Game of Thrones fans can expect a few notable changes to the show in the upcoming season, including the absence of Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), as we previously reported. Now, showrunner David Benioff is explaining a bit more about the decision to leave the character out of the season.
Benioff told Entertainment Weekly that the team is trying to keep all their storylines roughly in line with the book and running parallel, and last year the show caught up with Bran's storyline from the book series. "So if we pushed him forward this season, then he's way ahead of where the other characters are," Benioff said.
Benioff said he felt Bran finding the Three-Eyed Raven felt like a natural stopping point for him, and noted that a lot of Bran's immediate future will be a training period, which doesn't make for very exciting television.
The decision makes sense since, as Benioff said, the show has now almost completely caught up with Bran's storyline from A Dance with Dragons, the most recent book in the series. There's slightly more in the book involving Bran training with the Three-Eyed Raven, but nothing that would take up more than a few more scenes, and those scenes would probably not be very visually interesting.
It's not as if the show has never gone beyond the books though, and theoretically the showrunners could have continued with Bran's storyline using their knowledge of future books that George R.R. Martin has laid out for them. One major scene involving the White Walkers last season took the show into territory obviously based on George R.R. Martin's notes but which has not yet been published.
The show could have also made up material for Bran to keep him busy, as was done for Theon in Season 3. In that season, the showrunners basically stretched out a few scenes of the character being held captive by Ramsay Bolton for the entire season in order to keep Alfie Allen on the show. A lot of people felt Theon's storyline that season was pretty underwhelming and repetitive, so maybe the showrunners have learned their lesson about stretching something out for longer than necessary.
Plus, it's not like they don't have enough to work with next season. The show will be mixing together storylines from the fourth and fifth book in the series, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, which involves the introduction of a bunch of new characters. The season will also be using flashbacks for the first time, as we previously reported.
Game of Thrones returns for its fifth season this spring on HBO. The show is expected to run for seven seasons total.
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