said to EW. "'Yeah, good one, guys. Oh s--t, it's actually real?'"

Well, on one level his surprise is not surprising.

At the first glance this twist appears to be nonsensical. Bran was never interested in ruling anything. He has a claim on the throne of the now-independent North, but not on whatever they are going to use instead of the melted Iron Throne. He has magical farsight, including some ability to predict the future, but he has no armies, no loyal supporters, and no allies willing and able to safeguard him in King's Landing.

So, without sufficient context, it very much appears as a case of the showrunners simply running out of named characters and picking the first one who was not utterly unsuitable or occupied otherwise as the new King.

However, Isaac Wright might have been much less surprised, had he read George Martin 's books, and especially fan theories about the future of his character, before the script for the final season.

For it long was a popular theory that Bran is going to be possessed by the person who was only known in the show as the Three-Eyed Crow, but in the books was revealed to be the sorcerer Brynden Rivers aka Bloodraven, a person who, going by accounts of his earlier deeds, long before most of Game of Thrones' characters were even born, would be quite interested in ruling Westeros.

While even in the show it is fairly clear that by the endgame much of Bran Stark, perhaps virtually all of him, is gone and replaced by something emotionless and inhuman – though the hazy, blank stare he displayed throughout the final season was actually an accidental part of Isaac's performance – the showrunners did not go through with the possession theory.

Perhaps they believed it to be too depressing even compared to turning Bran into a sort of living, all-knowing computer, or perhaps they thought that it is better to keep some mystery about what exactly happened to him.