*SPOILER ALERT*
This is your warning. This article contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season Six, Episode Five ‘The Door’. Turn back now if you don’t want this amazing episode spoiled for you.
In what can only be described as a potentially game changing episode, ‘The Door’ surprised us showing Bran both warging into Hodor and using the greensight to cast his mind backwards in time to Winterfell. In this eventful scene, Bran’s mind is linked to Hodor’s in the present whilst he is also viewing the past in parallel, with Bran’s mind split between present and past we see that past Hodor can hear a voice from his future. This of course being the voice of Meera Reed telling him to “hold the door”. Because of this unbelievable paradox, young Hodor – known as Wylis at the time – suffers a seizure like event where all he can say is “hold the door” eventually slurring into “hodor”.
I’m sure we can all agree this was one of the most interesting and heart-breaking things we fans have seen in recent seasons of Game of Thrones, but does this create a problem for the show going forward. We’ve already seen a main character brought back to life and now we know that it’s possible for Bran to affect people in their past, causing huge ramifications. The issue from here on out is that events in the past can be controlled by someone in the present. I personally think that nothing we have explicitly seen in previous episodes will be contradicted or changed but it does pose the question of if Bran will be able to have a hand in altering future events by journeying into the past.
So hypothetically, let’s say that a week from now Rickon is killed by Ramsey Bolton and thrown from the walls of Winterfell into the snow below. Then another week on from that moment Bran runs into the Red Priestess Mellisandre, wargs into her mind as he’s become stronger, and also sends his own mind back to before Rickon dies. He then makes the Red Woman of the past go and claim his dead brother’s body so that she may perform her resurrection ritual, bringing him back from the dead. Effectively there are no longer any consequences to anything from this point on. And this loop hole or plot device will essentially become like something out of Doctor Who, where the Sonic Screwdriver always gets The Doctor out of whatever scrape he’s in with some reverse engineered nonsensical logic.
I really hope I’m wrong about this and it might not be as bad I fear. Maybe HBO will develop the idea further and we’ll get to see something cool like it turning out that it was Bran who sent the Mad King crazy by attempting to contact him via greensight. I can’t help but feel that now elements of death have no consequence and time travel is a possibility that the show may be starting to lose it’s way.
Agree or disagree? Let us know what you think about the future of Game of Thrones after this week’s episode in the comments!
David Burd / @yourpaldavid