After taking season 5 off, Bran made a big return in season 6, coming out the other side with the seemingly very important powers of the Three-Eyed Raven. It’s clear that Bran will have a very important part to play in the final two season of “Game of Thrones,” but what that part will be remains a complete unknown.
Bran is one of the few members of House Stark to never go south from the Stark home of Winterfell. Way back in the first episode of the series, Bran was shoved out a high window by Jaime Lannister.
He survived but was in a coma, and stayed in Winterfell while his father Ned and sisters Sansa and Arya traveled to King’s Landing. His half-brother Jon Snow, meanwhile, went north to join the Night’s Watch.
Bran awoke a few episodes later, paralyzed from the waist down and bedridden. On one occasion, a Lannister assassin (pictured) came after him as he lay helpless, but Bran’s pet direwolf, Summer, tore out the man’s throat.
After his father, Ned, was executed by King Joffrey, Robb Stark led the Northern houses to war and took their mother Catelyn with him — leaving Bran in charge of Winterfell.
During the war, “King of the North” Robb sent the Stark Ward Theon Greyjoy to the Iron Islands to broker a deal for aid with his father. But instead Theon led a raid on Winterfell with Ironborn men capturing it while the Stark armies fought hundreds of miles away.
Bran and his little brother, Rickon, were able to escape an occupied Winterfell with the help of Hodor and the wildling Osha.
Theon killed a pair of boys close in age to the Starks and told everyone it was Bran and Rickon, leading everyone to think they were dead.
After a lot of meandering around the countryside, the group met Jojen and Meera. Jojen and Bran had the same dreams, apparently, and they were both wargs — meaning their consciousnesses could enter the mind of an animal and control it. Their visions, Jojen said, were pointing them north of the Wall.
As the group moved north, they sought shelter in an old windmill during a thunderstorm, just as some wildlings were raiding a nearby homestead. Hodor, upset by the thunder, would not be quiet and risked giving away the group. And here Bran learned the greater extent of his warg powers by entering Hodor’s mind and silencing him. An alarming and enticing development.
From there, Jojen, Meera, Hodor and Bran, along with Bran’s trusty direwolf, Summer, went beyond the wall while the rest stayed south of it.
The trio stumbled into the Night’s Watch revolt at Craster’s Keep, getting locked up by the rebels, and Bran narrowly missed seeing Jon Snow again. Bran wargs into Hodor again to slaughter some of their captors so they can escape. Everyone, especially the gentle Hodor, is troubled by this.
They soon manage to find the tree from Bran’s visions and, as mentioned above, Jojen is killed by a wight. Bran again wargs into Hodor to fight them off.
After the fight, Bran at long last meets the Three-Eyed Raven, who turns out to be an old man fused to the roots of a weirwood tree. The Raven tells Bran he is there to train his third eye, and to use his dreams to delve into his father’s past.
Through his dreams, Bran discovers how the first White Walker was created, and sees Ned Stark slaying Arthur Dayne and members of the Targaryens’ Kingsguard who are guarding a tower holding Ned’s sister, Lyanna. But before Bran can follow Ned into the tower, the Raven pulls him out of the vision.
Becoming reckless with his powers, Bran accidentally reveals his location to The Night’s King and his forces. The White Walkers then attack the Raven’s lair while Bran is still dreaming, killing The Raven and Summer.
Trapped in his vision of Hodor as a child, Bran wargs into the younger Hodor so the present-day Hodor can fight off the White Walkers again. But because of Bran’s interference in the past, the younger Hodor’s mind is twisted, causing his inability to say anything other than the word “Hodor” — a blending together of the phrase “hold the door.”
With Hodor left behind with the White Walkers, Bran and Meera struggle to escape. But the two are rescued by Bran’s long lost uncle, Benjen, who was stabbed by the White Walkers while patrolling with the Night’s Watch but was saved by the Children of the Forest from becoming a Wight. Benjen says he must remain north of the Wall to fight the White Walkers because the magic properties of the Wall won’t allow the dead (including him) to pass it, and says that Bran must become the new Three-Eyed Raven.
After getting dropped off by Benjen near the Wall in the season 6 finale, Bran uses his powers again to return to his earlier vision of Ned and Lyanna. He sees Lyanna give birth to a son fathered by Rhaegar Targaryen. Bran realizes that this child is Jon Snow, making his bastard half-brother the true heir to the Iron Throne.
