'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Actor To Play 'Game Of Thrones' Three-Eyed Raven
Star Wars: The Force Awakens co-star Max von Sydow, a legendary actor with an incredible body of work to his name, is joining the cast of HBO's Game of Thrones season 6, taking over the role of the Three-Eyed Raven.
The 86-year-old Swedish actor has two Oscar-nominations and has appeared in films such as Minority Report, Shutter Island, The Exorcist, Three Days of the Condor, Dune, Judge Dredd, The Seventh Seal, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The Three-Eyed Raven was featured in the first three seasons of the George RR Martin television adaptation, but didn't appear in person until the fourth season. Struan Rodger played the character in a brief appearance in the show's season four finale, and now Max von Sydow will take over the role when the character reappears in Season 6.
It was also recently revealed that Ian McShane (Deadwood) would be joining Game of Thrones for its sixth season playing a role which is being kept under wraps. This latest bit of casting news was reported by Entertainment Weekly, which claims that "both McShane and von Sydow are not expected to have a lot of screen time next season, but both roles are crucial in their own way."
After his fall from the tower and awakening from his coma, Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) sees the raven in multiple dreams. He becomes convinced the raven is guiding him to the crypts in order to somehow find his father. In the second season, Bran asks Osha about the significance of the three-eyed raven but she does not reveal anything. In season 3, a strange boy then appears in his dream and tells Bran that he cannot kill the raven, because Bran is the raven.
And in Season 4, Bran and his group finally encounter the three-eyed raven in person, revealed to not be a bird but a very old man whose body is fused to the roots of the weirwood tree. He reveals that he has been watching them for all of their lives with a thousand eyes and one. The raven tells Bran that he will not help him walk again, but he will fly.
In the books, the bird is a three-eyed crow, rather than a raven, who helped Bran awake from his coma and promises to teach him to fly. Bran goes on a quest to find the crow in the real world and finally meets the old man in much the same way he did in the series. The books give clues to who the three-eyed crow was before he entered the cave, but most of the hints have not made it into the television adaptation.
As for Star Wars, we don't know what character Sydow plays in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens but rumors have ranged (invisotext, highlight to reveal possible spoilers: from an old still-alive Boba Fett to Star Wars Rebels character Kanan Jarrus (end invisotext).