Bran's transformation into the Three-Eyed Raven has been a blessing and a curse for Game of Thrones fans; on the one hand, his abilities allow us to explore previously uncharted corners of Westeros, like Rhaegar Targaryen's wedding to Lyanna Stark; on the other, he's kind of a downer at reunions.

We spoke to the man behind the Raven, Isaac Hempstead Wright, about his character's newfound friendship with Sam Tarly, those pesky rumors that Bran is the Night King, and a scene that was cut from Season 7 which would've completely changed the dynamic of Littlefinger's death scene.

Sam and Bran seem like a perfect team -- Sam's one of the most inquisitive characters on the show, and Bran seemingly has a lot of the answers we need. Do you think this means Sam is going to spend all of Season 8 asking Bran questions like he's Siri?

[Laughs.] Yeah! It’s a great union because I don’t know if Bran is really the kind of character anymore who’s making any great plans about what he’s gonna do with all this knowledge beyond what he knows his destiny is. It’s quite nice to have someone at the helm of this fantastic ability Bran has, to guide him in the right direction.

Sam had to prompt Bran to visit Rhaegar and Lyanna’s wedding; is that a hint as to the limits of his abilities, that he can’t see everything unless he knows where to look?

Exactly, he’s got a whole Kindle library, but he just hasn’t read every single book yet. The old Three-Eyed Raven had sat in that tree for a thousand years and has read every single word of everything that’s happened, whereas Bran hasn’t had that yet. He’s just been given all this information and so he still has to look it up in a massive encyclopedia of sorts.

Some fans are very perturbed that Sam took credit for discovering Rhaegar’s annulment when it was actually Gilly – do you think Bran might go back and fact-check him and vindicate Gilly?

Yeah, he’ll jump back and go, “actually, bring me Gilly, she knows this more than you.” [Laughs.]

I feel like the show hasn’t definitively established this: Can Bran see the future as well as the past and present?

I don’t know. We haven’t seen, as far as I can tell, any of him really seeing the future. I think Bran has an idea of destinies and an idea of fate, so he kind of has a foggy picture of where things are going.

When he gets that knife and hands it to Arya, I think he knows that knife has some kind of purpose in her hands. He doesn’t know “that’s gonna be the knife that’s gonna kill Littlefinger,” but he’s looking at it going, “I can feel a connection with this knife, through different timelines, and it seems to be in Arya’s hands – let me give it to her.” There’s that importance there. But I don’t think Bran can exactly predict the future.

Do you think he’d be bothered by the fact that Jon and Dany are getting intimate, considering that not much seems to bother him these days, but his whole journey was started because he caught two siblings having sex?

I don’t think it’s going to bother Bran that much; I certainly think it’ll bother Dany. I’m not sure she’s going to be best pleased that she’s screwing the heir to the Iron Throne when she thinks she is. I’m excited to see how they’re going to develop that next season. Jon’s the kind of honorable person who may not even raise that at all and feel that Daenerys should be queen, so who knows? That’s definitely going to be an awkward conversation.

Right, Jon has never wanted power for power's sake, but it feels like the incest of it all would probably bother him more, given that he’s always had that desire to feel like part of a family – do you think that’s the bigger hurdle?

Yeah. I think that’s probably not the best.

Apparently, some fans figured out that Bran, Arya and Sansa were double crossing Littlefinger fairly early on because in every scene Littlefinger was in, you could hear ravens in the background, signaling that Bran was listening. Were you aware of that, or did you just know in a broad sense that Bran would just be eavesdropping on Littlefinger and colluding with his sisters?

Really? Game of Thronesfans have a habit of hearing things and seeing things that aren’t really there and then attributing them to complex theories. [Laughs.] But I haven’t actually checked that, so maybe that is true.

We actually shot a scene that didn’t make it in where Sansa comes to Bran’s chambers and says “I need your help,” so whether that got cut because they wanted to change the way they all coordinated… it’s my understanding that Sansa came to Bran going “actually, can you just fact-check all this, because I’m not sure who to believe, and I’m going to use the talking encyclopedia to set things straight.”

What do you think of the fan theory that Bran is the Night King?

To be honest, I’m finding it a little bit far-fetched, but then again, I would’ve thought that the Hodor theory far-fetched if I’d seen that on an internet forum. I dunno, there are so many theories in Game of Thronesand so many things that are gonna begin to tie up next season, I think it’ll be interesting to see.

But people are now starting to put pictures of my face and the Night King’s together like “yep, that proves it.” Do I really look like an ancient ice zombie? Thanks. Cheers, guys.

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What was the most challenging part of playing Bran this season, considering just how different he is to the character you started off with?

It was a totally new thing for me, it was a really, really difficult thing to get right… just imagine being there with all these different timelines, everything floating around your head at once. He doesn’t really exist in any one time; his brain is permanently looking through all of history, everywhere at once.

That was difficult, especially because it’s so easy to become very boring if it’s just a character going, “Yes, yes, I know everything.” It can become quite monotonous, so just trying to capture a little bit of charisma, a little bit of personality, some mystery to him, so he doesn’t just become a talking plot point which just sells any convenient thing that you need to fix in the plot, but rather becomes a genuinely interesting unknown force.

The show is still so huge in scope, there are so many other stories and plot threads going on that you’re not involved in; which was your favorite just from an audience perspective?

I’ve got to say that that downing of the Wall was pretty epic. I love the Night King and all the stuff going on there, not just because I’ve had a vague involvement with it, but it’s been so cool getting to watch what started in the very first episode with some of the few White Walkers that existed, how they’ve developed into this massive army and this almost undefeatable force. To me, it’s sort of mirroring Daenerys’ journey from that very first episode, to become one of the most powerful forces in Westeros. That’s really what it is, it’s the Song of Ice and Fire -- I think it’s those two who are there to battle it out.

The Wall breaking is obviously a huge shift in the status quo of the series…

Yep, we are all screwed, we are officially screwed.

But Littlefinger’s death is also a seismic shift since he’s been there, scheming, from the beginning – what do you think his loss means for the show?

That is the end of a true Game of Thrones legend, there. Losing Littlefinger is I think in many ways going to make it a slightly more peaceful place. You don’t have this shady figure slinking around trying to puppeteer all these different threads and trying to shift them all to his own interests. I think it’ll certainly make Winterfell a happier place.

I loved the bittersweetness of the Stark reunion; how did you feel when you read how Arya, Sansa and Bran would reunite, after years of fan anticipation?

I liked that it was bittersweet because that’s Game of Thrones,isn’t it? If they all came back and said, “aww, it’s great to see you guys, let’s all have a catch-up over a cup of tea,” and there was just an episode of the three of them having a gossip, I think that would’ve been disappointing. The fact that we nearly saw Sansa and Arya at each other’s throats and they’ve both been freaked out by this strange new person their brother is, I think was proper good, Game of Thronesat its best.