Warning: This post contains major spoilers for Game Of Thrones season 8.
If you, too, feel that the ending to the Battle Of Winterfell was too good to be true, then this is the post for you. Obviously, there were some huge character losses when the wights and White Walkers attacked the Stark home, but if everything went down as it seems, then Arya (Maisie Williams) killed the Night King (Vladimir Furdik) and the White Walkers' thousand-year-long reign of terror has come to an end. But, of course, Reddit believes things didn't go down as they seem. Specifically, a lot of people latched on to the weird moment between Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) and the Night King before Arya did her gigantic death-leap and saved him. Reddit user AegonStarkgaryen thinks there's more to that scene than meets the eye, and it does not bode well for Bran. In fact, they believe that Westeros's true enemy wasn't the Night King at all, but another magical force hiding in plain sight: the Three-Eyed Raven.
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Here's why people think Bran, AKA the Three-Eyed Raven, is actually evil.
Just to cover our bases, Bran Stark is the fourth child of Ned and Catelyn Stark who loved climbing and discovering secret passageways before Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) pushed him out of a window. This left him comatose, and then crippled. He has since been unable to walk.
A warg is someone who can travel into the minds of animals and see things from their perspectives and control their actions. Bran develops this ability with help from the Three-Eyed Raven.
Who is the Three-Eyed Raven?
In the literal sense, it's a raven with three eyes that frequently appeared to Bran in his dreams. It's also the title given to the last greenseer, which is someone who is able to see past and future events via dream sequences. We finally meet the Three-Eyed Raven (the person) in season 4. He tells Bran he has been watching him his whole life, and coaches him through his visions and warging abilities. With the Three-Eyed Raven's help, Bran is able to jump into past events, even ones he never witnessed himself, such as Jon Snow's (Kit Harington) birth. He's also able to jump into more nebulous events, such as the scene with the White Walkers in which the Night King marks Bran by grabbing his arm.
Are Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven the same thing?
Here's where things get complicated. After the Night King marked Bran, the current Three-Eyed Raven's protection was ruined. The Night King and his army arrive at the cave where Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven were staying, and kill the Three-Eyed Raven as Bran & Co. escape.
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Bran is rescued by Benjen Stark, who tells him that the Three-Eyed Raven "lives again." AKA, Bran is the new Three-Eyed Raven.
But now he's evil?
Maybe. This theory noted Bran and the Night King's sus interaction during the Battle Of Winterfell and has come up with a possible explanation. It's no secret that Bran is not altogether normal, so what if the night the previous Three-Eyed Raven was killed, Bran was also killed, and is now fully inhabited by the Three-Eyed Raven?
How would that change things?
AegonStarkgaryen thinks that, having witnessed thousands of lifetimes of fickle human behavior, the Three-Eyed Raven has been stoking various flames to have all of mankind battle each other to death and cleanse the earth.
"The White Walkers were, in fact, trying to kill the 3ER for generations," the user writes. "As soon as he ventured South of the wall in the form of Bran, they followed suit ONLY to try kill him. So what does the 3ER do? He manipulates the rest of humanity to save him from the WW, painting THEM as the evil guy. That's his only option. The NK's mark is on him and will hunt him down.
Which means — all of this was engineered by the 3ER. That is why he [Bran] gave Arya the Catspaw dagger. So she could use it to kill the NK in order to save himself."
What would this mean for the rest of GoT?
If Bran/the Three-Eyed Raven really is evil, that means the Night King's death didn't actually solve anything. The Three Eyed Raven is still wreaking havoc. While AegonStarkgaryen doesn't have a guess as to how exactly the Stark family will find out that their brother has been replaced with an evil force, they do speculate that Arya will be the one to kill the Three-Eyed Raven once and for all. Hopefully with a similarly meme-able leap.
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