Last week's episode of Game of Thrones 'The Door' provided us with a complicated time loop that has got many questions arising to whose fault it was Hodor's speech impairment and why did all have to happen
The speech impairment could have been avoided but not Hodor's death, how?
In the world of GOT, there is no single layer of time (the present), simultaneously the past, present and future are happening. What is past for one is the present of another, vice versa.
The whole time loop happened because Bran warged without permission and unaccompanied into the middle of the white walkers. He was safe till he was touched by the Night's King and by bodily contact the Night's King gained the whereabouts of Bran. If he had not been touched he would have been safe, but really who can avoid being touched in the span of a second. Bran heads out of the vision and is warned by the old man to start preparing for a rescue mission. Meera steps into action. Here comes the downfall. There were 2 choices that Bran could have mad leading to a change in the past and present.
Instead of staying conscious with Meera and making it easier for everyone to escape easily, Bran and the three-eyed Raven are again in a vision of the past Winterfell where his dad, uncle and Hodor are young. Meera steps out of the cave and is confronted by the opposing army. She and the children of the forest have to prevent the Night's King from entering the cave while the men are in another world altogether. The children of the forest light a ring of fire to keep the invaders out but fail when the Night's King (and his gang) passes the fire easily. The white walkers are stopped by the fire but the use of their high-power brains than Bran jump to the top of the tree to enter from above.
Meera heads back into the cave and tries to wake Bran up but he is so into watching the past that he remains asleep. She pulls him onto a troller and tries to pull the troller out and run away outside the cave into the forest.
This is where the time loop happened. Hodor being the slow one despite his size, had to prevent the white walkers from running after Meera and the unconscious Bran. If he had run away with them, the Night's king might have come after them as well knowing where the heavy Hodor is heading towards. But Hodor decided to stay behind and keep the door between the white walkers and Bran shut. How and why did he get the idea to keep the hold the door?
Meera obviously told him to, but would have not been enough motivation for a simple-minded person to keep it shut for that long. Obviously we needed the intervention of Bran for that to happen. If Bran had been conscious/awake at that time, he would have warged into the present-time Hodor to hold the door. That way up till now or even through his whole life Hodor would have been able to speak and would have been called by his real name, Wylis/Willis.
But it just happened to be that one cannot step out of a vision that fast and Bran was very well into observing the past while all this happened. Meera urged Bran to wake up and warned him to warg into Hodor. Since Bran was in the past, and Hodor was right in front of him, Bran warged into the younger Hodor instead of the older present one. By this time Meera and the unconscious Bran were outside running away. The young Hodor's (of the past) and the older Hodor's (of the present) minds linked and he kept repeating the words 'hold the door' which Meera instructed him to. I am not sure if a sane person would have been able to handle the pressure but Hodor's mind and body erupted into a seizure by constantly repeating the words 'hold the door' until they were shortened into 'hodor'. This change in his speech could have been short-term but considering two times (past and present) were linked inside his brain, the change was long-term.
Again, had Bran been awake at the time of attack, this time loop would not have occurred. Perhaps Hodor might have still been loyal to Bran if the course of history had been different.
Could Hodor have survived the pushing of white walkers onto the door? Unfortunately no. He would not have been fast enough to get away from them. Since there were so many of them, they ultimately started getting at him from the other side (through breakage in the door) which lead to his death.
Can we really blame anyone here? I don't think so. Even if Hodor was sane, he might still have been used by Bran since his size proved a big advantage in stopped the white walkers and doing other things that only giants could do. The reason why he was used in the past and present was that he was with Bran at that moment. Bran had warged into him earlier in season 4. It didn't have to be this present that had to be the turning point of Hodor's speech, it could have been earlier if at any time Bran had been in a past vision of Hodor's or anyone else's for that matter.
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