In A Song of Ice and Fire, Coldhands is a strange, mysterious figure, with connections
to the three-eyed crow, the children of the forest, the Night’s Watch, and the Others.
Who is he, and what is he? Let's have a look. In Book 3, Sam and Gilly are attacked by wights
north of the Wall. They’re saved by a “thin” “gaunt” “man” who wears black clothes,
rides a “giant elk”, and uses a huge group of ravens to fight wights kinda like
in that Hitchcock movie. He never gives a name, but Sam calls him Coldhands for his
cold, black hands. Coldhands takes Sam and Gilly south to the abandoned Nightfort on
the Wall, and we learn that he’s been sent by the three-eyed crow to fetch Bran Stark.
So in Dance, Coldhands leads Bran, Hodor, Meera and Jojen, to the three-eyed crow, far
in the north. During this journey, Meera gets really suspicious
of Coldhands. Cause he never really explains who he is and what’s going on, he hides
his face behind a scarf and a hood – he’s also dead. He doesn’t eat or breathe or
seem to sleep, his heart doesn’t beat. Coldhands is a lot like a wight, the zombies controlled
by white walkers. They’re both described as “dead things”, “pale”, with “cold”,
“black” hands. They’re unable to cross certain magical wards. They don’t seem
to feel cold. And Coldhands fears fire, which we know kills wights.
But in other ways, Coldhands is very different to a wight. Wights have bright blue eyes, but
he has “black eyes”. Wights are slow and clumsy, but he’s agile. Wights don’t
talk, but Coldhands speaks in a rattling voice, with intelligence, even hints of emotion.
Wights seem to have lost their humanity, but Coldhands still seems to be a person.
And while wights work for white walkers, Coldhands serves the three-eyed crow.
So the three-eyed crow is actually Brynden Rivers, or Bloodraven, a Targaryen bastard,
ex-Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, a “Dreamer, wizard … greenseer”, and
one hundred and twenty-five year old man, apparently kept alive by his connection to
the weirwoods and the magic of the old gods. Bloodraven’s goals and motivations are shady
and unclear, but he mostly seems to hang out with the children of the forest, watch the
world through the eyes of weirwood trees, skinchange into ravens, manipulate events
from afar – y’know – standard psychic tree man shit. Some people think that Bloodraven
controls Coldhands by skinchanging into him, like Bran controls Hodor. Which might happen
sometimes, but surely not all of the time – Coldhands does seem to exist as his own
person. So what keeps this corpse walking? Coldhands seems to be connected to the old
gods. Like the greenseers of the children of the forest, he has power over animals.
He keeps a group of ravens to scout and fight for him, and he can speak with them – “underst[and]
their quorks and squawks”. He rides a “giant elk” and when it dies, Coldhands performs
a little ritual for it, “murmur[ing] a blessing in some strange tongue as he slit[s] its throat”.
Maybe it’s the magic of the old gods that animates Coldhands. We’ve seen zombies of
ice, zombies of fire, zombies of stone, zombies of necromantic science – why not zombies
of nature, of the old gods? Maybe, just as the Others resurrect wights with ice magic,
and Thoros resurrects Beric with fire magic, Bloodraven resurrects Coldhands with nature
magic. Coldhands is just another kind of zombie.
So that may explain what Coldhands is. The next question is who Coldhands is, or who
he was before his presumed resurrection. His identity does seem to be important because
Meera keeps asking about it, and Coldhands refuses to show his face or say his real name.
So who could he be? Coldhands seems to have been a brother of
the Night’s Watch. He calls Sam “brother”, and wears black, though as Meera points
out, “Anyone can put on a black cloak”, so it’s not certain that he was with the
Watch. Either way, for a while, a popular theory was that Coldhands is Benjen Stark
– Ned’s brother who went beyond the Wall in Book 1 and never came back. Maybe Benjen
was killed by white walkers and later resurrected by Bloodraven as Coldhands. It was a pretty
good idea, but earlier this year, Reddit user _honeybird checked out the original manuscript
of Dance with Dragons and found a note from George Martin saying that Coldhands is not
Benjen – so there goes that idea. Other possible Watchmen include Will and Waymar
Royce, black brothers killed in the Prologue of Book 1. This is kinda trickier because
we know Waymar and probably Will were turned into wights by the Others, so for one of them
to be Coldhands, Bloodraven or someone must have somehow restored their mind after they
were zombified, which is not something we've ever seen happen, so it seems unlikely that
Coldhands is Will or Waymar. Coldhands was apparently killed “long ago”,
and we’re told this by a two hundred year old child of the forest, so Coldhands probably
died years and years ago. One cool idea is that Coldhands is Ser Duncan the Tall, the
protagonist of the Dunk and Egg novellas, set almost a hundred years before the main
series. Dunk had a relationship with Bloodraven – he meets him at the end The Mystery Knight and
escorted him to the Wall when Bloodraven joined the Watch. Maybe Dunk joined the Watch himself,
was killed beyond the Wall, and became Coldhands. There’s no real evidence for this, though,
and certain facts don’t fit, like, Dunk is really tall and Coldhands apparently isn’t,
Dunk seems to have died at Summerhall, not beyond the Wall, and if Dunk joined the Watch,
we’d have probably heard about it. So that one probably isnt’t true either.
Another theory takes us much further back, and links Coldhands to the legendary Night’s
King, a Lord Commander from eight thousand years ago who apparently married an Other
or a wight. This would explain how Coldhands knows about the Black Gate – the Night's King
ruled at the Nightfort and may have used the Black Gate for secret sacrifices. But there
are a few reasons why this theory doesn’t fit either. Firstly, the Night’s King was apparently
cast down by the wildlings and the Starks, but Coldhands was apparently killed by the
Others. Even if the wildlings and Starks let the Night’s King live – which would
be weird, because they apparently “obliterated [his] very name from memory” – why would
the Others kill the Night’s King? He’d apparently been making sacrifices to them.
And even if they did, that doesn’t explain why the Night's King would survive as a sentient
wight for eight thousand years, or why he'd end up working for Bloodraven, or why he'd
have power over animals, or anything really. And eight thousand years is a long ass time.
Could a body and mind survive that long? We are told that “cold preserves”, but if
Coldhands is so ancient it seems weird that he’s never described as such. From the way
he speaks and moves and fights, he seems pretty bloody sprightly for an eight thousand year
old corpse. George Martin has implied that the Night’s King has not survived to the
present day. So overall, it seems unlikely that Coldhands is the Night’s King.
One more theory is that Coldhands is a descendent of the Night’s King and his blue-eyed bride.
Human-Other hybrids have been hinted to exist. But Coldhands doesn’t really seem like
he's part-Other. Others are strange, “beautiful” creatures, “a different sort of life” – but Coldhands
is just a dead man. He hasn’t got blue eyes, or an icy sword, or really any special features
of the white walkers. Even if he is some hybrid, that doesn’t really explain why his mind survives
his death. Besides, the Night’s King’s bride seems more like a wight than an Other,
and can you imagine a zombie giving birth to Coldhands? Would you want to? There’s all sorts of
spooky magic shit you can speculate but at the end of the day there’s just no strong
evidence for this stuff. So there are lots of really interesting possibilities
here, but none of them are all that convincing. It’s tempting to conclude that Coldhands
isn’t anyone special at all, just some random Night’s Watchman who was killed by the Others,
then resurrected by Bloodraven, but if that’s the case, why does Coldhands hide his face,
why do the books keep drawing our attention to the mystery of his identity? It really
seems like there’s something going on here, but for now, we simply don’t have the answers.
We don’t know who Coldhands is, but we can make a pretty guess at what he is – he may
be a Night’s Watchman who was killed by the Others then was reanimated with the magic
of the old gods, probably by Bloodraven and the children of the forest. Whoever and whatever
he is, Coldhands is a really a cool character, so hopefully we’ll see more of him when
Winds of Winter finally comes. Thanks for watching. This video was made with
the support of Patrons on Patreon, including Vineyarddawg, Suzinka Petrovski, Boback Sharifian,
Sarah Gulotta, PodreySanchez, MegglesRuth, Sam Spendlove, Daniel Abdallah, Aidan Kenny,
MikeSee, Hazza, Franz, PunkD, and Gregory Wolfe II. For updates, early access, and other
perks, you can support this channel at patreon.com/AltShiftX. Cheers.