[BOOK SPOILERS] Bran's importance sold short in Season 1?

[aimlessgun]

I was talking to a non-reader friend about the season and he described Bran as a "useless character" and doesn't see the point of returning to him in Winterfell once Robb leaves.

You definitely get much less of a sense of significance from his dreams in the show than in the book, and I guess the creepy prescient shared dream wasn't enough to make my friend think "oh there are big things in store for him as a seer".

What say you? Do you think the show needed to make time for more Bran dreams?

[NW Deserter]

The only difference really is the omission of his falling dream. Honestly, by the end of my first Game of Thrones reading, I felt the same way about Bran. I did sorta figure that he'd play a part eventually because he'd had so many PoVs (including the first of the book, not counting the prologue) and was a Stark, but it really wasn't until near the end of Clash of Kings, when Jojen starts teaching him about his Third Eye, that I thought he'd be at all important.

[aimlessgun]

Less of a falling dream than a flying dream. In the dream he sees the entire world, and sees things that he could not possibly know since he was comatose. He sees his mother and Ser Rodrik sailing to King's Landing, sees his father arguing with Robert in King's Landing, he sees representations of their enemies, the Hound, Jaime (or Joffrey?) and the Mountain, surrounding his sisters.

What grabbed me most was this part:

...North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.

If the 3 eyed crow thinks Bran must live, that really drives home to me that he will be instrumental in defeating the Others. Later when Old Nan is telling him stories she talks about the previous invasion, when a hero went out looking for the Children of the Forest to get their help...and my mind immediately linked that to Bran's destiny.

[howland_reed]

No, it's fine.

Bran really doesn't do much in Game of Thrones besides being a lens for the reader and having crow dreams, which the show has covered pretty adroitly, without being heavy-handed and with enough mystique.

I'm sure he'll be more heavily featured in S2. It's not like his 'fake death' will happen in the first few episodes of S2, so they have ample time to develop his character even more before he's forced to trek north.

[j52y]

I will agree that Bran after the first book felt more important than Bran after the first season. But , that's main;y because of the dream and the fact that Bran is a POV character. Were I a viewer, I would assume that Bran has an important role to play in a future season, or else he wouldn't be main billed.

[Envie]

Bran doesn't really start having these significant green dreams and skinchanger episodes until close to the end of the first book. I agree that the missing 'flying' dreams with the raven would have made him seem larger in the grand scheme of things, but perhaps that would have been difficult to do production wise and taking up time needed for the immediate plot of the television series.

It's curious to hear what a nonreader thinks about Bran, or any of the characters - but then again everyone's opinion, even those who've read the books is different for different characters. There are many who thought Ned Stark was a very important character who was killed off so early, but I've always felt he was really meant to be a throwaway character from the start, who is merely a catalyst for all of the others around him (his wife and children mainly).

Bran's real part in the story is to show some of the 'magic' that's returning into Westeros including inner sight and shapshifting, which the children of the forest once used. There's magical things happening beyond the wall, and across the sea - and Bran's showing another form of it closer to home.

[Exmortus]

I think that season one should have given just a little more explanation as to Bran's importance. Each time we see the crow, thats all we get, a glimpse of the fact that it is no ordinary crow. I think they should have had a little dialouge between the crow like in the book. No need to do the whole falling/flying just a couple cryptic comments when he sees the crow right before he wakes up. Just a little more of an inclination that Bran is going be a much more interesting character than season one made him out to be.