[Book Spoilers All] Bran’s Growing Powers in S6 Based upon the Reread

[Meera of Tarth]

More thoughts on what has possibly happened.....I'm not good at timetravel explanations so I challenge you to prove me wrong!

 

You know....I watched the episode thinking it was Hodor's who sacrificed himself. It made total sense.

Now, that makes Bran selfish......and when he sees Wyllis is just heartbreaking, because he has warged Hodor at the same time, and now he has done 2 things wrong (meeting the NK, warging Present Hodor), or 3, considering he possibly created Hodor from Wyllis.

Anyway, I'm still not sure if he was warging Hodor all the time. They want to make us think that it was Bran who was holding the door? And Meera wanted it to happen instead of all they running saying Hold the Door to Bran?

I know it's self-survival issues....but.....I don't know.

-But Bran warging Hodor doesn't explain all the things. Why could he warg Hodor, run and hold the door while at the same time see Wyllis from the past? Is it an allegory? Why does Wyllis see him?

-Some people argue that Bran warged Hodor while having the vision and thus, being next to the two Hodors, it collapsed both Wyllis and Hodor's minds. But that doesn't explain how is he aware of Wyllis and running at the same time and why does WYllis see him. >Again, is it an allegory?

-And that doesn't explain the time paradoxes. 3 hypothesis:

 

cyclic, not changes are possible, but there is more than one Bran......"normal timetravel"; if there are changes, that means new timelines, but it's not the case

• Are we supposed to think that a Bran from the Future did the same thing some time ago in the cave while our Bran was a baby and that our Hodor collapsed 20 years ago because of the action of that Bran from the Future in his past that turn out to be OUR past, the past in which OUR Hodor became Wyllis? Because Hodor was Hodor time before OUR BRAN warged Hodor in the cave. And Wyllis is warged AFTER present Bran wargs Present Hodor. 
• -So maybe OUR Bran warged Present Hodor and also warged a Wyllis from the past just like FBran did, but the Wyllis whom he warged was not OUR Hodor from our known past, but a Hodor that will meet a Bran that has yet to appear, that now is a baby, probably.
• This baby will become a Future Bran (not the Future Bran I was taking about, that was the first Bran, this would be the Third Bran, being OUR Bran the second).

cyclic, only one Bran affecting the past but it's the same past that results into our present. Somebody mentioned the loop here and I think they are right.

• -I think the one timeline with different Brans doing the same is not the explanation. Because we need two Brans to explain Present Hodor. But one BRan doing the same things results into a loop, which is even more complicated. And not only a loop, but a loop in which those actions are not simultaneous, considering that what we saw were two wargings not simultaneous.

Bran has changed the past, without knowing it, and created a new timeline

• -Anyway, that would mean that timelines are cyclic, and the ink is always dry. My take is that the ink can't be dry and that is even more complicated, but interesting:
• So probably  that Present Hodor was created in another circumstance, and not The Hold The Door we already know. Present Bran created Hodor, but not the one we know, but another future Hodor, changing the past and also our present, without knowing it.

[Tijgy]

@Meera of Tarth

According to @Chebyshov - http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/144855143127/i-know-were-here-mostly-criticizing-the-show-but

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But with that out of the way…yeah. It was super unclear. How it was presented was that Bran was stuck in a green dream as the wights were attacking. So his consciousness was in Past!Winterhell, where Young!Hodor (aka “Wylis”) was chilling.

In the present day, all these wights were swarming, so Meera starts screaming at Bran that he has to “warg” Hodor (...). Bran still stays in his vision (eyes are still all white and stuff), so she gets Hodor to pick him up or drag him or something  (...) . Anyway, they get to this back door that Hodor opens, as Meera drags Bran on a sled thing out of it. Then she begins screaming at Hodor to “hold the door!”

As she’s yelling, we flash back into Bran’s flashback where we still hear her voice. He makes eye contact with Young!Hodor, and then I *think* the implication is that in that vision, he skinchanges into him. So this causes Young!Hodor to have some kind of seizure, presumably because he’s glimpsing his own demise through this somehow?? And Young!Hodor keeps repeating “hold the door” until it morphs into “hodor” while Present!Hodor holds the door. But from what I can tell, Present!Hodor wasn’t being controlled by Bran. Though again, it was really fucking dark and shaky, so I could be wrong.

The best sense I can make of it is that thanks to Bran and Meera, those jerks, Young!Hodor glimpsed his future and it was the inception point for his disability as a result. It doesn’t seem like the Hodor we had seen on our screens had any tangible understand of what was going to happen to him, but somewhere there is this repressed trauma, as he can only say “hodor.” Time paradox! “Programmed to live for this menial purpose” is kind of an Unintended Implication, I think, which is not made more comfortable by the fact that it was Bran doing the programming. 

They really made it not clear what happened.

[Meera of Tarth]

1 hour ago, Tijgy said:

@Meera of Tarth

According to @Chebyshov - http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/144855143127/i-know-were-here-mostly-criticizing-the-show-but

They really made it not clear what happened.

OK. So maybe it's done on purpose and we won't know yet what happened. Everyone I talk about say it's so confusing. Could Bran still be in the past and in the present doing two different things at the same time? It's really really weird....

And, by the way....I wouldn't discard the action of another Bran (possibly from the future taking action of one of the two Hodors). I thought the Present Bran was warging the Present Hodor, but who knows, it could be that the Present one is warging the young Hodor and The Future Bran the Present Hodor. There are a lot of explanations, considering the fixed timeline.

What doesn't make sense is that if Present Bran wargs Present Hodor and also Wyllis, then at that time, when Wyllis was warged Bran had not been born...so that's why I thought we need another Bran, that's another reason.

But, considering what the article says, if Bran warged Wyllis, we also need another Bran to warg Hodor. It would explain everything in a fixed timeline.The same Bran in both moments it's absurd and results into a strange loop where Bran is omnipresent, and he is not a god.

However...I also think that Bran can alter the timelines. And, possibly out Hodor became Hodor by other means. Anyway, I find it difficult to believe that Hodor always knew what was going to happen to him.

[Chebyshov]

Honestly, I hate to be a poodle, but I just don't think the show is worthy of any form of Watsonian analysis. They thought this time paradox was a cool twist, but it's filled with so much illogic, just like every other Shock™ they write. Did Bran have to be touching a branch to be greenseeing or not? Isn't that a bit of a crucial detail?

Overall, I really don't think this is gonna shed any insight into his book trajectory, especially when Martin himself said the context was going to be different, and I definitely don't think Bran's book arc had much impact in their crafting of this narrative, just like with every other character on this show.

Creatively it made sense because they wanted it to happen. Trying to rationalize it beyond that is going to lead to a headache, trust me.

But, given the timey-wimey enthusiasm, this is from a comment on the Fandom Following recap, for what it's worth:

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Ok, so I'm kind of a time paradox fan, and since I do believe that some version of this Hodor origins story will happen in the books (in a way, and in a really, really different way - like the Shireen burning, that simply can't and won't happen in the same illogical context), here are my two cents:

So, we're clearly dealing with a closed loop here. Bran can't change the past, some of the past events (Hodor) happened the way they did because Bran already did it in the future.

But here's a but. The execution of the closed loop in this episode was, what else, badly done. Why was the loop created in the first place? The cave is about to be under attack, they know it, not!Bloodraven, instead of helping to protect the cave, takes Bran into weirwood.net once again. So there should be a really good reason, right? Something REALLY important he needs to show him? Nope, they're just watching Ned depart for the Vale. Nothing happens. There's no reason to waste those crucial moments to do this. But then it turns out that not!Bloodraven's doing it, only so Bran can warg Hodor and close the loop. And this is not how this should work. The reasoning for the loop has to grow out of the future, not out of the past. If there was no reason to create the loop in the first place, it wouldn't exist. There shouldn't be a mindless circle of "I need to do this thing only because I know this thing happened". No, the cause-effect principle is exactly the same as always, just the time is backward (future --> past, not past ---> future). It should still be "This thing happened, because I needed to do it".

Not!Blackraven basically forcing Bran to fry Hodor's brain only because he knows that Bran did it, isn't a well-excecuted loop. If this was the only reason they were watching this vision instead of protecting the cave, getting Bran away in a more effective way, teaching Bran what he has to do next etc., then this Hodor-loop shouldn't exist. Because they had a lot of other better options at that point. It doesn't really surprise me they screwed it up, but they definitely screwed it up.

And I can't believe they did the staying behind to buy heroes time thing over and over again, and the whole thing where the zombies should've definitely caught up with our heroes, but somehow don't. Really, literally a minute after breaking down that door the ice zombies on speed should catch up and devour Bran and Meera.

 

[Meera of Tarth]

News from Bran!

Isaac said this...Oh, he is amazing, look:

@Tijgy you will like this

 

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I read it, and I was with my mom, and I said, “Oh my god. Hodor dies.” She said, “No he doesn’t.” And I said, “Yes. He just died. And so did Summer.” It was pure disbelief. I think the most traumatizing thing about it is that it’s not just that Hodor dies, and it’s the death of this gentle giant who we didn’t know much about. It’s like, we justhave finally seen what exactly happened to his character to make him that way, and it’s totally traumatic and awful and sad that this once perfectly happy and fun little kid was basically screwed over by Bran. That giant bomb drops, and then he’s taken from us.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/game-thrones-isaac-hempstead-wright-897287

[Meera of Tarth]

And now....Nairn says that Hodor wasn't warged when holding the door, as I speculated!!!

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The man of the week, Hodor himself Kristian Nairn gives a great interview to the New York Times about his work on the show, and answers a good and pressing question: does Bran being responsible for Hodor’s death and his “Hodor”-ness change Nairn’s feelings about Bran and Hodor’s relationship?

The actor says, “No it doesn’t. Although Bran was responsible for the whole chain of events that killed Hodor, Hodor didn’t have to hold that door. He wasn’t being warged into at that stage. It was Meera who asked him to hold the door, it wasn’t Bran. He wants to protect the little guy. That’s all he’s ever done. He wants to help — this is the ultimate helping hand here. I just think he would be happy they could continue without him.”

 

 

[Meera of Tarth]

Oh, and look at this too:

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I know very little about what exactly happened there. I know about as much as we've seen on screen. I don't know the exact intricacies of how it worked. But my take on it is that Bran is in this vision. He hears Meera. He gets that he has to warg, but subconsciously, the only way he can do that is through a time-bending thing, which is by going into the Hodor he's presently with in this vision. It's not like they're dreams, either, as far as I know. It's not like Bran's just having a dream…

No, he's in the past.

Yeah, exactly. The only way Bran can get into Hodor in the current day is to go into the vehicle of the young Hodor and go through his mind. It's like Bran is kind of racing through millions of different time frames and neural pathways in the brain of the young Hodor, going all the way into the current day. I think it's almost like an overload for the young Hodor's brain, and the adult Hodor's brain, and suddenly everything's kicking off. I don't know if it's a conscious decision Bran makes to take Hodor over. I think it's more subconsciously, he knows that he has to somehow get inside Hodor.

Bran tries to warg Past Hodor, and possibly does.

There is a time connection between both Hodors, as I speculated.

We know Old Hodor was warged: but no one says who really warged him. Isaac doesn't explicitly say he wargs him, possibly he says he tries to warg him by warging Wyllis, and by doing it, there is a short-circuit between both Hodors and we don't know if he managed to warg Old Hodor. Considering

-the moment when we see Wyllis being warged

-what Nairn says, Hodor is counscious

-We know someone (Bran?) wargs Hodor when they are INSIDE the cave

the most logical explanation is that by that short-circuit, Old Hodor most likely gets un-warged when Bran tries to warg Wyllis, and that suggests that that Bran previously warged Old Hodor (or someone else warged him, not present timeline BRAN). Could it be that someone else unwarged Hodor? I don't think so.

The sequence of events is this: we see Bran being aware of the situation, then Hodors gets warged possibly by Bran from his vision...and then Bran sees Wyllis, Wyllys gets warged and that same time we know that Hodor is sacrificing.

 

But we should also take into consideration that the sequence of events maybe is not in order. Anyway, Hodor not being warged (as the actor says) when holding the Door is really difficult to explain while Isaac saying what he thinks it has happened. 

My take is that:

So possibly Bran warged both Hodors, and when warged Wyllis /the second Hodor  the first one got unwarged and he sacrificed.

LINKS: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/game-thrones-isaac-hempstead-wright-897287

[Tijgy]

1 hour ago, Meera of Tarth said:

So possibly Bran warged both Hodors, and when warged Wyllis /the second Hodor  the first one got unwarged and he sacrificed.

 

I think you are right about this. I really like also more the idea Hodor sacrificed himself over the idea Bran forced him to do this.

[Meera of Tarth]

19 hours ago, Tijgy said:

I think you are right about this. I really like also more the idea Hodor sacrificed himself over the idea Bran forced him to do this.

We have proof now. Nairn wouldn't have said this if it was not for certain. Because it really has an impact on the story. And that's how I took it the first time. I'm "happy" again

[Wizz-The-Smith]

On ‎25‎/‎05‎/‎2016 at 5:59 PM, Chebyshov said:

Honestly, I hate to be a poodle, but I just don't think the show is worthy of any form of Watsonian analysis. They thought this time paradox was a cool twist, but it's filled with so much illogic, just like every other Shock™ they write. Did Bran have to be touching a branch to be greenseeing or not? Isn't that a bit of a crucial detail?

Overall, I really don't think this is gonna shed any insight into his book trajectory, especially when Martin himself said the context was going to be different, and I definitely don't think Bran's book arc had much impact in their crafting of this narrative, just like with every other character on this show.

Creatively it made sense because they wanted it to happen. Trying to rationalize it beyond that is going to lead to a headache, trust me.

But, given the timey-wimey enthusiasm, this is from a comment on the Fandom Following recap, for what it's worth:

 

[Bolded]  Exactly this.  I think GRRM has already said it will be different in the books.  The 'hold the door' thing seems confirmed, but how this scenario comes about in the novels could well be very different.  In fact, I suspect it will be a lot clearer in the books, however it plays out.  I agree this 'time paradox thing' was seen as a cool avenue to take, and they will use 'TV short cuts' such as the touching of the weirwood mentioned above.  There will be things that don't add up, and inevitable holes in the time paradox, I don't think it's worth thinking too much about.  We as a fandom all like to scrutinise, and sometimes the show will not reach this level of detail for various reasons.    

But for what it's worth regards the show alone, here's my take on all this after some searches on the web........................  

Big Hodor was definitely skinchanged as his eyes went white.  But Christian Nairn [Hodor actor] has said that Bran was not controlling him when he was 'holding the door' and he sacrificed himself as he was listening to Meera.  So it seems Bran was skinchanged into Hodor [through a connection with Willis, or perhaps an ability to magic into both time zones] until the point he made eye contact with Willis.  He then accidently skinchanged Willis in the past, leaving Big Hodor to be the hero.  But tragically leaving Young Willis in a horrible time split as he can see Bran and hear the shouts from Meera [in the future] and see his future death.  This of course is too much for the young lads mind, and we know the rest.  It's all rather horrible, poor Willis [Walder]  I THINK that's what happened anyway, it is somewhat confusing!!   

Hey Meera, I don't disregard the notion that they may play with this 'time thing' a bit more in the show, I fully expect it in fact.  But I think it will be very different in the books, I trust George to bring more clarity to the situation.  They must have some idea of what's going on, so if you can shed light on the 'show perspective' then all discussion is worthwhile seeing as we're in a show thread.    Some cool thoughts in the posts up thread, if not a little mind boggling.   

[Meera of Tarth]

News on Wyllis:

 

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Did Hodor know how he was going to die ever since that pivotal moment in the Winterfell courtyard when he lost his speech?

I don’t think so. I don’t think he had any sense of what was coming. I don’t think he recognized Bran when he saw him the second time around. He maybe felt some sort of connection to him, which was why the bond was there. But I don’t think he said to himself “Oh that’s that little [expletive] from the courtyard, stay away from him. Run!”

 

http://winteriscoming.net/2016/05/27/kristian-nairn-holds-the-door-and-shows-he-has-no-hard-feelings/

[Tijgy]

I also want to quickly bring in what Isaac said about it (from the article @Meera of Tarth found)

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Back at the Tower of Joy, Bran called out to his father, and Ned's reaction suggested that Bran can interact with the past. After "The Door," there's no question that Bran can make a dent on the past — and in this particular case, it seems that Bran was always fated to turn Hodor into Hodor. 

Right. It comes down to a sense of determinism versus indeterminism, whether we think that everything's going to be a preordained, sequential series of events, or whether we can really mess about with the timeline and there's some free will there. I don't know. I remember watching a Stephen Hawking documentary where he was talking about time-traveling into the past, and the problem with that is it creates paradoxes. He suspects that basically it won't be possible to prevent these paradoxes from happening. I think you can translate that into Game of Thrones, in the sense that basically Bran messing with the timeline, it's almost like he's being punished. He has to pay the price for doing it. Time takes back what Bran's taking from time. It's like a trade-off, really. Bran can't just be like, "Yeah, I'm going to go do this and stop myself from falling out the window." Every time he does, it'll have a massive ripple kind of Doctor Who effect on the rest of the univers

 

It is of course still what the actor thinks and not the showrunners. 

Isaac looks like a real smart lad.

[Meera of Tarth]

9 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

[Bolded]  Exactly this.  I think GRRM has already said it will be different in the books.  The 'hold the door' thing seems confirmed, but how this scenario comes about in the novels could well be very different.  In fact, I suspect it will be a lot clearer in the books, however it plays out.  I agree this 'time paradox thing' was seen as a cool avenue to take, and they will use 'TV short cuts' such as the touching of the weirwood mentioned above.  There will be things that don't add up, and inevitable holes in the time paradox, I don't think it's worth thinking too much about.  We as a fandom all like to scrutinise, and sometimes the show will not reach this level of detail for various reasons.    

But for what it's worth regards the show alone, here's my take on all this after some searches on the web........................  

Big Hodor was definitely skinchanged as his eyes went white.  But Christian Nairn [Hodor actor] has said that Bran was not controlling him when he was 'holding the door' and he sacrificed himself as he was listening to Meera.  So it seems Bran was skinchanged into Hodor [through a connection with Willis, or perhaps an ability to magic into both time zones] until the point he made eye contact with Willis.  He then accidently skinchanged Willis in the past, leaving Big Hodor to be the hero.  But tragically leaving Young Willis in a horrible time split as he can see Bran and hear the shouts from Meera [in the future] and see his future death.  This of course is too much for the young lads mind, and we know the rest.  It's all rather horrible, poor Willis [Walder]  I THINK that's what happened anyway, it is somewhat confusing!!   

Hey Meera, I don't disregard the notion that they may play with this 'time thing' a bit more in the show, I fully expect it in fact.  But I think it will be very different in the books, I trust George to bring more clarity to the situation.  They must have some idea of what's going on, so if you can shed light on the 'show perspective' then all discussion is worthwhile seeing as we're in a show thread.    Some cool thoughts in the posts up thread, if not a little mind boggling.   

Hey @Wizz-The-Smith!!

If had all these in my head all the week! How to explain what happened!!! You know, I cried when watching that scene, but it really was more confusing, because the first time I thought he didn't warg Hodor (I didn't see the white eyes), then someone told me he actually  did, and then read about what Nairn said...so he sacrificed...I was " happy" to know Bran did not kill him.

I think we have the same idea on mind. He warged and unwarged him, by warging Wyllis. Something like that. 

I can also see more about this coming in the show....even the confirmation if we are in a fixed timeline or not, but if we are in the former I dont think we will get to see a FutureBran or something like that, not even in the books.

[Meera of Tarth]

7 minutes ago, Tijgy said:

I also want to quickly bring in what Isaac said about it (from the article @Meera of Tarth found)

It is of course still what the actor thinks and not the showrunners. 

Isaac looks like a real smart lad.

Yes, he is. The interview is amazing.

I think we will have more "Dr Who" stuff in the show. He can interact with the past, and I think he can probably make a few changes if necessary.

I also remember Isaac said something about the future, before the season aired. Maybe we will see him seeing or altering the Future?

That hasn't happened in the books. I'm so thrilled.

[Wizz-The-Smith]

10 minutes ago, Tijgy said:

I also want to quickly bring in what Isaac said about it (from the article @Meera of Tarth found)

It is of course still what the actor thinks and not the showrunners. 

Isaac looks like a real smart lad.

Agree with you both, Isaac is certainly a smart lad.  I reckon the actors have a good idea of what's going on regards storyline for the show.  They have to have some insight to play the role effectively.   

[Meera of Tarth]

I think they do have an idea. Kristian Nairn knew he would be dying sacrificing for his friend, you know these when he is acting. He does a great job.

As for Bran, it's interesting how Isaac says: I don't know exactly how this has happened" and says there's comething about the subcounscious IIRC. You know that even Bran doesn't know what's happening....he has more power than he thinks he has.

Moreover, regarding Bran you know that apart from being surprised, he faces Wyllis' event and so, the emotional part is important in his powers.

I think that was a revelation too.

[thehandwipes]

Uh, not to ruin anybody's Happy, but have we ever, in book or show, seen any indication that Hodor is capable of great bravery.  We've seen him panic in thunder, freeze in terror while under attack from wights, and have to be calmed down at the sight of roots cause they look like snakes.  Awesomeness may come natural to Hodor but I've seen nothing that even vaguely resembles courage.  It wouldn't be the first time we've seen an actor on the show say something entirely counterintuitive regarding their character.

Is it not far more likely that Hodor was helplessly pinned against that door by Bran.  That he died struggling like Thistle to regain control of his body while terrifying, terrifying wights peeled the skin from his flesh and the flesh from his bones and his only two friends in the world fled to safety, without him.

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"Deep inside he could hear poor Hodor whimpering still..."

Just kidding, the show doesn't mean anything. 

[Meera of Tarth]

13 hours ago, thehandwipes said:

Uh, not to ruin anybody's Happy, but have we ever, in book or show, seen any indication that Hodor is capable of great bravery.  We've seen him panic in thunder, freeze in terror while under attack from wights, and have to be calmed down at the sight of roots cause they look like snakes.  Awesomeness may come natural to Hodor but I've seen nothing that even vaguely resembles courage.  It wouldn't be the first time we've seen an actor on the show say something entirely counterintuitive regarding their character.

Is it not far more likely that Hodor was helplessly pinned against that door by Bran.  That he died struggling like Thistle to regain control of his body while terrifying, terrifying wights peeled the skin from his flesh and the flesh from his bones and his only two friends in the world fled to safety, without him.

Just kidding, the show doesn't mean anything. 

I can agree with you up to a certain point. I know that Hodor is not a brave person, and sacrificing himself is out of character both in the books and  in te show, but IMO these were extraordinary circumstances and he probably wasn't sacrificing 100%. I mean, he probably wanted to run, but at the last moment he knew there was no way out. At that moment he demonstrates he is brave probably for the first time and decides Bran has to be alive for saving the world.

I know, it's a plothole......but since Nairn said it was for real, and I felt it was Hodor and not Bran the one who was holding the door.....I prefer that version

[Tijgy]

1 minute ago, Meera of Tarth said:

I know, it's a plothole......but since Nairn said it was for real, and I felt it was Hodor and not Bran the one who was holding the door.....I prefer that version

Me too . I think it is open to interpretation and maybe we learn something more in this season.  

 

[thehandwipes]

17 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

I can agree with you up to a certain point. I know that Hodor is not a brave person, and sacrificing himself is out of character both in the books and  in te show, but IMO these were extraordinary circumstances and he probably wasn't sacrificing 100%. I mean, he probably wanted to run, but at the last moment he knew there was no way out. At that moment he demonstrates he is brave probably for the first time and decides Bran has to be alive for saving the world.

I know, it's a plothole......but since Nairn said it was for real, and I felt it was Hodor and not Bran the one who was holding the door.....I prefer that version

Lena and Nicolaj said it was consentual but it didn't look that way to me. 

I don't actually think the show can tell us anything about what will really happen.  If D&D want all their characters to sacrifice themselves in the most badass way possible with no thought to their characters, they'll make it happen, as un-creatively as possibly. 

In Norse mythology the god Hodr, tricked by Loki, accidentally kills Baldr (which is actually the exact same name as Walder) with an arrow tipped with mistletoe.  Hodr is the god of winter, of the cold and the dark.  Baldr is the god of awesomeness, everyone loves this guy, he's the best.  Maybe they were trying to show this and failed, but I think in the books Bran (Hodr) will hurt Waldur (Baldr) by mistake by Bloodraven's (Loki) doing.  That's my take on it.