bran stark comes off like a fucking wanker by the end of Game of Thrones, but that’s mainly on the writers. Isaac Hempstead Wright had the deeply weird job of playing a kid who gets dropped out of a tower and then slowly turns into everyone’s least chatty search engine. the performance isn’t the problem. the show stops giving Bran enough to be a person.
early on, bran’s story is one of the bits that actually made me curious. he falls, wakes up unable to walk, starts having these unsettling dreams, and heads north because there might be an answer to what’s happening to him. there’s a real mystery to it. the Hodor reveal is horrible and clever, and for a minute all the strange time stuff feels like it has a cost.
the writers leave him behind
after the Three-Eyed Raven storyline, Bran comes back from every scene with less personality than he had going in. he talks like he’s reading a weather report from 400 years in the future. someone tells him their entire family has been through hell and he replies with something like “i know”. cheers, mate. extremely helpful. it’s funny once; it’s frustrating when the show keeps using that same flatness instead of letting us understand what’s going on inside him.
i get what the writers are going for. he’s seen too much, he’s not quite the same person, and the distance is meant to be eerie. but “mysterious” and “interesting” aren’t the same thing. the show strips away his wants and relationships, then mostly uses him as a plot device who turns up to deliver information when the story needs it.
and he can see so much, apparently, but the writers never make those powers feel like a proper point of view. what does he actually want? what matters to him now? what can he change, and what can’t he? the show keeps the rules foggy, so his visions can be hugely important one episode and oddly irrelevant the next. that isn’t a mystery; it’s a story tool the writers haven’t bothered to make consistent.
the ending has not earned him the crown
the ending is where the writing problem becomes the show’s problem. the lords are asked who should rule, Tyrion says Bran has the best story, and suddenly that is meant to settle it. i’m sorry, the best story? Jon has spent years being used as a weapon and then exiled. Sansa has survived and learned how power works. Arya crossed half the map to kill the Night King. but the series gives Bran almost no meaningful choices in the final stretch, then asks us to accept that his story makes him the obvious king.
i can see the idea: maybe the person who remembers the past can stop the next king from repeating it. that could be a good ending. the writers just don’t make the case. they give Bran huge, vague powers, leave him out of the action for stretches, and then ask one speech to do the work of a whole character arc. The Ringer made a similar point about the gap between the idea and the way the show got there.
also, “why do you think i came all this way?” is such a strange line at that moment. if the writers want us to read Bran as a schemer, they barely build that. if they want us to read him as a reluctant, wise choice, the line works against them. either way, it leaves the finale feeling like the show changed the rules right at the end.
it drags the whole ending down
there’s another thing that bothers me: the way “Bran the Broken” becomes his title, and the way Tyrion’s pitch leans on Bran’s disability and the fact that he can’t have children. i don’t mind a disabled character becoming king. i mind the writing treating his body like a neat political symbol, then barely showing us the person who has to live in it. it could have been sharp and complicated. instead, it’s another shortcut to making him seem like a wise, safe choice.
so yes, Bran can be a wanker. but the bigger failure is the writing: it turns him into a cryptic walking plot answer, then asks us to care about a political ending it hasn’t made believable. that weakens more than Bran. it makes the final choice of king feel unearned, leaves the show’s ideas about power and memory half-finished, and makes all those years of prophecy and visions feel like setup without a proper payoff. i’m not mad that Bran gets the crown. i’m mad the writers didn’t do the work to make it matter.