'Game Of Thrones' Season 6 Teaser: Bran Stark Is Back; Why He Matters
The new teaser trailer for "Game of Thrones" Season 6 dropped this week, leaving GoT fans with something to chew on until the new season premieres in April - or earlier, if George R.R. Martin releases the sixth installment to his "A Song of Ice and Fire" series before then.
Many who saw the 42-second-long teaser would say that there wasn't much there to give fans a clue about what's to come. Most of the trailer was just a montage of scenes from the first five seasons of "Game of Thrones." There was Ned Stark being beheaded, Viserys Targaryen getting his crown of gold, Jamie Lannister's hand being chopped off, Arya Stark going blind at the end of Season 5, and more. There were zombie skeletons, battle scenes, the greatsword Ice, the Red Wedding, the Purple Wedding, Daenerys, and her dragons. And it all ended with Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright), who was last seen at the end of Season 4, saying, "You have no idea what is going to happen."
Though this may sound like the producers teasing the show's fans, it actually makes sense given how Bran's story goes in the novels. In "A Dance With Dragons," the most recent book in "A Song of Ice and Fire," Bran is introduced to the arts of greenseeing - the ability to see visions, and skinchanging - the ability to inhabit the bodies of animals and other humans. Bran learns these from the Three Eyed Raven (Struan Rodger in Season 4, Max von Sydow in Season 6), a tree-bound mystical creature who narrates part of the teaser.
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"We watch, we listen, and we remember," the Three Eyed Raven says. "The past is already written. The ink is dry."
As The Hollywood Reporter noted, these words can be taken as an emphasis on the past, especially given the various speculations about Season 6 events, such as the one that will supposedly take place at the Tower of Joy. But the image of Bran at the end, with his eyes rolled back, signalling that he is warging or about to warg, along with the ominous final line, may very well mean that he will play a pivotal role in events to come. Will Bran use his warging abilities to somehow bring his brother back to life? Will he be Season 6's Jon Snow? Will audiences find out that all of it was just a figment of Bran's imagination?
"Game of Thrones" Season 6 premieres in April 2016.
