Back in September, Kristian Nairn was quoted as stating that he and co-star Isaac Hempstead-Wright’s character Hodor and Bran Stark would be absent from the upcoming fifth season of HBO’s epic fantasy series Game of Thrones, with Hempstead-Wright subsequently playing down fears that the duo would be sitting out the next batch of episodes. Well, it seems that Nairn was right, as showrunner David Benioff has now confirmed to EW that Bran will be missing when the show resumes in the Spring.
“Ideally that wouldn’t have gotten out and it’s unfortunate it did. The fact is, even though we’re making changes to the books and adapting as necessary, we’re trying to keep the various storylines the same as the books and trying to keep them roughly [chronologically] parallel. And last year we caught up to the end of Bran’s storyline [in George R.R. Martin’s most recent A Song of Ice and Fire novel, A Dance with Dragons]. So if we pushed him forward this season, then he’s way ahead of where the other characters are. It made sense to stop where we did. [Bran] is now entering a training period which is going to take quite some time, much of which isn’t particularly cinematic. So rather than being stuck in a cave for a year, we figured it would be interesting to leave him out for a little bit, so when you see him again…”
Are you disappointed that we’ll have to wait until 2016 to catch up with Bran, Hodor and Meera (Ellie Kendrick)? Let us know your thoughts…
Originally published November 5, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
