The pop culture world still hasn’t quite recovered from Game of Thrones‘ divisive series finale, which came to a close with—*spoilers*, I suppose—Bran “The Three-Eyed Raven” Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) as King of the Six-ish Kingdoms based on the idea he had the “best story,” despite the pint-sized assassin who saved literally all of mankind sitting just to his right. Some loved it, some hated it, many were simply meh, but the real unanswered question facing long-time Thrones fans is whether George R.R. Martin‘s still-unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire source material would end the same way.
According to Hempstead Wright, it’s sure looking like it. Speaking to Making Game of Thrones, the actor divulged that Martin told showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss two Bran-focused plot-points that he had planned for the books: Hodor’s tragic “Hold the Door” origin story and Bran taking the crown:
“[Creators] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] told me there were two things George R.R. Martin had planned for Bran, and that was the Hodor revelation, and that he would be king. So that’s pretty special to be directly involved in something that is part of George’s vision. It was a really nice way to wrap it up.”
Of course, plans change and, either way, stories are almost always more about the journey than the destination. Martin’s books feature tons of characters, subplots, and locales the show altered or never touched on at all. The author has talked about it at large on his blog, most recently in a post following the HBO series’ final episode:
Image via HBO
How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different?
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Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes.
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I am working in a very different medium than David and Dan, never forget. They had six hours for this final season. I expect these last two books of mine will fill 3000 manuscript pages between them before I’m done… and if more pages and chapters and scenes are needed, I’ll add them. And of course the butterfly effect will be at work as well; those of you who follow this Not A Blog will know that I’ve been talking about that since season one. There are characters who never made it onto the screen at all, and others who died in the show but still live in the books… so if nothing else, the readers will learn what happened to Jeyne Poole, Lady Stoneheart, Penny and her pig, Skahaz Shavepate, Arianne Martell, Darkstar, Victarion Greyjoy, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Aegon VI, and a myriad of other characters both great and small that viewers of the show never had the chance to meet. And yes, there will be unicorns… of a sort…
I’ll tell ya what, say what you will about the Game of Thrones finale but what it most definitely did not feature is any unicorns. Your move, Martin.
For more on Game of Thrones season 8, check out the links below:
