This post contains spoilers for the final season of Game of Thrones. Consider yourself warned.
People are definitely not over the finale of Game of Thrones, and chances are many of them won’t be for a very, very long time. One good thing about the show ending, though, is that the cast can finally open up about the plot in a way they haven’t before.
Often sworn to secrecy (or not even aware of what was coming next), they had to talk around all sorts of subjects, but not anymore. And sometimes it turns out their opinions closely mirror ours. Take Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who played Bran Stark for all eight seasons. In a twist no one saw coming, Bran became ruler of the Six Kingdoms. This got mixed reactions from fans, and Hempstead-Wright totally understands it.
“Not everyone will be happy,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s so difficult to finish a series as popular as this without pissing some people off. I don’t think anybody will think it’s predictable, and that’s as much as you can hope for. People are going to be angry. There’s going to be a lot of broken hearts. It’s ‘bittersweet,’ exactly as [saga author] George R.R. Martin intended. It’s a fitting conclusion to this epic saga.”
In fact, Hempstead-Wright fully believed that the finale script, in which Bran is chosen as king, was a joke. “When I got to the [Dragonpit scene] in the last episode and they’re like, ‘What about Bran?’ I had to get up and pace around the room,” he said. “I genuinely thought it was a joke script and that [showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] sent to everyone a script with their own character ends up on the Iron Throne. ‘Yeah, good one guys. Oh s–t, it’s actually real?’”
“I’m happy,” he continued. “Though I kind of did want to die and get in one good death scene with an exploding head or something.”
We still have plenty of questions about Bran and his powers—but at least Sansa got a crown too. Double Stark power can’t be that bad, right?
