But while this moment may not have panned out on the speculation front, "Beyond the Wall" still had plenty of things to theorize about. One of which is the idea that the Night King may be, in fact, Bran Stark - a long-running theory that got a boost from "Beyond the Wall." It involves Bran, who would
have gotten stuck in the past, getting trapped inside the first white walker ever created (the Night King, who he witnessed getting turned), while attempting to actually thwart the creation of white walkers.
It's a dense theory that involves warging, the idea that spending too much time in the past will get you stuck there, and the fact that the Night King and Bran seemed to be connected psychically. Notably, Bran is also able to warg into humans and has powers that not only allow him to see into the past, but change things as well. There's even an element of the theory that suggest that the voices that drove King Aerys "Mad" came from Bran, who was telling him to "Burn" all the white walkers. There are holes for sure - namely why the Three-Eyed-Raven before Bran never mentioned anything - but the theory's gotten some new believers this week. Basically, broken down, Bran's attempts to prevent the "Great War" cause him to go back in time in steps, failing at every turn, until eventually he time travels too much and gets trapped.
Hell, it's no more crazy than my personal weird theory that Arya Stark never made it to Winterfell. I know there are some who think Arya never actually
made it back to Westeros, and that she's really just been the Waif in Arya skin the whole time. My idea is less extreme than that and just uses the Nymeria reunion in the woods as a turning point to actually send her to King's Landing and "No One" to Winterfell. How would Jaqen have Arya's face without killing her? Welp, that's a hole, now isn't it?