The revelation of the identity of the character who inherits the Iron Throne during the final episode surprised more than one … Starting with his own interpreter, Isaac Hempstead Wright.
When discovering who inherited the Iron Throne in the last episode, comedian Isaac Hempstead Wright, who plays the role of Bran Stark, believed it was a joke on the part of showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss, renowned for regularly trapping the actors of Game of Thrones by sending them fake versions of scenarios in which their characters die horribly.
“When I got to the Dragonpit sequence in the last episode and all the characters were like, ‘Why not Bran?’ I had to get up and pace around the room.”he said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I sincerely believed in a joke in the script and that [Benioff et Weiss] had sent everyone a version of the scenario in which their character ended up on the Iron Throne. “She’s a good one, guys. Oh shit, is that for real?”
Once the surprise effect passed, this final twist turned out to be rather satisfying for the actor: “To be honest, I think he’ll be a very good king. Maybe he’ll have emotional gaps and he won’t really be a sensitive leader, but that’s also a very useful quality for a king or a queen. And at the same time, you can’t really argue with Bran. He’s like, “No, I know everything.”
Hempstead Wright also returned to his favorite moment from the filming of season 8: his confrontation with the Night King during episode 3, “The Long Night”. “It was pretty strong to shoot those sequences at night when the Night King gets killed, and to see the end of one of the most important and powerful characters on the show.
There’s that moment between Bran and the Night King where Bran almost feels compassion for him. He never wanted to be the Night King. He was seen being tied to a tree and having a Dragonglass blade plunged into his heart. [en référence à la séquence montrant les origines du personnage dans la saison 6, ndlr], before wanting destruction at all costs. It was probably my favorite sequence to shoot.”
The actor also revealed that the directors had done everything to keep the surprise of the finale on set and avoid spoilers, to the point of bringing in actors who did not appear in the Dragonpit sequence to sow doubt among the curious: “Several other actors who weren’t in the scene flew in to mislead the paparazzi, and they were quite grateful to have a free vacation while we were filming in the scorching sun.”