'Game of Thrones' Bran Stark Finally Explained What He Was Actually Doing During the Battle of Winterfell

This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones, Season 8.

Aside from the glorious demise of the Night King, one of the highlights of the final season of Game of Thrones so far has to be the memes that follow each episode. And, of all the characters on the show, no one has felt the wrath of the meme quite as hard as Bran Stark did after episode three, "The Long Night" (opens in new tab). While everyone else in Winterfell sacrificed their lives and fought the dead head-on (opens in new tab), Bran seemingly took a 73 minute-long nap for the entire episode.

Since Bran spent the duration of episode three warging from beginning to end, fans have been endlessly speculating as to what the mysterious character may have really been up to. Why didn’t he use his powers to save a few lives? To co-ordinate the battle a little better? To do literally ANYTHING useful? Now, real-life Bran, better known as actor Isaac Hempstead Wright, has explained what he was actually doing.

"As far as I understand it, he's just in the ravens," Isaac Hempstead Wright said to The NY Times. "He's just keeping tabs on the battle. But having lots of shots of ravens flying around wouldn't be much of interest! And it would be pretty impractical for him to be like, 'Hey, Theon, can you go run over there and tell this guy to get out of the way of that guy?’

"Bran recognizes that all he can do is sit there and let whatever happens, happen. We saw how quickly all their plans disintegrated! There would have been no chance of an efficient communication system.”

So, how about those endless theories that link Bran to the Night King (opens in new tab)? Hempstead Wright gave his thoughts on those too. While Game of Thrones fans have long suspected that there must be a deeper connection between the two characters, the actor explained their long, extended eye contact in episode three (opens in new tab) as nothing but pity from Bran.

"Bran saw the creation of the Night King, or the first White Walker, or whatever. He realizes that he was once just a normal guy who... didn't ask to become this raving, crazy ice killer... He was trapped into this Night King's body, and programmed to kill everyone.”

Wow, I didn’t know I’d ever be feeling kinda bad for the Night King, but now I’m seeing a whole new side to him! The poor guy, he never asked for this.

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