0:03 How powerful is Bran? What powers does
0:05 he actually have? And how powerful will
0:08 he become? Let's take a look. Hi
0:09 everyone, this is Robert. Welcome to
0:12 InDeepge Geek. If you like theories,
0:13 background, history, and lore about A
0:15 Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the
0:17 Rings, and The Witcher, this is the
0:20 place for you. Welcome. In the books,
0:22 Bran has already developed an impressive
0:24 array of abilities. And in the TV show,
0:27 he gained even more. He started with
0:29 some strange magical dreams. Then seemed
0:31 to be able to take control of Summer,
0:33 his direwolf. Then he seemed to be able
0:35 to do that to Hodor. Then he could see
0:37 visions of the past and present and even
0:39 interact with them through weirwood
0:41 trees. On the show, he moved beyond that
0:43 to being able to seemingly go anywhere
0:46 at any time without being seen or take
0:48 control of animals bodies and learn
0:50 secrets about everyone. In short, he
0:52 appeared to have near god-like abilities
0:55 through the power of the old gods, which
0:57 is an impressive set of abilities to say
0:59 the least. But will he get there in the
1:02 books, too? Is there a limit to what he
1:04 will be able to do? First of all, it's
1:06 important to note that Bran's powers,
1:08 though impressive, are not unique to
1:10 him. If you dig through the lore in the
1:12 world of ice and fire, you will find
1:14 many others who can do what he does.
1:17 What is unique or nearly unique is how
1:19 he can do all of them with such strength
1:22 and at such a young age. In the books,
1:24 he is still only perhaps 10 years old at
1:26 the end of A Dance with Dragons. He has
1:28 not even reached puberty, has only just
1:30 started his training, and he is already
1:32 one of the most powerful people in the
1:34 world. So, let's break down his
1:38 abilities. What can he do? Let's start
1:40 with skin changing or walking. This is
1:42 the ability to enter the mind of an
1:45 animal and control its actions. Wargging
1:46 is technically only used to refer to
1:49 those who do it to wolves or dogs. In
1:51 the world of ice and fire, this talent
1:53 is surprisingly common among those of
1:55 First Men heritage, although not all of
1:57 those who have the talent develop it in
1:59 any meaningful way. Blood Raven says
2:01 that perhaps one in a thousand can,
2:02 though he may have been speaking
2:05 rhetorically. In the books, we read of
2:07 at least a dozen different people who
2:08 can do this in some way, ranging from
2:10 the Stark children, who all seem to have
2:12 some kind of link to their direwolf, up
2:15 to Vamir Sixkins, a wildling, who, as
2:17 his name implies, can inhabit the bodies
2:19 of six different animals in addition to
2:22 his own body. There's his mentor, Hagon,
2:24 there's Blood Raven, of course, Oral
2:26 with his eagle, Boro with his boar, and
2:29 so on. Not common, but also not exactly
2:32 rare. All of the Stark children have the
2:33 ability, and although some are showing
2:35 lots of promise, Arya now seems to be
2:37 able to skin change into cats as well,
2:40 for example. And Rickon's bond to Shaggy
2:42 Dog is also strong, theirs appears
2:44 mostly subconscious, often happening in
2:46 dreams and the like. Bran can
2:49 consciously go into summer, seemingly at
2:51 will, as well as now Hodor, and he is
2:54 being trained to be even stronger. Blood
2:56 Raven shows him how to skin change into
2:58 a raven. And he spends large periods of
3:01 time inside Summer. As we read, slipping
3:03 into Summer's skin had become as easy
3:05 for him as slipping on a pair of
3:07 breaches once had been before his back
3:09 was broken. Changing his own skin for a
3:11 raven's night black feathers had been
3:13 harder, but not as hard as he had
3:16 feared. Not with these ravens. Before
3:18 long, he was flying around the cavern,
3:20 weaving through the long stone teeth
3:22 that hung down from the ceiling, even
3:24 flapping out over the abyss and swooping
3:27 down into its cold black depths. Skin
3:30 changing is easy for Bran. And of
3:32 course, Bran has gone even further by
3:33 taking over a human's mind and
3:35 controlling their body for extended
3:38 periods of time. We see Vamir try to do
3:39 this in the prologue to A Dance with
3:42 Dragons. So he clearly thinks it's
3:43 something that's possible for others,
3:46 but Vamir was too weak at the time to go
3:47 through with it. His intended host
3:50 fought back. Hodor, on the other hand,
3:52 is described as retreating, scared into
3:54 a corner of his mind when Bran takes
3:57 over. We see Bran try to justify to
3:59 himself what he is doing. He knows it's
4:01 me, he says to himself, as if that is
4:04 enough reason. Make no mistake, this is
4:07 not consensual. Hodor did not want Bran
4:09 to push him away and do whatever he
4:11 wanted with his body. When Vimeir tries
4:13 it himself, he knows that it is
4:16 considered an abomination. The reader is
4:18 left to make their own moral judgment
4:20 about what is happening. But this is
4:22 dark stuff indeed. In fact, it is
4:24 noticeable that Bran has so far broken
4:26 two of the three cardinal rules of skin
4:28 changes. Taking control of another human
4:31 being and as Summer, eating dead human
4:34 bodies. and he shows no remorse or even
4:36 an awareness that he is doing something
4:38 that others might not agree with. We'll
4:40 come back to that because we should
4:42 probably also note that the Stark
4:44 children's direwolves are connected as
4:47 pack in some way. They can sense each
4:49 other's presence or absence and through
4:51 wolf dreams at the very least see
4:53 through each other's eyes at times. Bran
4:57 has access to that too. So that's skin
4:59 changing. But that is not the extent of
5:01 Bran's powers because his powers take
5:03 their next big step forward after he
5:06 arrives at the three-eyed crow's cave.
5:08 There he is fed a rather gruesome paste
5:10 and starts his training as a green seer.
5:13 And this is what elevates him from a
5:15 simple magic user to something much more
5:17 other level. But let's start with
5:20 looking quickly at what green seers are
5:22 or were historically because they were
5:24 initially the wise elders, magic users,
5:26 and leaders of the children of the
5:29 forest. not humans. They had green
5:32 dreams, dreams that are true in some
5:34 sense, like Jojan gets, could wag into
5:36 animals, and could see through the eyes
5:39 carved in weirwood trees. You can add to
5:41 this a whole host of other powers
5:43 recorded by legend, turning trees into
5:45 warriors, casting the hammer of the
5:47 waters, a spell that broke the
5:49 landbridge between Westeros and Essos,
5:52 and so on. These may or may not be true.
5:54 We can perhaps look at that in other
5:56 videos, but let's here look at the
5:58 relationship between the weirwood trees
5:59 and green seers because that is where
6:01 Bran's powers are now expanding most
6:04 swiftly. The key starting point here is
6:06 that the weirwood trees across Westeros
6:08 seem to all be connected, probably
6:10 physically underground through a massive
6:12 interconnected root system, but
6:15 definitely magically. So if you access
6:17 one, you can see out of the eyes of
6:19 another. Although that's probably
6:21 oversimplifying it. The way it is
6:23 described, it is actually more like
6:25 Bran, after he'd had his abilities
6:27 unlocked by that weirwood paste, seems
6:29 to skin change into the tree network
6:32 itself, inhabiting it. "Take a listen to
6:35 this." "Close your eyes," said the
6:38 three-eyed crow. "Slip your skin, as you
6:40 do when you join with Summer, but this
6:43 time go into the roots instead. Follow
6:45 them up through the earth to the trees
6:47 upon the hill, and tell me what you see."
6:49 see."
6:51 Ran closed his eyes and slipped free of
6:53 his skin. Into the roots, he thought,
6:57 into the weirwood, become the tree. For
6:59 an instant he could see the cavern in
7:01 its black mantle, could hear the river
7:04 rushing by below. Then, all at once, he
7:06 was back home again.
7:08 He was seeing out through the Winterfell
7:11 weirwood. The second time he does it, he
7:13 doesn't even seem to need to be touching
7:15 the tree. He just slips into the network
7:17 without even really trying. And he sees
7:19 again through the Winterfell weirwood,
7:22 but in the past again. Blood Raven has
7:25 to explain what's going on. Time is
7:27 different for a tree than for a man. Sun
7:30 and soil and water. These are the things
7:32 a weirwood understands. Not days and
7:35 years and centuries. For men, time is a
7:37 river. We are trapped in its flow,
7:40 hurtling from past to present, always in
7:42 the same direction. The lives of trees
7:45 are different. They root and grow and
7:48 die in one place. And that river does
7:51 not move them. The oak is the acorn. The
7:54 acorn is the oak. And the weirwood. A
7:56 thousand human years are a moment to a
7:59 weirwood. And through such gates you and
8:02 I may gaze into the past.
8:04 So looking through the eyes of a
8:06 weirwood tree is not just a matter of
8:08 looking out somewhere else at the same
8:10 time. You can look out somewhere else at
8:12 a different time. Bran does this through
8:14 the weirwood at Winterfell, accessing
8:17 its memories years, centuries, and
8:20 probably even millennia earlier. This
8:22 all happens very quickly for Bran,
8:24 probably even quicker than Blood Raven
8:26 expected. He tries to get him to see
8:27 through the eyes of the weirwood tree he
8:30 is directly under, but Bran instead
8:31 heads straight to seeing out of a
8:33 completely different tree years in the
8:37 past. He is a natural. We should pause
8:39 for a moment to acknowledge quite how
8:41 rare all this is. Blood Raven says that
8:44 only one man in a thousand is born a
8:46 skin changer and only one skin changer
8:48 in a thousand is born a green seer,
8:50 which is rare enough already. But for
8:52 humans to be taken in and trained by the
8:54 children of the forest to develop their
8:56 skills to the maximum, as appears to
8:57 have happened to Blood Raven and now
9:00 Bran, and for Bran to develop his skills
9:02 so swiftly. This is supposed to be
9:04 impressive and everything we see of the
9:07 children suggests this is a last gasp
9:10 hope for them. They are almost extinct
9:12 with no more green sears of their own
9:14 left. Using or teaming up with humans
9:17 who have those abilities is their last
9:19 hope. But again, we are venturing into
9:21 areas for other videos because Blood
9:23 Raven hints to Bran that the power at
9:25 his disposal may be even greater than
9:27 what we've seen him display. He says
9:30 that the singers carved eyes into their
9:32 heart trees to awaken them and those are
9:35 the first eyes a new green seer learns
9:38 to use. But in time you will see well
9:41 beyond the trees themselves.
9:44 So in time and given the speed at which
9:46 he is learning probably quite soon Bran
9:48 will be able to see things beyond the
9:51 range of actual physical weirwoods in
9:54 the present or the past. This is an
9:56 astonishing power. We don't know the
9:58 limits of this yet, but it sounds like
10:00 he could go anywhere in the history of
10:03 Westeros and see and hear what happened.
10:06 Bran will need to know what and when to
10:08 look for, but no information will be off
10:11 limits. Surely George R. Martin will use
10:12 this as a way to show us what happened
10:14 in some of the most pivotal moments of
10:17 the story. The turnney at Harrenhal say
10:19 the tragedy at Summerhal, the Tower of
10:22 Joy. Who knows where we may end up? But
10:23 that is not all because all the
10:25 indications are that Blood Raven is
10:27 either holding back in telling Bran some
10:29 of the power available to him or there
10:32 are things that are beyond Blood Raven
10:34 that probably won't be beyond Bran. In
10:36 Bran's first look through the Weirwood
10:38 network, he sees his father and calls
10:42 out in surprise Winterfell. Ned looks
10:45 around and calls out, "Who's there?" Ned
10:48 heard something. But when Bran tells
10:50 Blood Raven, he says that he heard a
10:53 whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst
10:56 the leaves. You cannot speak to him. Try
10:58 as you might, I know. I have my own
11:01 ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a
11:04 brother that I hated, a woman I desired.
11:07 Through the trees, I see them still, but
11:09 no word of mine has ever reached them.
11:12 The past remains the past. We can learn
11:16 from it, but we cannot change it. Which
11:18 seems pretty clear. But when you look
11:20 through the books with an eye to times
11:22 people may have heard Bran call out to
11:24 them from a weirwood tree, they appear
11:26 all over the place. For example, a
11:29 couple of times with Theon. Theon, a
11:31 voice seemed to whisper, his head
11:35 snapped up. Who said that? All he could
11:36 see were the trees and the fog that
11:38 covered them. The voice had been as
11:41 faint as rustling leaves, as cold as
11:45 hate. A god's voice or a ghost's.
11:49 And later, "Bran," the tree murmured.
11:52 "They know, the gods know. They saw what
11:54 I did. And for one strange moment, it
11:57 seemed as if it were Bran's face carved
11:59 into the pale trunk of the weirwood,
12:01 staring down at him with eyes red and
12:04 wise and sad."
12:08 And then Ned again. Father. Bran's voice
12:10 was a whisper in the wind, a rustle in
12:13 the leaves. Father, it's me. It's Bran.
12:16 Brandon. Eddard Stark lifted his head
12:18 and looked long at the weirwood,
12:22 frowning, but he did not speak. And
12:23 there are more examples, I can assure
12:26 you. Blood Raven tells Bran that the
12:28 people he talks to like that can only
12:30 hear the whistling on the wind or a
12:32 rustling among the leaves, which may
12:34 have been the case with Ned, but Theon
12:37 definitely heard his name and Bran's.
12:39 And in each of those occasions, Bran
12:42 changes things in the past, just small
12:44 things. His father turning and frowning,
12:47 Theon replying, but he does change
12:50 things. Blood Raven assures Bran that
12:52 the past remains the past. We can learn
12:55 from it, but we cannot change it. But
12:58 Bran demonstrabably can change things in
13:00 the past. Small things now, but probably
13:02 larger things when he actually knows
13:04 what he's doing. And if we're talking
13:07 about the past, then what of the future?
13:09 That whole speech by Blood Raven about
13:11 the Wirward Network experiencing time
13:13 differently to humans contains several
13:15 hints that we aren't just talking about
13:19 the past and present. To them, seasons
13:21 pass in the flutter of a moth's wing,
13:25 and past, present, and future are one.
13:27 He describes the future as a sea of
13:30 shadows, but not impermeable. And when
13:32 Bran asks him a question about the
13:34 future, he says that that he has not
13:37 seen, implying that he has seen other
13:40 things in the future. And why not? Other
13:42 magical types in this world see glimpses
13:44 of the future, including several
13:46 associated with old gods magic, like
13:48 Jojan Reed and the ghost of high heart.
13:50 So, the future also doesn't seem out of
13:52 bounds for Bran, though he probably
13:55 won't access it until the future rather
13:57 than now, if that makes sense. But to
13:59 build on all of that, what makes Bran
14:01 even more special is his apparent
14:03 ability to effortly combine these
14:05 abilities. He talks to Jon through a
14:08 weirwood tree while Jon is having a wolf
14:10 dream, for example. And perhaps the
14:13 culmination of all this is Hodor. George
14:15 R. Martin has confirmed that the Hodor
14:17 holds the door reveal will happen in the
14:20 books. Not exactly like we saw in the TV
14:22 show, but the principle of what Bran
14:24 does clearly seems to be the same.
14:27 Something like skin changing into Hodor
14:29 while instructing him to hold the door
14:31 while traveling to the past to change
14:33 Hodor's past and present and future at
14:36 the same time. I'm being vague here
14:37 because George R. Martin himself was
14:40 vague when asked about it in Fire Cannot
14:42 Kill a Dragon by James Hibbert. It's an
14:44 obscenity, he says, to go into
14:46 somebody's mind. So Bran may be
14:49 responsible for Hodor's simplicity due
14:51 to going into his mind so powerfully
14:54 that it rippled back through time. The
14:56 explanation of Bran's powers, the whole
14:59 question of time and causality, can we
15:02 affect the past? Is time a river you can
15:04 only sail one way or an ocean that can
15:06 be affected wherever you drop into it?
15:09 These are issues I want to explore in
15:12 the book, but it's harder to explain in
15:14 a show.
15:16 At the moment, the fandom's best idea is
15:18 that Bran here establishes a kind of
15:21 closed time loop. He had always will
15:24 have done it. So, poor Hodor is locked
15:26 in that loop forever. And if he can do
15:29 that, how much more can he do? If he can
15:31 skin change into animals and humans, is
15:34 not bound by time or distance, can
15:36 communicate with people in the past or
15:38 maybe even the future, and can do all of
15:40 this so powerfully that he can send
15:43 ripples through time itself. What is
15:45 there to hold him back? And he seems to
15:46 be able to do most of this without
15:49 anyone really knowing. Blood Raven had
15:50 to ask what Bran saw through the
15:52 Weirwood network. No one seems to know
15:55 when he is skin changing into Hodor. He
15:57 can learn what happened in the past
15:59 without anyone knowing he is there. And
16:02 crucially, he seems not to care about
16:04 the morality of any of this. Maybe the
16:06 Hodor incident will finally make him
16:08 hold back a little, but he has already
16:10 committed two acts even Vamir considered
16:13 abominations. Blood Raven doesn't seem
16:15 to have much interest yet in teaching
16:17 him what he shouldn't do, just telling
16:19 him what he thinks he can't do. And he
16:21 seems to be underestimating Bran's
16:23 abilities already. I suspect George R.
16:25 Martin would want us to compare what
16:28 Bran does with animals and with Hodor to
16:31 what the others do. They can control the
16:34 bodies of dead animals. The legends are
16:36 full of them lining up with undead giant
16:38 spiders or the like. And they also seem
16:40 to be able to control dead humans, the
16:43 ice whites. But Bran does that with live
16:46 animals and a live human just taking
16:48 control of them regardless of whether
16:52 they want it or not. Which is worse?
16:54 Bran's astonishing abilities combined
16:56 with his understandable given his age,
16:58 but still lack of critical thinking
17:00 about the impacts of what he is doing
17:02 are a toxic mix. His chapters are
17:05 getting darker and darker. And as George
17:07 R. Martin says, they will lead him to
17:09 exploring not just how Bran might affect
17:12 the plot, but the whole question of time
17:15 and causality itself in the world of ice
17:17 and fire.
17:19 If you'd like to see more A Song of Ice
17:20 and Fire videos like this, there's a
17:22 link to my playlist on the left of your
17:25 screen now. Or to support this channel,
17:26 thank you. There's a link to my Patreon
17:28 page on the right of your screen. Thanks
17:31 for watching. That's all for this time.
