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In season 4 of Game of Thrones, Bran Stark and his brother Rickon were marching with Hodor, Jojen, and Meera towards the giant weir-wood tree on the hill where the three-eyed crow was.

When Bran asks the crow if he can fix his legs, the crow says that that is beyond his power. Heartbroken, Bran's eyes begin to fill with tears, but the crow responds:

You will never walk again, Bran... but you will fly

What does this mean? How can Bran fly? Does his ability of warging will help him fly?

Can anyone answer these questions without spoiling any events from the coming seasons?

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  • 8
    Can't be answered without spoiling :)
    – Ciacciu
    Jun 9, 2015 at 12:59
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    "without spoiling any events from the coming seasons" - Oh, that for sure, since, well, Bran and all the others don't ever appear again after that (neither in the show nor in the books, it seems). ;-)
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Jun 9, 2015 at 13:05
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    @Ciacciu Can it even be answered with spoiling at all?
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Jun 9, 2015 at 13:07
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    @NapoleonWilson the books do explain what the three-eyed crow means, but my point was that the question looks like "I want to know what happens next, but please don't tell me what happens next". Maybe my definition of spoilers is broader than the OP's :-)
    – Ciacciu
    Jun 9, 2015 at 13:18
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    @Mourad - Opening it up to pure speculation would make this question off-topic, so keep as it is. And if you don't want to spoil the series for yourself, DON'T READ ANY OF THE ANSWERS AS THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! :) Jun 9, 2015 at 15:51

5 Answers 5

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Yes, his ability of warging helps him fly.

We've already seen one skinchanger, the wildling Orell, who was able to warg into his pet eagle. Bran is a very powerful skinchanger -- though he mostly Bran wargs into his direwolf, he's also able to warg into

humans (Hodor) and even weirwood trees.

This means Bran is almost certainly able to warg into other animals, including birds. The raven/crow is promising to help teach Bran to properly use his skinchanging abilities, which will allow him to warg into any nearby birds and fly.

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    I don't think 3 eyed raven talking about warging into birds.
    – Ankit Sharma
    Jun 10, 2015 at 6:54
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    I know there's a fan theory which says that Bran is going to warg into a dragon but I'm skeptical. There's a slightly more plausible theory that he'll be one of the 3 dragon riders, but after Dance with Dragons we have 3 far better candidates for that, too...
    – KutuluMike
    Jun 10, 2015 at 10:34
  • I am expecting something different entirely. Flying for real.
    – Ankit Sharma
    Jun 10, 2015 at 10:35
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    Well, all the theories here are quite interesting, but at the end of the day they're probably making too much out of a simple phrase meant to say "you will be going to warg into all kinds of stuff, including birds" in an impressive way. Can he already warg inside of Hodor and therefore walk? Sure, but that doesn't mean this dialogue is to be taken too literally. So on the bottom line this is the most obvious and reasonable answer, even if the others are interesting, too.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Jun 10, 2015 at 15:56
  • IIRC, the in the novels the crow promises to teach Bran to fly very early, while he's still in a the coma dream after his fall. And then makes the statement again later on. The meaning is a lot clearer in that case, I think.
    – KutuluMike
    Jun 10, 2015 at 17:32
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This is likely foreshadowing for some event in the future that is not spoilerable (by anybody except G.R.R Martin) because Bran's story line isn't developed any further in the book. See What happened to Bran and Hodor? (thanks to @Napoleon Wilson for the link)

Bran warging into an eagle/flying bird doesn't satisfy what the crows prediction. If warging into a bird counted as flying then warging into Hodor counts as walking which he will supposedly never do again.

One possible theory is

that Bran will ride a dragon. Ride, not warg. (However, he might multi-task... who knows.)

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    Still a speculation, but REALLY good catch about the walking/flying comparison. +1 to you, good Sir
    – Ciacciu
    Jun 10, 2015 at 7:21
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    I confidently guess that this is a good catch in the sense that once we know what really happens, you will still be left nit-picking with Martin as to what "counts" as what. If riding a dragon "counts as flying", then you could just as well say that riding a horse "counts as walking/trotting/cantering/galloping", it's a genuine English usage of the word :-p I would not be in the least surprised if the crow's claim is about warging birds, regardless of the fact that this means the uses of "walk" and "fly" within the claim are inconsistent. Jun 10, 2015 at 12:40
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I always translated this metaphorically as in:

"You must learn to walk before you run." - meaning you must learn from the start, before you are good at something.

So naturally I translated:

"You will never walk again, Bran… but you will fly." - you will never be normal again, but you will be better (as flying is better than walking).

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  • This is exactly how I also looked at it. Mostly, people are looking at it literally, but I think its metaphorical meaning has more gravity. Bran came to the three-eyed raven with the hope that he'd be able to have a "normal" life again. Raven's reply was clear-cut. You will NEVER be normal again. But you will become something extra-ordinary. And this is what we have seen now in Season-07. Bran has come back to Winterfell, but he isn't Bran anymore. He's someone else, something extra-ordinary. Season-08 will unleash his potential.
    – shivams
    Sep 15, 2017 at 9:52
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During the series, on a couple of occasions, just before white walkers appear birds (probably crows) in their numbers fly by. Whether this has some significance or not to what Bran will be able to control I don't know. But that's certainly not my theory. Jojen tells Bran that he is not like other wargs, he his special, stronger. I don't see how warging into a bird of any kind will show that strength. I mean it's not like we havn't seen it before. Also in one of Brans visions he sees a shadow of a dragon flying over King's Landing. Either he just glimpses into the future of a dragon over King's Landing lead only by Daenerys or he has some kind of hand in it. My guess is probably the latter.

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Thanks to all of you for answering my question.

Reading your responses and doing some research on the internet, I came up with a personal theory about what the three-eyed crow meant by his saying

"You will never walk again, Bran… but you will fly"

to Bran Stark and I want to share it with you all.

The ability of warging is beyond what we thought it is, because if the animal whose mind a warg has entered dies while he is controlling it, the warg will survive this. But if a warg's own body is killed while entering the mind of an animal, the warg's human consciousness can live on inside of the animal.

By saying that we can all agree on the fact that if Bran while warging maybe an eagle or a dragon why not, and lets supose he died, his consciousness will survive inside the dragon or the eagle or what ever it will be, and if this happens the saying of the crow that Bran will fly is literaly correct and Bran will fly because in this case he will be inside a dragon or an eagle.

This is my personal theory, feel free to discuss it with me if you see that there is something wrong in it, and let us help each other to come up with the most correct theory.

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