Game of Thrones Season 5: Two key characters are taking a year off; Get ready to travel to Dorne

By Robert Christie - 04 Sep '14 07:30AM

There's some good news and bad news for Season 5 of "Game of Thrones".

The bad news: Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) and Hodor (Kristian Nairn) will not appear next season.

The good news: They're not dying.

"We have a season off and we have a year's hiatus, solely because I imagine our storyline is up to the end of the books," Narin said during a recent interview.

Accorindg to EW.com, where we last left Bran and Hodor in the series - in a cave with the three-eyed crow - is about where George R.R. Martin has reached with their story in the "A Song of Fire and Ice" books. The decision to give Bran and Hodor the season off will open up more time for the series to focus on GoT's new characters, namely the members of the late Oberyn Martell's family.

We will meet the family members - which include Oberyn's deadly and dangerous daughters -in his home country of Dorne. (The scenes which take place in Dorne will be shot in Spain.) Meet the family members and the other new characters here.

In other "Game of Thrones" news, according to recent comments from Martin, your favorite characters may be in more danger of facing death than in previous seasons. Check out this excerpt from an interview Martin did with Buzzfeed:

The way my books are structured, everyone was together, then they all went their separate ways and the story deltas out like that, and now it's getting to the point where the story is beginning to delta back in, and the viewpoint characters are occasionally meeting up with each other now and being in the same point at the same time, which gives me a lot more flexibility for killing people.

"Game of Thrones" returns in 2015 on HBO.