Benjen Stark
Ned's younger brother, First Ranger of the Night's Watch, who gave up Winterfell for the black cloak and the lands beyond the Wall.
A soul of House Stark, born at Winterfell, sworn to The Night's Watch.
The fuller tale
Season Six
In Blood of My Blood ÔÇö The First Ranger, back from the dead ÔÇö mostly. A dead man in the woods saves Bran and Meera: uncle Benjen, half-wight, half-Watch.
Season Seven
In Beyond the Wall ÔÇö One horse, one nephew, no room for both.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Lost beyond the Wall (S7┬ÀE6)
First Ranger, half-saved by the children's magic after a Walker's touch, he spent his long twilight harrying the dead. He gave Jon his horse at the frozen lake and turned to face the swarm with a burning flail ÔÇö a Stark's last watch, ended.
The show gives Benjen the death ÔÇö or the ending, for a man already half past death ÔÇö that the books have never written. When the wight hunt beyond the Wall collapses and Jon, unhorsed, is about to be overrun at the frozen lake, Benjen comes out of the storm swinging a flaming flail, throws his nephew onto his own horse, and slaps it south. There is no second horse and no discussion; he turns to face the swarm so the ride has time to matter, and the dead close over him. Saving a Stark boy at the cost of everything left of himself ÔÇö as endings go, it is the family business. In the books, no such scene exists: Benjen Stark is missing beyond the Wall, presumed by many but confirmed by no one, and readers still wait for the ranging to come home.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
In the books Benjen is simply gone ÔÇö last seen riding from Castle Black in the first volume, sought by the great ranging, never found. The mysterious Coldhands, the dead-but-kindly ranger on an elk who escorts Sam and later Bran's party, was so obviously Benjen-shaped that readers assumed the identification for years, until the author's handwritten 'No' on a manuscript margin settled it. The show, with a pragmatism it often showed toward the books' sprawl, merged the two anyway: its Benjen is Coldhands, origin story and all. Readers therefore still hold an open file the show closed ÔÇö the First Ranger's true fate is one of the published saga's genuinely unanswered questions.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.