'Game Of Thrones' Season 5 Spoilers: Does Bran Die? What's Next With Three-Eyed Raven? `

Season 5 of “Game of Thrones” is still a full year away, and even though Season 4 of the series only concluded a few weeks ago, fans are already clamoring to discover what is set to occur next for all the characters of Westeros. In the Season 4 finale “The Children” fans watched as Bran Stark, the cripple son of Ned Stark, finally make it to his destination in the true North. Despite the death of Jojen Reed, Bran Stark’s journey was for the most part successful, reaching the Three-Eyed Raven, who for solely TV viewers looked pretty much like a really old man lodging deeply into a tree. But Bran’s destiny and his relationship with the Three-Eyed Raven is much more than just a man in a tree, so what is next for the heir of Winterfell in Season 5?

The most difficult part about figuring out what is next for Bran, Meera and Hodor is the fact that the TV series has now lapped Bran’s current storyline in George R.R. Martin’s “A Dance With Dragons,” even the Season 4 finale lapped the book with Jojen’s death being revealed prematurely. In the book, Jojen is saved by the wights by his sister Meera, who carries her on her back, he makes it back to the cave where he enters a grave depression and states his desire to go home to Greywater Watch. In “A Dance with Dragons” Meera speaks to Bran and states that Jojen had a greendream of his fate and believes that he will die upon arriving in Greywater Watch. However, this is not how the story unfolded in the HBO series, but many fans have agreed that Jojen’s fate was always to die after finally bringing Bran to the Three-Eyed Raven.

So does that mean Bran will die too? Most likely not, Bran doesn’t die in “A Dance of Dragons” and due to the cliffhanger ending fans can safely assume Bran will be alive for majority of “The Winds of Winter” and Season 5 of “Game of Thrones.” In the forthcoming season Bran will begin his training with the Three-Eyed Raven, learning about greenseeing and skinchanging. He will be fed weirwood paste, made by the Children of the Forest, which many fan theories believe is a mix of weirwood seeds and perhaps even the blood of Jojen Reed. The Three-Eyed Raven gives him this paste once the last greenseer decides that Bran is ready for the next step—to move beyond skinchanging and discover his great abilities as a greenseer.

Bran is a greenseer by nature, however the weirwood paste awakens his gift and wed him to the trees. Greenseers have power over nature and have prophetic visions, this means Bran will have the ability to see into the past, present, and future, and to communicate, all through weirwood trees. Many fans believe this will be the best way for the TV series to explain several characters backstories by utilizing flashbacks through Bran’s visions. One of Bran’s first vision’s in “A Dance With Dragons” is of his father Ned Stark sitting beneath Winterfell’s heart tree. Bran becomes emotionally overwhelmed and tries to speak to Ned, but all that his father can hear is a whisper in the wind.