Game of Thrones – Episode 605: Warging Humans in – “The Door”

. . . To eat of human meat was abomination, to mate as wolf with wolf was abomination, and to seize the body of another man was the worst abomination of all. . .” (A Dance with Dragons, Prologue)

I have been missing for a while the type of shocking scene that is worth watching in Game of Thrones. In Episode 605 – “The Door,” we finally get to know what happened to Hodor, a scene that causes distress in the audience. Earlier this season, in Episode 601, we learned that he was able to talk in the past, which led us to believe that something traumatizing happened to him at some particular point in his life. The central theme is that the use of special powers backfires if it is used unwisely. There are three instances in Episode 605 that reflect this theme.

The Origin of the White Walkers

The first example in which magic or supernatural powers is not used adequately is the scene involving the creation of the White Walkers. The Greenseer and Bran are in the past, thousands of years back. He sees a beautiful landscape in which a group of standing stones is set in a pattern on the land. A weirwood is in the center. He sees the children, but then one of them, Leaf, stabs a First Man, with a dragonglass dagger. Through magic, this individual does not die but becomes the Night’s King (the Great Other in the books). Bran’s friend, Leaf, reveals that they were created to defeat the First Men who have been destroying their sacred trees and slaughtering them. They created a race to protect themselves without realizing that their invention would also turn against them. The Children created Winter accidentally. The location where the transformation or sacrifice took place looked warm thousands of years back. Later, we see the same area covered by snow and infested by wights and the White Walkers.

The second event in which magic is used to create more chaos by accident is when Bran out of curiosity touches the weirwood to have visions or time-travel without being accompanied by the greenseer. He sees the same location where the first White Walker was created. It is winter, so he sees the present. Bran sees the army of wights who seem lifeless even though they are standing. As he moves further back, he comes face to face with the White Walkers. What Bran has learned is that nobody can see a greenseer witnessing an event. However, it seems that when somebody has some form of magic, it is possible for him or her to see a greenseer. The Night’s King sees him and touches him leaving a mark on his arm. Then, all the wights turn their attention to Bran. Subsequently, the last greenseer tells Bran and Meera that they are no longer safe in the cave since the Night’s King is aware of their location. The White Walkers are now able to bypass the magic barrier that protects them inside the cave. They send their hordes of wights to destroy the cave bringing the possible extinction of the Children and death to both Summer and Hodor. The Night’s King kills the last greenseer when he is showing Bran the past while warging. I love watching the special effect portraying how the greenseer disintegrates in the past as he is killed.

Speculations: Three years ago, I came across a theory that stated that the White Walkers were Children of the Forest who rebelled against their own and the First Men. At the same time, another book reader theorized that the Children of the Forest created them. Of course, I considered these theories crackpot but plausible in a way. One wonders whether the producers are reading the different threads about the books and using readers’ ideas for the episodes. Is it possible for other people with magic to see a greenseer while others cannot? Could somebody like Melisandre be able to see Bran when he is warging? Furthermore, it seems that Bran is a danger if he goes south of the Wall. The Night’s King might be able to trace him, and bypass the Wall’s magical barrier entering the Seven Kingdoms.

The Warging of Humans

For a while, Bran has been warging Hodor occasionally, especially in scenes in which fighting is required. The TV audience has been wondering what would be the effects of warging somebody with a typical human mind. In the prolog of A Dance with Dragons, there is a malicious Wildling known by the name of Varamyr Sixskins. Of course, he has six “familiars.” He is dying because of an injury, and he is thinking about having a second life in one of his animals. However, there is a woman who is taking care of him, Thistle. Varamyr thinks that he could probably live his second life inside her, so he tries to warg her. He relates:

. . . “Get out, get out!” he heard her own mouth shouting. Her body staggered, fell, and rose again, her hands flailed, her legs jerked this way and that in some grotesque dance as his spirit and her own fought for the flesh . . . She raised her hands to his face. He tried  to push them down, but the hands would not obey, and she was clawing at his eyes. . . (A Dance with Dragons, Prologue)

Varamyr is a skilled warg. He has dominated different animals, even some who do not like him. Based on the passage description, it is hard for somebody skilled as him to warg another individual. In the case of Bran Stark, he is warging Hodor while he is in the past. Hodor does not see him, so he cannot fight back, a possible reason why Bran succeeded.

In the TV adaptation, what we see is that Bran is in the past. He is watching his father leave to the Vale. We finally get to see Rickard Stark, Bran’s grandfather. He is advising his son not to strike first, but if he has to, he has to ensure that he must win. This advice is reminiscent of Davos telling Sansa that people in the North are loyal to the Starks, but they want to be on the winning side to avoid being skinned. Everybody will join a battle as long as they know they will win. Bran witnesses the death of the last greenseer while warging. At the same time, he sees Hodor, and he hears Meera screaming, “hold the door.” It is unclear what Bran wanted to achieve. However, it seems that he wanted to warg Hodor so that he would hold the door. However, he does it in the past when there was no danger, causing a severe trauma in Hodor. What is not defined is whether Hodor was able to see a glimpse of the future? Did he know how he will be dying? By being warged in the past, it seems that he was aware that his role was to hold the door at a certain point later in life.

Other Speculations: After this episode, my husband, a non-book reader, and I started to speculate about greenseers changing the past because of their time-traveling skills. Based on this episode, they are no longer “ghosts” witnessing past events. My husband believes that greenseers cannot change the past. Therefore, Bran cannot go back to that day in which he warged Hodor for the first time. It has already happened, even though it is produced by somebody in the future. I tend to think that it all depends on the greenseer’s abilities. In episode 603, “Oathbreaker,” Bran calls his father after the fight at the Tower of Joy. Ned Stark turns around to see. The greenseer disregards it as just simply being the wind.

The following passages from A Dance with Dragons reflect that Bran is able to communicate with people in the present, in this particular case, Theon. Therefore, it is possible that he can do it also with people from the past.

The night was windless, the snow drifting straight down out of a cold black sky, yet the leaves of the heart tree were rustling his name. “Theon,” they seemed to whisper, “Theon.” (A Ghost in Winterfell)

They know. The gods know. They saw what I did. And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran’s face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad. Bran’s ghost, he thought, but that was madness. (A Ghost in Winterfell)

Other Highlights:

It seems that Arya will never be “no one.” She considers Lady Crane nice and a good performer. These are hints that she is still Ned Stark’s daughter. In regards to the farce, the nice characters are portrayed in a disgusting manner. Arya was not pleased with the portrayal of her father. Furthermore, Tyrion is represented as somebody who desires power and forces himself on his new bride, Sansa, which is not the case in reality. We also see whitewashed versions of Cersei and Joffrey. Overall, the farce is an indicator that the winners are the ones who write the history.

In the North, Sansa and Jon are going to rally minor houses for their cause. Sansa has become better in playing politics. She does not tell Jon the source from where she acquired the knowledge that her uncle, the Blackfish, has taken hold of Riverrun. It seems he has an army in the Riverlands. It is not clear at this stage why she is hiding this information.

Even though Yara Greyjoy is probably the best candidate to be Queen of the Iron Islands, the Ironborn prefer her uncle, Euron. As a result, they are forced to leave the islands stealing the best ships. They are probably heading to take refuge in the North, or they are heading to Slaver’s Bay to thwart Euron’s plan. Does anybody else notice a resemblance between the actors who play Theon and Euron?  Or is it just me?

Varys and Tyrion have a new ally, the Red Priestess Kinvara, an enigmatic character. Based on their conversation with her, she seems to have a political agenda in place, the conversion of thousands to the Red Faith. She could be a great aid but dangerous. She knows about how Varys was castrated, and the entity that he heard from the flames. Kinvara dresses in a similar manner like Melisandre. She may be wearing a glamor based on the gemstone she carries on her neck.