About six months ago, it was announced that British acting legend Jim Broadbent had joined that cast of HBO’s Game of Thrones for its penultimate seventh season. At the time, no details were provided on which character Broadbent would be portraying, but fans immediately jumped to the conclusion that he’d be playing a maester of some description, and it looks like they were right on the money.
During an interview with Screen Crush, Broadbent spilled that he’ll be playing “a maester, an archmaester. I’m an old professor character. I did five episodes. I did sort of one major scene in each episode.” Though the actor didn’t specify which maester, he did divulge that he’d filmed his scenes with John Brandley, who plays Samwell Tarly. As you may recall, Sam arrived at the Citadel in Old Town towards the end of season 6 with a view to becoming a measter himself. There, he was told he’d have to wait to see the archmaester, who is almost certainly Broadbent’s character.
The prevailing theory seems to be that this maester will actually turn out to be Archmaester Marwyn, who earned the nickname Marwyn the Mage because of his unshakeable belief in magical creatures such as dragons and wights. If Broadbent is indeed playing Marwyn, there’s a good chance he’ll be the one to enlighten the non-believers of Westeros on the encroaching threat of the demonic White Walkers.
We’ll find out for sure when Game of Thrones returns to our screens this summer.
