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This episode really threw us all for a loop. We got a ton of little exposistion moving each character forward a tiny bit. And then we have Bran, Meera, and Hodor and boy howdy did you all have some opinions about that.
Some are calling this the first major spoiler for the book readers. Most people called the Jon thing from 3 years ago, but this was unexpected. We delve deep into that and everything else that happened in this episode!
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Is Bran the unwitting antagonist? Is he the deity or one of the deities responsible for the events of GoT. What is a deity if not omniscient and omnipotent? Bran is neither of those things yet, but he has the potential to be close. He has the ability to know all and cause all. Is his near future just a series of “Groundhog Day-esque” montages of Bran causing havoc through time and space? It would be fitting for him to have caused a lot of the events throughout the history of Westeros.
I had a different first impression of what happened to Willis. As Bran warged into him through his vision of the past, suddenly he was hearing the shouts of “hold the door” in both the past and present simultaneously. Almost like running into yourself while time-traveling, this overloaded his mind and left him in a state of udder hodorness.
This sounds simple and plausible! I like it. No need for weird past warging into furure Hodor. It is like a feedback loop. I think I will accept this as the correct answer since, again, you can sum it up in 1 sentence.
I thought that they stated that Hodor was simple even before this through the last flash back when we met lyanna. Didn’t young old man say that and he was acting like he was as we’ll. IMO I don’t think bran made him mentally disabled I think they just caused his brain to glitch and only say Hodor
Love the podcast, but this one was a stinker. Sorry you guys didn’t like it, but thankfully it seems you’re in the minority. Kind of confirms my suspicions that the show watchers have more fun than the book readers. The explanation that Nick describes above (which is exactly how I interpret what happened), is an awesome idea and I bet is better than whatever Martin comes up with in the books. I was ready to enjoy the banter of this podcast after watching one of my favorite episodes of the series, and instead got a lot of whining.
Gotta love a good time travel discussion. Talk about descending into the deepest, darkest of nerd holes. Paradoxes, multiverses, and spacetime continuums all around! Hodor.