Game of Thrones Theorycraft: Will Bran be Involved in Jon Snow’s Resurrection?

By now — unless you’ve been living under a rock, in a cave with no internet access — you’ve seen the Game of Thrones teaser poster featuring a blood splattered Jon Snow, and the short teaser trailer featuring old clips with new dialogue from Bloodraven and Bran. These are quite unexpected moves from HBO and Game of Thrones, as no one really expected to see anything from Season 6, until the HBO yearender on New Year’s Eve. But the poster and teaser trailer do raise some valid concerns, mainly among the conspiracy nuts like myself. So, don your tinfoil hats, and jump aboard the crazy train with me, as we delve deep into another Game of Thrones Theorycraft.

The first piece of this puzzle comes from the teaser poster. Now, while it features Jon Snow, and while I am sure that it garnered the appropriate amount of attention that HBO was seeking, there is an important clue that many fans have simply glossed over: The blood. While the immediate consensus is that the blood belongs to Jon himself, I believe it belongs to someone else…or a group of someones. Think about it, if you were betrayed and murdered by your own sworn brothers — men who served under your command — and then you were resurrected, what would be your first act as a newly minted member of the living? Would you immediately seek bloody and murderous revenge on those who betrayed you? I know I would.

What if you happened to have a Valyrian steel sword at your side, and you just so happened to be an expert swordsman? Would you cut a bloody swath through those former sworn brothers of yours? Hell yes, I would. Imagine a lifetime of being scorned by the woman who was forced to raise you, but never showed an ounce of love toward you. Add to that the fact that you feel like you are never quite good enough, or on the same level as the trueborn children of the man claiming to be your father. Then, pile on the disdain you receive from the knights and officers, and general population of Castle Black because you carry with you the stigma of being a bastard.

And then, to top it all off, the one man who could never accept you, even though you had proven yourself time and again — Alliser Thorne — was the one to orchestrate your murder. Do you think all of that frustration, angst, and feelings of anger would come to the surface, once you had been resurrected?

So, Jon is brought back to the world of the living, and then kills anyone who had a hand in his murder. This is the first piece of the puzzle that HBO has given us. The blood from the poster is not his own, because it belongs to those who fall to Longclaw and his righteous vengeance. Next we have the teaser trailer. It begins with what we are going to call “Bloodraven’s Guide to Greenseeing.”

We watch. We listen, and we remember. The past is already written. The ink is dry.

Besides the obvious, what is Bloodraven telling Bran, here? He’s saying the past cannot be changed. He’s saying that as a powerful Greenseer, Bran can observe past events, but he can never change them, no matter how much he wishes to do so. In A Dance with Dragons, Bran sees the Godswood at Winterfell, and observes several past events.

• His young father praying with a bowed head “Let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them, and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive.” (Bran tries to call to his father, and Ned looks up at the weirwood as if he heard something)
• A girl and a younger boy play fighting with branches. (Most likely Benjen and Lyanna)
• A pregnant woman coming out of the black pool praying for a son to avenge her. (Most likely Ned’s grandmother)
• A slender girl on her toes kissing a knight as tall as Hodor. (Theorized a young Nan kissing Ser Duncan the Tall)
• A pale, dark-eyed youth cutting three branches from the weirwood and shaping them into arrows. (Theorized to be Bloodraven)
• Other lords of Winterfell: tall, hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. (Kings of Winter)
• A bearded man forcing a captive down on his knees, and a white-haired woman killing the captive with a bronze sickle. (Blood sacrifice to the Old Gods)

An interesting note about Bran and the Winterfell Godswood, and it’s weirwood tree. Later in A Dance with Dragons, Reek, née Theon Greyjoy, goes to Winterfell’s Godswood to pray, even though the Old Gods were not his gods:

A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool. It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. “… Bran,” the tree murmured. They know. The gods know. They saw what I did. And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran’s face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad.

With these contextual clues, I firmly believe Bran has the potential to be a much more powerful Greenseer than Bloodraven, especially if he can reach those he is observing through the weirwoods. If the ink is truly dry, then how is Bran able to guide Theon to help the spearwives save fake-Arya? This event is a current one, which I believe holds ramifications for the events of Jon Snow’s demise and eventual resurrection.

Now, to the sequence of events in the teaser trailer. While it was full of many different scenes, the last two are what interest me the most.

Notice how the light begins to fill the scene as Jon is bleeding out into the snow, and then it switches to Bran going into a warg-state. Again, while these are old scenes, I believe HBO is leaving breadcrumbs behind, for us to follow. Is this Bran seeing Jon dying? Or, are we being shown a clue as to what Jon may do before he breathes his final breath? Let’s go back to A Dance with Dragons, shall we?

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …

Jon’s last thought was of his direwolf — with whom he shares the warg bond — Ghost. Now, many of you will be quick to point out that show-Jon really has never displayed the warging ability of his younger brother, Bran. In fact, up to now, the show has only shown Bran to have that ability, but that doesn’t mean Jon won’t or can’t display these abilities, as well.

Art Credit: shadowflashdabearded on Deviantart

It is my theory that Bran will see Jon’s death (in real time), possibly through the eyes of the late-lamented Jeor Mormont’s raven, and as Jon’s life passes from his body, Bran will help him guide that lifeforce into Ghost, for safe keeping. That will allow Melisandre to have time to bring Jon’s body back from the dead, and then Jon can return to his body and begin his new life, freed from the vows of the Night’s Watch. One final clue from the books, that Jon and Bran have previously seen each other in their dreams, thus establishing a bond through Bran’s Greenseeing and Jon’s latent ability to warg. In A Clash of Kings, Jon has this dream:

“Jon?” The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only… A weirwood. It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes? “Not always,” came the silent shout. “Not before the crow.”

So there it is, the precedent set down in the books, from which the television show — Game of Thrones — draws its inspiration (albeit sometimes rather loosely). The real question remains, will this be the method by which Jon returns to the realm of the living? I guess we’ll just have to keep speculating and waiting for April, 2016 to get here.