'Game of Thrones' Season 8 Spoilers: Trailer Teases a Major Role for Bran

Everyone’s talking about the newest Game of Thrones teaser trailer, which revealed the Season 8 premiere date and focused on the truth about Jon Snow’s identity. However, it’s not just who’s seen and heard in the teaser but who isn’t, and they may play a role in Jon finally learning who his parents really are.

Potential spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8 below.

In the teaser, Jon, Sansa, and Arya walk by statues of dead family members in the crypts at Winterfell until they reach statue versions of themselves. As they do, we hear past quotes from Lyanna, Catelyn, and Ned Stark, all focused on Jon and his origins. Then, a frost approaches, presumably symbolizing the upcoming battle against the Army of the Dead.

However, there’s one Stark missing from the teaser. Everyone’s wondering why Bran isn’t there with the rest of his siblings, but his absence could actually be a pretty huge clue about the role his character (now an all-seeing being known as the Three-Eyed Raven) plays in Jon Snow’s journey during Game of Thrones Season 8.

After all, Bran knows the truth about Jon’s parents, while the characters present in the trailer do not. Bran even said that Jon needed to learn the truth in the Season 7 finale.

The first of the three quotes about Jon’s lineage in the teaser comes from the Season 6 finale. “You have to protect him,” Lyanna told Ned of her son, Jon, on the day he was born.

Though Bran isn’t present in the teaser, everything seems to be pointing to his character being the one to tell Jon the truth about his parents. Bran did witness Jon’s birth. That could come into play when Jon finds out the truth in the final season. What if, while telling Jon about what he can now do as the Three-Eyed Raven, Bran tells him what he learned that day?

While no one involved with the show is sharing what will happen when Jon finds out he’s actually a Targaryen with a claim to the throne, actor Kit Harington did offer a small clue. In an interview with TV Insider, he admitted that it’s going to “be very hard for him.” After all, finding out the truth also means finding out that Daenerys is his aunt.

Perhaps it would be better for him to hear it from someone he knows. Maybe a family member like Bran?

“From a dramatic standpoint, it makes things interesting, because the story is no longer about who Jon’s parents are,” executive producer D.B. Weiss said to TV Insider. “It’s about what happens when Jon finds out.”

There’s also the fact that the new Game of Thrones Season 8 teaser seems to suggest Jon, Sansa, and Arya will all die — why else would we see their statues in the crypt? In that case, Bran’s absence may be a subtle way to suggest he may be immortal now that he’s become the Three-Eyed Raven, or, at the very least, that he’ll be one of the few characters to make it through the final season alive.

Then again, maybe Bran will get his own teaser leading up to the final season of Game of Thrones. After all, we’re still waiting for an official trailer, and it’s possible that HBO will release more teasers, which don’t feature footage from the episodes, prior to the premiere.

Game of Thrones Season 8 will premiere on Sunday, April 14 at 9 p.m. on HBO.

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