‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 8 Finale: The Epic Journey Of Bran The Broken

According to Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), the thing that truly unites people is not armies or gold, but stories. And, out of all the stories in Game of Thrones, he believes the one of Brandon Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright), or Bran the Broken, is the most important, the most interesting, and the one most likely to unite the seven kingdoms.

SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses Episode 6 (titled “The Iron Throne”) of HBO’s Game of Thrones Season 8. Please proceed with caution if you have not yet viewed this episode and wish to avoid spoilers.

In Season 1 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, Bran Stark climbed a tower and saw Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in a compromising position with his sister, Cersei (Lena Headey). Rather than risk being exposed, Jaime pushed Bran out of the window and to what he assumed would be his death.

However, Bran survived the fall albeit as a paraplegic. During the rest of Game of Thrones, Bran has appeared to be a separate story from the others involving the battle to claim the Iron Throne. By Season 6 of Game of Thrones, Bran had become the Three-Eyed Raven, a character who has the ability to warg into people and creatures as well as having greensight, which means that they can view past events as if he were present at the time.

While Bran spent many of the seasons of Game of Thrones apart from his family and the conflicts going on in Westeros, his endgame actually turned out to be the most important of all.

In the Season 8 finale of Game of Thrones, viewers learned that Bran was actually destined to be the next ruler. While previous rulers had presided over seven kingdoms, Bran, now renamed Bran the Broken by Tyrion, is actually the ruler of the six kingdoms due to his sister, Sansa (Sophie Turner), claiming ownership of the North independently of the South.

As Bran the Broken has always said, everyone in Game of Thrones has always been exactly where they were supposed to be leading up to the final battle for the Iron Throne. Inverse even suggests that Bran manipulated the past in order to end up the ultimate ruler in Westeros. However, as the previous Three-Eyed Raven once pointed out to Bran, the past cannot be changed with greensight.

While placing Bran the Broken in a position to rule makes sense since he knows everything that has ever happened and can use that knowledge to help avoid the mistakes of others, fans are not happy with the title bestowed upon him by Tyrion, according to PopBuzz.

“Of all the things to call Bran… the broken,” said one Twitter user.

“He’s literally a living archive of human history who can see basically anything anywhere, surely you can think of something not centered around his disability.”

“‘Bran the Broken’ is wild ableist like… was ‘Bran the All-Knowing’ not available?” said another person on Twitter.

As for whether or not Bran the Broken will be a good king that will be able to keep the kingdoms united, well, fans will never know because HBO concluded Game of Thrones with the Season 8 finale and are only planning prequel series set in the same universe.

Episode 6 was the final episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones Season 8 and the series overall. HBO is currently in production on a prequel series set in the same universe as Game of Thrones. However, no release date has yet been announced for this new series.