GAME OF THRONES Season 6 First Look: Bran Stark is All Grown Up
It's been nearly five years since HBO's Game of Thrones first hit television screens and captivated audiences worldwide. Author George R.R. Martin has the ability to pace the story however he sees fit as he writes the novels, but when showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff cast actors for the show, they have to deal with the actors growing up much faster than the characters they're playing. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than with 16-year-old Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who plays Bran Stark; the actor wasn't needed for the show last season, so this new first-look photo of him from EW in the upcoming season 6 is a somewhat shocking reminder that he is now, in the parlance of the books, "a man grown."
When we last saw Bran in the season 4 finale, he was going to learn how to "fly" from the mysterious Three-Eyed Raven (now played by Max Von Sydow). The show has caught up to Martin's storyline for that character, so unless The Winds of Winter is published before next April, the next thing we see from Bran will be an invention of the show. The whole series is about to head into uncharted territory in that regard, so it should be very interesting to compare the two once Winds is actually published and see how the two stories intersect or diverge in the two different versions. At the very least, I doubt we'll see Kristian Nairn's Hodor lugging the now six-foot Hempstead-Wright around on his back next season.
If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to check out the teaser trailer for season six right here.