Why we can’t trust Bran or the Three-Eyed Raven on ‘Game of Thrones’

Game of Thrones subtly dropped one of the series’ biggest reveals in the second episode of Season 8. After seven years of mystery and endless theories, we finally have an answer to what the White Walkers want. 

“He wants to erase this world, and I am its memory,” Bran says of the Night King. “He’ll come for me. He’s tried before, with many Three-Eyed Ravens.”

But as straightforward as this end goal sounds, it’s actually a lot more complicated than Bran makes it out to be. (Typical.)

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Night King actor Vladimir Furdik teased that in Season 8, “People will see he has a target he wants to kill, and you will find out who that is.” Furdik went on to explain that it’s because, “He wants revenge… Everybody in this story has two sides—a bad side and a good side. The Night King only has one side, a bad side.”

To the casual watcher, all of this only confirms the assumption that the White Walkers just came back to take over and end humanity. But for hardcore theorizers, this shatters many expectations, including those about the fundamental core of this story.

Which is why, among many other reasons, you shouldn’t trust that Bran knows the truth about what the White Walkers want. Actually, you shouldn’t trust any of the Three-Eyed Ravens’ visions.

For starters, Bran’s seemingly simple explanation raises so many questions in itself: What exactly is the Three-Eyed Raven’s job? Who was the first one ever made, who created him, and why? Where does the Three-Eyed Raven’s power come from? Why would the Night King want revenge against man? And why would he have started raising his army to go south if the Three-Eyed Raven was north of the Wall the whole time? Wouldn’t he have tried harder to kill Bran when he had him cornered in the cave?

But before we try answering all those, let’s talk about why we shouldn’t take Bran’s assessment of the White Walkers’ ultimate goal at face value.

Bran in essence paints it as an eternal battle between the Three-Eyed Ravens and the White Walkers. Yet the motivation he ascribes to the Night King — arguably the series’ most pivotal mystery — seems not only overly simplistic, but counter to Game of Thrones‘ core themes. 

George R. R. Martin has repeatedly stated that his series dismantles this exact fantasy genre trope about a battle between a pure evil and pure good. As he said in a 2011 interview, “A villain is a hero of the other side.”

He went deeper in Rolling Stone, saying:

The war that Tolkien wrote about was a war for the fate of civilization and the future of humanity, and that’s become the template. I’m not sure that it’s a good template, though. The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that. 

“A villain is a hero of the other side.”

Yet that cliche is exactly what Bran sets up, with Three-Eyed Ravens throughout history saving the future of humanity from the mindlessly evil Night King and his ugly undead minions. 

But let’s put aside the deep textual analysis mumbo jumbo for now. If Bran isn’t telling the full story, how do we make sense of the Three-Eyed Raven and Night King’s relationship in a way that’s more aligned with Game of Thrones‘ themes?

Well if Game of Thrones has taught us anything, it’s that morality comes only in shades of grey. And when it comes to the Three-Eyed Raven, there’s lots of dubious intentions if you start questioning where his source of magic comes from.

Almost certainly, the Children of the Forest are partially behind the power and origin of the Three-Eyed Raven. You know, the same Children of the Forest who created the Night King by tying an innocent man to a tree and turning him into a weaponized monster against his own will.

Bran and other Three-Eyed Ravens derive their power from what fans dub the “weirnet,” a.k.a. the network of magical weirwood trees that allow them to see visions and events of the past, present, and future.

That’s what Sam means when he explains to Bran, “Your memories don’t come from books. Your stories aren’t just stories. If I wanted to erase the world of men, I’d start with you.”

But bearing witness to a select amount of events in Westerosi history doesn’t actually make Bran or the Three-Eyed Raven “all knowing,” or the keeper of mankind’s memory at all.

The Three-Eyed Raven’s knowledge is fallible and without its own biases.

For one, the weirnet is limited to Westeros — and an increasingly small region of it, since the weirwoods were cut down thousands of years ago in the south. Because a weirwood tree needs to be present for an event to become part of weirnet, the Three-Eyed Raven’s understanding of history would not include the rest of the world.

So despite Bran and the previous Three-Eyed Raven’s repeated insistence otherwise, they absolutely do not know everything. According to the legends of the Long Night that Sam read about in Season 6, the White Walkers were actually a much larger global problem the first time they came,  expanding into Essos (that’s why you’ve got things like the Lord of Light and Azor Ahai prophecy). 

Bran is not the keeper of their history and memory. And it just goes to show you that the Three-Eyed Raven’s knowledge is fallible and not without its own biases.

Their power to see into the past, present, and future is dictated by the Children of the Forest, whose consciousnesses basically become embedded into the weirwoods after they die. And if you ask us, they’re a pretty iffy source! 

Remember that the Children of the Forest were at war with mankind for most of their existence in Westeros, and didn’t leave on the best of terms after man slaughtered them to extinction. 

It’s especially hard to trust their perspective on the White Walkers, whose creation was their greatest cosmic mistake. They have their own agenda, though we don’t know what it is. The knowledge that the Children of the Forest pass on through the Three-Eyed Raven is tainted by their one-sided perspective on who and what the White Walkers are and what they want.

It’s not unlike the way Melisandre rationalizes using tricks and glamor to manipulate people into believing whatever furthers the agenda for the Lord of Light. Sure, there are some truths in her visions in the flames, and a real sincerity in her religious belief. But that does not make her source of magic morally good or all knowing whatsoever.

Indeed, the Red Priests are an especially apt comparison for the previous Three-Eyed Raven, a.k.a. Bloodraven. In the books he’s a super shady character, not the wise old man in a tree from the show. He’s described as this grotesque corpse, decomposing and cloaked in darkness and blood. 

He even tells Bran, “Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong.” That sure doesn’t sound like The Good Guy Saving All Humanity From Ultimate Evil! 

But what does all that mean for how this will all shake out on the show?

A recently popularized fan theory went as far as to speculate that Bloodraven and the Three-Eyed Raven were two different people all along, trying to manipulate Bran into doing dark biddings. But that seems too convoluted for the show. 

Others speculate that the Night King was originally a Three-Eyed Raven turned into a White Walker by mistake, and now he and Bran are like two opposing forces of the same magical powers. But that’s also hard to imagine fitting into the show. Perhaps the Night King was instead a Three-Eyed Raven betrayed by the Children of the Forest, making his vengeful vendetta at least more sympathetic.

The more logical fan theory on the Three-Eyed Raven’s origins is that the first one was the savior northern legends call the Last Hero. Allegedly, the Last Hero defeated the White Walkers the first time by going Beyond the Wall to get help from the Children of the Forest. That sounds a lot like Bran’s arc. (The Last Hero even lost his dog on the journey, like Bran with Summer.)

Still others theorize that perhaps the Night King truly is motivated by nothing more but the need to end all human life. Certainly, he is still angry about being turned into a White Walker, as shown by his constant use of the spiral pattern. Game of Thrones writer Dave Hill said that:

As we saw with Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven, the spiral pattern was sacred to the Children of the Forest, who created the Night King by sacrificing a captured man in a spiral “henge of stones.” The Night King then adopted the symbol as a sort of blasphemy, like Satan with the upside-down cross.

Honestly, it’s hard to make too many educated guesses about what the new major piece of information Bran dropped actually means. The show has remained frustratingly vague when it comes to answering even the most basic questions about the Three-Eyed Raven, like WTF he even is or does.

But what we do know about Three-Eyed Ravens should give us reason to question him, rather than rally around his perspective on what the White Walkers want.

Game of Thrones is a story about how everything is not as it seems, and that mankind’s history, legends, wars, and memories are often riddled with lies. The alleged rape of Lyanna Stark, which launched an entire war, turned out to be a love story. The bastard son of Ned Stark was actually heir to the Iron Throne all along. The evil monsters who want to kill everything actually began as innocent men who never asked to become monstrous.

Ultimately, there has to be more to the White Walkers than meets the eye — even if it’s the three eyes of an “all knowing” raven.