And time travel. For fucks sake man. This best not pull a fucking Lost. If is by way of Sam Becketting about the place and 'the cycle continues', or some shit, it'll be bloody silly.

Wow what a great episode. The ending was superb. Loved the whole theater play in Braavos, especially the bit with Sansa's boobies out.

If it does go in that particular direction I'm gonna end up losing a shit ton of respect for it. BSG, LOST and Matrix did it only to fall flat on their arse and is used when they run out of ideas.

Trust me, it's bad. Everything else becomes redundant.

I've seen a lot of people confused about the implications of the scene last night on how time works in ASOIAF, and how it opens up a lot of paradoxes. And I'm here to tell you, no it doesn't.

"The past is already written. The ink is dry."

Time travel in ASOIAF follows Novikov's Self-Consistency Principle, which posits that there is only one timeline, and people who go in the past to change the past have already changed the past and that it was destined to happen all along.

Two major examples in pop culture of other stories that follow this rule. Harry Potter and Futurama.

In Harry Potter, the use of time turners made many people confused. "Why not use them to go back in time and kill Voldemort as a child? Why not save Harry?" Because time travel can't change the past, it can only cause it to happen. When Hermione and Harry use the time turner in Prisoner of Azkaban, they don't change the past by saving Sirius and Buckbeak, they had already saved Sirius and Buckbeak. They went into the past to conclude their destiny to save them.

In Futurama, Fry goes back in time and accidentally kills his grandfather and sleeps with his grandmother. They all expect him to cease existing until they realize that Fry is his own grandfather after all, and the only reason he exists is because he went back in time to sleep with his grandmother (I'll grant that this one is a tad more paradoxical).

Which leaves us with time travel in ASOAIF. Last night, Bran didn't change the past by causing Hodor. Time, fate, destiny....those are written in stone. Bran was always destined to go back and warg into Wylis/Walder, turning him into Hodor. By doing this, it enables Hodor to continue to fulfill his destiny by making him a simpleton who has to help Bran when Bran gets paralyzed.

As for future implications, this means that Bran can't change the past to impact the future. He can't go back and convince the CotF to not create the first Other, he can't stop Ned from being beheaded or Robb from being betrayed. He can only interact with the past to cause the timeline to continue as it already has.

This is the way I look at it, and why it doesn't bother me. From Reddit:

Just because it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy doesn't make it any less of a paradox.

Your theory too, destiny is absolute but time travel is possible. What happens when I go back to cut my own leg off ? (to claim benefits)

You'd be legless your entire life. See: Hodor.

Let me put it like this, the can of worms is open, Bran can time travel and can create paradoxes. This is all true.

So if they decide to go wild then the entire show, the story arcs, the characters, everything can become pre determined by Bran.

Is that show like the Butterfly Effect then ?, that could be cool, it could be a bit Looper though.

Woooah pony. It is paradoxical because Bran has already changed the past, he made Hodor Hodor innit. It's like the grandfather paradox in Futurama, how did it happen the 1st time and if you changed it the 1st time then 'destiny' isn't absolute. I think this is called the bootstrap paradox.

You can't win, it's why writers wrestle with the idea and fail.

This best not pull a fucking Lost.

Pretty sure Eraser already explained it, but he's right. Bran didn't and won't change anything. Like he said, the past is already written. He changed nothing. The only thing he did was watch everything take place as it had always been...