Do you remember when the Game of Thrones opening sequence only featured four locations? Viewers thought the major settings for the show would just be King's Landing, Winterfell, The Wall, and Pentos. Back then, most of the Starks were alive, Arya could see, and Bran Stark could walk! So much has changed in six seasons of the show, but one thing that isn't always clear is just how much time passes on the show. With his Sunday return looming, how old is Bran on Game of Thrones Season 6? Characters traverse seas and walk the length of Westeros, but fans see these events occur in hour-long chunks over the course of multiple seasons. Bran's been unable to walk since Season 1, which means viewers haven't seen him on his feet in over five years. Does that mean Bran, himself, also hasn't walked in five years?
In Season 1, Bran states that he is 10 years old, but after that it becomes less simple. There's no concrete account of how much time has passed in the show, but fans have attempted to do the legwork to discover how many years have gone by between the beginning of the show and where it is now. Some resources, including the unofficial Game of Thrones wiki, believe that each season represents a separate year. However, as Vulture reports, many fans believe the span of time between the events in the book represented at the start of Season 1 and the events in the book represented at the end of Season 5 is approximately three and a half years. While the show and book are different entities at this point, three and a half years seems plausible. The only case in which it doesn't quite make sense is that Bran looks way older than 13 now.
Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who has played Bran since Season 1, is currently 17 years old. Wright and the other child actors on Game of Thrones have continued to age at the same rate that everyone must biologically age at due to science, making it impossible for the characters themselves to age at the rate implied in the books. Bran, Sansa, and Arya Stark have all aged and seemingly impossible rates if the show is following the supposed three-and-a-half year timeline implied by the books.
Bran appears to have become a young adult over the span of six seasons. While the events of the show certainly could fit within three and a half years, the only way to explain the massive growth spurts of the many child actors on the show is to say that each season lasts a year in Westeros. Alternatively, the show could always attribute this growth to magic somehow since that's in play — but that's unlikely.
It's been a whole season since audiences have seen Bran Stark, who was last left in the presence of the Three-Eyed Raven. While it's unclear how much time has passed for Bran between seasons 4 and 6, he certainly looks quite different since his last appearance on the show. The most honest guess that one can give to Bran's age is to say it's somewhere between three and six years and allow the show the chance to make things clearer somewhere down the line. Even if Bran needs to say something like "I can't believe it's been four years since the Lannisters pushed me from that window," surely fans would be relieved to have a concrete answer to the Game of Thrones timeline.
Images: Helen Sloan/HBO, Giphy
