But, as is always the case, there comes a theory that could help to cast the story in a better light and here's mine on it. What if Bran aka The Three Eyed Raven was the Greater-Scope Villain of the series?
Now I'm basing this theory off three major plot points in Season 8, Everyone acting like an idiot, Dany and Jaime's suddenly not caring about the people despite that being the main driving force behind their entire character arcs and Bran becoming the King of the Six Kingdoms.
First let's look at the last point, Bran becoming the King of the Six Kingdoms. Throughout most of Seasons 7 and 8 Bran has been telling everyone that he doesn't want the Thorn and yet, he's suddenly all for being the supreme ruler of everything. Even telling Tyrion, quote "Why do you think I came back?" One of these two things must be true, either Bran was telling the truth and didn't want to be king, which seems to go against what he says to Tyrion, or he was lying the whole time and always intended to be king.
Of course there is just the small matter of having two potential rivals to that goal, both of whom have a much better claim to the throne and both well loved by a LOT of people and are seen as reasonable people. However, trying to outright kill either of them would just draw out hostilities and possibly even get the two of them to join forces to kill him.
Thus we come to the first and second point I brought up, Everyone Acting like an Idiot and Dany and Jaime's Sudden fall to the Dark Side. One of the major complaints of The Long Night was how Bran was just sitting around Warging, even though we don't see the results of this at all during the episode. Well what if he wasn't using his powers to control anything, what if instead he was using his Warging powers to alter the minds of certain people, namely everyone who was going to survive the battle. Remember it's soon after this that Dany just happens to forget about the Iron Fleet and starts getting crazier and everyone just happens to make a number of really stupid choices that leads to Kingslanding getting burned, Dany's and Jaime's deaths and Jon becoming more and more passive.
What if Bran had been planting these horrible ideas in everyone's heads during the battle, where they were all detracted by the army of the undead. It would explain why Dany suddenly goes full Bad Queen when she hears the Bells, Bran had altered her mind enough so that would trigger her to just burn KL to the ground. And as for Jaime, remember that Jaime is the reason that Bran is a cripple it's entirely possible that the part of Bran that's still Bran holds a grudge against Jaime for that so he makes it where all of Jaime's character development is undone so dies in such a way that would ruin him in the eyes of everyone he knew and loved.
And that's my theory. I have no idea if this even sounds good or interesting but I do want to know what you all think. Is Bran the reason for every bad story choice in Season 8 and does this silly little theory make the final season a little better? Let me know.
