GAME OF THRONES Showrunner Compares Bran's Absence to STAR WARS

If you've been following closely with Game of Thrones news in the show's off-season, you probably already know that Bran and Hodor won't be appearing in the upcoming fifth season. (Spoilers ahead for the end of season 4.) In an interview with EW - that outlet has been churning out GOT content left and right over the past couple of days! - co-showrunner David Benioff compares Bran's absence to Luke Skywalker's journey over the course of the original Star Wars trilogy:

“Like, it would be far less interesting, after The Empire Strikes Back to have an hour-long movie in between Empire and Return of the Jedi where Luke is training. It’s so much cooler to cut from end of Empire to begging [sic] of Return, where he’s become the Jedi.

"The fact is, even though we’re making changes to the books and adapting as necessary, we’re trying to keep the various storylines the same [as the books] and trying to keep them roughly [chronologically] parallel. And [in season 4] we caught up to the end of Bran’s storyline [in George R.R. Martin’s most recent book, A Dance with Dragons] last year. So if we pushed him forward this season, then he’s way ahead of where the other characters are.”

This totally makes sense to me, and though releasing actor Isaac Hempstead-Wright from his contract temporarily means there's the danger that the actor might not return to the role, Benioff is hopeful that he actually will come back for the show's sixth season. The only thing that might be a little weird about not seeing Bran for such a long period of time is that Hempstead-Wright is noticeably aging, while the character of Bran is not supposed to age that much over the course of the books because it takes place during a smaller span of time. Here's hoping they don't have to eventually recast him - I'm looking forward to seeing how his story plays out once he gets back in the mix after earning his sorcery powers from that weird tree dude.