14 DAY TRIAL // A few months back, Kristian Nairn, the actor playing Hodor, on the HBO fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” said in an interview that neither he nor the character Bran would appear in the upcoming season five.
Since their part of the narrative seemed to be going in a really exciting direction, fans were hoping that Nairn wasn't particularly right when he said such things. However, the rumor has just been cleared up by one of the show's creators, David Benioff, who has told EW about what is really going to happen.
Benioff confirms Bran won't appear this season to give the other characters a chance to catch up with their stories
Benioff claims that the leak was “unfortunate” but points out that the Bran and Hodor storyline had to be excluded from this series because they had already gotten far along when compared to the story in the books.
“Last year we caught up to the end of Bran’s storyline (in Martin’s most recent A Song of Ice and Fire novel, A Dance with Dragon). So if we pushed him forward this season, then he’s way ahead of where the other characters are.”
At the end of season 4, viewers could already see Bran getting ready to start his training in the art of skinchanging and greensight. Anyone who has read the books will tell you that this particular point in the story is reached much later in Martin's novels, so it made sense to give the other stories a chance to catch up.
Bran's magic training wasn't deemed cinematic, might end up skipped altogether in the TV show
Benioff also stresses that this point in Bran's story, when he begins his magic training, isn't “particularly cinematic,” which means that there could be plans to exclude it altogether from the show, leaving fans to fill in the blanks for themselves.
Production on the fifth season of “Game of Thrones” is currently undergoing in several locations across the Globe, in order to adapt to the different sceneries presented in the books. To the already popular destinations in Ireland, Croatia and Iceland, this year, the production team also went to Spain in order to film the Meereenese part of the novels.
Benioff, one of the two creators of “Game of Thrones,” the TV series, also let it slip in a previous interview that for the first time since it started, the show was going to have flashbacks this season, which means that viewers could catch glimpses of their favorite dead characters. Most fans are hoping that Eddard Stark, played by Sean Bean, would make at least one appearance.