Game Of Thrones Season 6: Breaking Down Bran’s Vision in Blood of my Blood

This article originally appeared on Den of Geek UK.

Warning: contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season 6 episode 6.

“Blood Of My Blood” opened with Bran Stark’s Greenseer vision sending him a whole jumble of fast-cut images. There were dragons, murders, explosions, undead armies, a screaming king and an unkindness of ravens. But without the aid of freeze-frame, how was Bran able to understand what it all meant?

That’s where we come in. We’ve got a pause button and we’re not afraid to use it. Here’s what Bran saw…

Unless Cersei’s following in her little brother’s footsteps, we assume these chaps are King’s Landing alchemists back in the day of King Aerys II, Dany’s father, who was popularly known as the Mad King. They’re stashing stores of wildfire (the explosive, burning liquid Tyrion used to fight off Stannis’ fleet in The Battle Of Blackwater) underneath King’s Landing at the behest of the Mad King, who planned to set the city alight and emerge from the flames in dragon form.

This looks like Drogon flying against a stormy sky. That rope in the foreground suggests something nautical. Could this be from Dany’s much-talked-of journey across the Narrow Sea to Westeros?

As there were no dragons living at the time of King Aerys II, this shadow appears to be a future vision of one flying over King’s Landing.

Here’s the Mad King himself, repeating his catchphrase “Burn Them All”.

And here’s a familiar image from “Hardhome”: the Night King raising up the dead after the battle.

This goes back to the pilot episode when Jaime Lannister pushed Bran out of the tower window, losing him the use of his legs, after he witnessed Jaime and Cersei committing incest.

This barren, wintry landscape is shown in time-lapse. Will it be the site of something significant?

Here’s Catelyn Stark, Bran’s mother, having her throat slit at the Red Wedding back in season three.

This takes us back to the final moment of season one, in which Dany hatches her dragon eggs on Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre and emerges as the Unburnt Mother of Dragons.

In season four episode four, Craster’s last son was sacrificed to the Night King, who turned him into a White Walker by touching his cheek. Bran’s being given inside knowledge on how White Walkers are created once again here.

There’s Bran’s father, Ned Stark, being beheaded in season one, episode nine.

There’s a load of ravens, then more from the Mad King and then this shot of Wildfire raging underneath King’s Landing. If this is a future rather than a past vision, perhaps we can expect something explosive to happen there before the season is out.

Bran sees a young Jaime Lannister drawing his sword on and killing King Aerys II by stabbing him in the back. Note the reappearance of the Targaryen throne room, last glimpsed in ruins in Daenerys’ vision at the House of the Undying.

Then it’s over to a young Ned Stark outside the Tower of Joy asking Prince Rhaegar’s men where his sister Lyanna is.

Followed by a bleeding wound. In total speculation mode here, could it be a caesarean incision? Perhaps at the Tower of Joy?

Then Bran sees his brother Robb being murdered.

And back to a vision from the previous episode, in which the Children of the Forest create the Night King by inserting a blade of dragonglass into his heart.

More from Jon Snow’s adventures in “Hardhome.”

And here’s Jaime Lannister where Ned Stark walked in and found him following King Aerys II’s murder: sitting on the Iron Throne.

Then Bran falls once again, the Mad King cries “Burn them all”, and more from Hardhome.

So what does it all mean? Taken as a whole, the visions appear to add up to one message: Dragons + White Walkers + “Burn them all”. You could call it an instruction to Bran that with the fire of Dany’s dragons they can defeat the armies of the undead.

But then what was the significance of witnessing Jaime’s King-slaying? Or remembering the events of the Red Wedding? As Khal Drogo might say, these are questions for wise men with skinny arms…

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