‘Oathbreaker’ is the third episode of the sixth season of HBO’s fantasy television series Game of Thrones, and the 53rd overall.
Sometimes the only thing of value in an episode is a single dialogue. In both the previous season and Martin’s previous book, silence reigns over what happened in Bloodraven’s cave below the great weirwood tree. But in this season we finally learn that Bran is receiving retrocognitive lessons about Westeros’ past. After one of those lessons, in which Bran sees his father as a young man fighting with the best swordsman in the kingdom, Bran’s mentor interrupts the vision and after a brief exchange he says:
Three-eyed raven: The past is already written the ink is dry.
Bran: What’s in that tower? I want to go back there.
Three-eyed raven: I have told you many times: stay too long where you don’t belong and you will never return.
Bran: Why do I want to return? So I can be a cripple again? So I can talk to an old man in a tree?
Three-eyed raven: You think I wanted to sit here for a thousand years watching the world from a distance as the roots grew through me?
Bran: So why did you?
Three-eyed raven: I was waiting for you.
Bran: I don’t want to be you.
Three-eyed raven: (chuckles) I don’t blame you. You won’t be here forever. You won’t be an old man in a tree. But before you leave you must learn!