Check Out Teen Bran's White Pupils in New Game of Thrones Teaser

Game of Thrones’ fifth season was notable for the absence of Bran Stark, the spirited young cripple of the North and Hodor’s glorified jockey. But the first teaser for season six show’s he’s back and wargier than ever.

I suspected that the reason for this was because Isaac Hempstead Wright, the now 16-year-old English actor behind the role, had to navigate the perils of puberty in private. GoT’s showrunner David Benioff, however, said the show’s writers took a break from Bran’s plot line because they had caught up with that of the books too quickly.

“The fact is, even though we’re making changes to the books and adapting as necessary, we’re trying to keep the various storylines the same as the books and trying to keep them roughly [chronologically] parallel,” Benioff told Entertainment Weekly. “And last year we caught up to the end of Bran’s storyline [in George R.R. Martin’s most recent A Song of Ice and Fire novel, A Dance with Dragons]. So if we pushed him forward this season, then he’s way ahead of where the other characters are.”

Last we saw, Bran, alongside Hodor and Meera Reed, was in a cave with his new professor of warging, a three-eyed raven.

“He’s now entering a training period which is going to take quite some time, much of which isn’t particularly cinematic,” Benioff continued. “So rather than being stuck in a cave for a year, we figured it would be interesting to leave him out for a little bit, so when you see him again…”

Well, consider him trained. In the newest trailer released on Thursday, Bran lifts his white eyes to the sky and speaks in a husky pubescent growl, “They have no idea what’s going to happen.”