Here's Why Game of Thrones Season 5 Won't Include Bran Stark

Some Game of Thrones fans were more than a little confused when Kristian Nairn, who plays Hodor on the HBO fantasy series, let it slip over the summer that both he and Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark) will be absent for all of Season 5, especially since their storyline was finally starting to gain traction on the show.

Now, thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we know exactly why Bran and Hodor (Hodor!) are taking a season-long vacation, and it's just as many fans of the source novels expected: Their characters have gone as far as they can at the moment, because the next chapter of their story hasn't been published yet!

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Executive producer and showrunner David Benioff told EW, "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 last year we caught up to the end of Bran's storyline [in the most recent book, A Dance with Dragons]. So if we pushed him forward this season, then he's way ahead of where the other characters are."

"It made sense to stop where we did," Benioff continued, noting that Bran's character is now entering a period of training after having found the Three-Eyed Raven at the end of Season 4. "Rather than being stuck in a cave for a year, we figured it would be interesting to leave him out for a little bit."

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So there you have it! Are you bummed to know that the next time you see Bran on your television screen, he'll appear to be approximately 35 years old? Or are you happy that Game of Thrones' writers aren't shoehorning him in and padding his story the way they did with Theon Greyjoy's (Alfie Allen)? Hit the comments!

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