3ER = Bran Time Loop

How are we not all on board with this yet?

I'm not going to list all the obvious reasons that have been listed before but real fast: they are literally the same person, old 3ER (Bran) fails to stop the NK, hops back to the past and does his best to set up Westeros (Bran the Builder) for a better shot then waits for himself in the tree. He's probably doing all that Lord of Light shit while in the tree, but that's a separate consideration. They mentioned no less than three times in the show that if you stay too long warging into the past you're stuck. There's no reason to ever mention this if it doesn't happen in the show.

New 3ER (Bran) is now giving it a shot, and if he fails he will jump back in the past and try again. This plays perfectly into this season's set ups. Why else would the NK go out of his way and risk everything to get at Bran? As long as the 3ER exists, he can never truly win. He also mentions no one has tried killing the NK with dragonfire before (drawing on the knowledge of each time they've been through this loop). Why would he even say this if he doesn't have knowledge of all the loops where they are trying to stop the NK?

Referring to the NK exposing himself to get to Bran: “He’s tried before. Many times, with many Three-eyed Ravens.” Knowing the history of Westeros and when the NK was created, we know this has to refer to different timelines.

So yes, each time the 3ER tries to stop the NK, he sets up new things to try. He probably orchestrated the whole god damn R+L situation (we saw him affecting that scene already) just to create a series of events to get the dragons here for the first time. In the same vein, this might have been the first loop where the 3ER gets marked by the NK. And if he goes back to set it up again, new Bran will take his place and not be marked yet.

There's a billion specific things from the show that point to this. I don't know why it isn't the prevailing theory, so go ahead and poke holes in it for me, please.

Edit: I do want to point out that in the time loop theory, almost every other theory can still be true. Whatever you think about Dany, Jon, Cersei, the Lord of Light, the Prince that was Promised, the Children, etc. None of it is precluded by this.

Edit: I just want to say I don't think I'll change your mind. I think we agree on a lot, but I'm just reading between the lines differently. That's the fun in having theories.

We'll just have to disagree on this. In a TV show like this, they simply don't explain these kind of details if they don't pay off. It's a classic Chekhov's Gun situation IMO. It was even mentioned multiple times and by multiple characters. If it were just a line in the books, I feel it could be a throwaway, but not on the show.

Yes, they said he wanted to erase the memory of men by killing the 3ER. If you think about it, how does that make sense when taken literally? He wants to kill all men, and the 3ER is one of those (arguing he's not a man doesn't change this point). If you're thinking of it as a sappy "no one is dead as long as they're remebered" way, he has only a little more incentive to go after Bran than he does to destroy every book he sees. Remember that the council opened with the fact that if they kill the NK, his army falls. They then doubted there was any reason he could be lured into a trap. Bran told them the NK will risk death and complete and utter defeat to go after him, because he's done it before. Is that a good idea if your goal is to destroy humanity and nothing else? It only makes a shred of sense if you know killing every man except the 3ER meaningless.

Again, remember this is in the context of the war council discussion. He's not just saying the NK likes to kill three eyed ravens. Yes, he went after the 3ER in the tree earlier. But he risked nothing to do so. Bran is telling everyone that the NK will risk losing the entire war and letting millions of men live for a chance to kill the 3ER. Doesn't really fit with the vanilla "destroy humanity" motivation.

I agree on the NK's fundamental motivation. I'm just putting forward that he will never achieve it with the 3ER alive. Remember that the NK is a greenseer, the Great Other, whatever you want to call it - but he is aware time and space in the same way that the 3ER is.

Okay. Let's say they can never affect the past. They can't have a vision, and change anything that has already happened. That fits even better with the looping theory. He can't do jack shit about anything we've seen up to this point. What he can do, is get stuck in the past. So you're the 3ER, you've managed to have a new physical form in the past. You can't go back to the future, because now it hasn't happened yet. You're no longer in the past, but the present. But you still know everything you did before you got yourself stuck. So what do you do? Try to stop the Night King again.

My theory is that he fails to stop the NK, purposefully has a vision/warging/greenseeing to put himself in the past, and get stuck there. On purpose. The theory is that he's done this many times. I also think it's possible that this is his last chance based on getting marked this time around.