Full spoilers for Game of Thrones: Season 7 continue below. Make sure to read IGN's review of the Season 7 finale, "The Dragon and the Wolf."
Just like his character Bran Stark, Isaac Hempstead-Wright is the keeper of the secrets on Game of Thrones. He's spent the past half year keeping the biggest secret of all -- that Jon Snow is really Aegon Targaryen, legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark -- as well as some info on deleted scenes from the Season 7 finale. It's a tough burden to bear, he admits, but one he relishes.
"I am dreading the moment I get the Season 8 scripts and am literally holding the end of Game of Thrones in," Hempstead-Wright told IGN. "This season was hard enough. I just want to tell everyone."
With Season 7 officially over, Hempstead-Wright now has that opportunity. That's why we got him on the phone to answer nine of our burning Game of Thrones questions, like whether Bran is really the Night King, and just when he started communicating Littlefinger's secrets to Sansa and Arya. Read our Q&A below.
IGN: After Bran and Sam realize Jon is the legitimate heir to the Iron Throne, Bran is very insistent that they need to tell Jon the second he gets to Winterfell. Why do you think Bran thinks this information is so important to convey to Jon, immediately?
It’s clear that Jon is a threat to Daenerys, then that could end everything now.
Hempstead: I think Bran, prior to this thought he only had one big destiny and that was something to do with the White Walkers and that was the fact that he had to be one of the ones to get involved to stop the army of the dead. This tells Bran that he has another fate, another destiny that involves changing the fate of the battle for the Iron Throne. As unimportant as the Iron Throne is at this moment in time, Bran still recognizes that it’s pretty serious stuff. Especially since Bran has been seeing what’s been going on with Jon and Daenerys. I think he’ll recognize that there’s clearly a relationship going. I think what he’s saying there is “before this gets out of hand, Jon needs to know this because this is going to be a very important thing and it could shatter the alliance between Daenerys and the Starks.”
IGN: Do you view it as Bran was witnessing them consummating their romance while he was revealing this information?
Hempstead: I’m not sure. I don’t think Bran is that focused on that yet. I think he knows where this has been going and the reason this is important to Bran is that they need these two together and to be a team and if all of a sudden it’s clear that Jon is a threat to Daenerys, then that could end everything now.
IGN: From how you and Sophie and Maisie constructed the season, how long do you view that Bran had been communicating with Arya and Sansa and giving them the full scope of what Littlefinger had done? Was that all at the end, or earlier?
Hempstead: There was a scene that we ended up getting rid of, I’m not sure why, where Sansa came to Bran’s chambers and said, “I need your help.” The way I understand it, Bran didn’t know what was going on. It was a battle between Sansa and Arya really and it wasn’t any of Bran’s business until Sansa thought, “Why don’t I fact check this with the best fact checker in the universe” and Bran was like “Littlefinger did this and this and this.” I think also it’d become clear to Bran that Littlefinger had some kind of nefarious doings within him. Because Bran has a real idea of destinies, I think he was waiting for his sister to come to him to give her the knowledge. I don’t think he would have let that happen and he wouldn’t have sat there while Arya got killed by Sansa because Bran would have known that that wasn’t the way things had to go. He would have known, “I need to be here to reveal what the truth is.”
IGN: Was that scene supposed to be in the finale? Or was that earlier in the season.
Hempstead: It was going to be in the finale -- I don’t know actually. I have no idea when that scene was. I think it would have been the last episode.
Bran has been a more remote character this season because he’s existed in so many different time frames.
IGN: Bran was marked by the Night King last season. Do you think that will amount to anything in the show?
Hempstead: I don’t know. It hasn’t seemed to be that much of a focus of this season. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with the Night King getting through the wall. I’m glad that’s not on Bran’s head. Who knows. Maybe it’s a tracking device and the Night King knows exactly where to head. I’m not sure.
IGN: What do you think about the theories that Bran is the Night King?
Hempstead: I think it’s a little bit farfetched, but then again I would have said the Hodor theory was farfetched if I had just read that on an internet forum. It’s crazy. People are putting pictures of me and the Night King together and they’re like, “That confirms it. They look identical!” And I’m like, “Really? I look that much like an ancient ice zombie leader?"
IGN: Some of it probably came out of Bran as the Three-Eyed Raven acting very differently from the Bran we know. Even Meera noted that. Talk to me a little bit about those choices in your performance to make him a colder character.
Hempstead: It’s not that Bran is cold now. I think a lot of people interpret it as Bran becoming an unpleasant person or as Bran just being distant and not involved. Bran literally had the history of the universe downloaded into his head. Admittedly, he hasn’t read through it all yet. He’s got like a Kindle library of everything but he hasn’t read through every single volume yet, but it means that the part of Bran that was his personality is so much smaller now. It’s not 0.1 percent of what makes up his brain. Because he has everything else stored in it. Naturally, those human tendencies like emotions haven’t really manifested themselves in Bran anymore because he’s almost just a vessel for knowledge and thought.
Therefore, Bran has been a more remote character this season because he’s existed in so many different time frames. It’s like Doctor Manhattan. He’s not ever in one place at one time. Whenever he’s sitting somewhere he has millions of different timelines and different experiences floating around his head as though they’re his own. It’s like every other person’s memory in the history of the world is his own memory. It was really fun to get that across in the performance but also not to just let it become boring and like “yeah I know everything, blah blah blah.” The challenge was keeping him interesting and mysterious as some semblance of a person left under on the knowledge.
IGN: Speaking of destiny, what do you view Bran’s destiny to be at this point?
Hempstead: I think it’s definitely got something to do with the White Walkers. Because Bran is one of the only people apart from maybe Meera who knows how the White Walkers were created. And also since he has a history of everything in his head, it surely means he might be able to find some kind of weakness for them somewhere or find some way -- surely the White Walkers must have a little hat around the corner at some point going “Blimey, good thing no one uses this to defeat us because that’s our true weakness.” If Bran could have a look for that moment that’d be really crucial. I think the reason we saw Bran a little more animated in that last scene is that it’s now become clear to him that he has another purpose and that’s to make sure Jon knows his true parentage. There’s a lot of interesting stuff that Bran has to get across to people very soon.
IGN: We know Bran can see the past and the present. As it’s been told to you, can Bran see the future as well?
Hempstead: I don’t think so. I think it’s more that he has an idea of different people’s fates and their story arcs. I think that’s the most important thing. That’s the only way Bran can see the future. He knows how things must end and what he must do. I don’t think he can predict the future and go to the battle commander and go “I know here they’re going to attack from.”
For more of IGN's Game of Thrones coverage, make sure to read director Jeremy Podeswa's explanation of Tyrion's suspicious look and Tormund and Beric's fate. Plus, find out how that big Jon Snow "Aegon" reveal clashes with George R.R. Martin's books.
Terri Schwartz is Editorial Producer at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.
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