Hodor is the Hero Archetype We Need Now
Hodor is the Hero Archetype We Need Now
From climate change to rising authoritarianism, we need to 'hold the door' for collective problem-solving in the polycrisis—and we should valorize those who do.
🚨 SPOILER ALERT: This post contains Game of Thrones spoilers. Skip the middle section (designated) if you want to get the idea with minimal spoilers.
Depictions of superheroes have become so ubiquitous that even Marvel has recently felt the pressure to switch up its tried-and-trusty formula. But whatever hiccups the Disney juggernaut might be experiencing, the framing of uniquely gifted heroes with good hearts and lovable flaws still dominates in Western media. In this article, I’m not going to argue you shouldn’t watch Marvel movies. I’m going to argue that a hero archetype better suited to the polycrisis is Hodor from Game of Thrones.
Until Season 6 of the show, Hodor exists as a lovable giant who protects Bran Stark—and later Meera and Jojen Reed—with the tic that he can only utter one word: “hodor.” Actor Kristian Nairn elevates this from one-note comic relief by varying his delivery of the word depending on circumstance, revealing Hodor has a richer interior life than his limited vocabulary might imply. (Note: I’ll be focusing on the Hodor of the show in this piece, though the gist holds even if you’ve only read the books).
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Since it’s been a few years—and you’re probably more focused on Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower these days—a quick refresh on Hodor:
That his name is Hodor and he only says “hodor” goes unexplained until episode 5 of season 6, titled “The Door.” In it, we learn that this is a consequence of a supernatural event in which Bran is ‘warging’ into (entering the mind of) Hodor in the past while, in the present, wights (the reanimated undead created by the White Walkers) are closing in on Bran, Meera, and Hodor. In the moment of heightened danger, Bran blurs the realities of the past and present. Meera screams at Hodor (in the present) to “hold the door” to protect Bran by giving him and Meera time to escape. This call penetrates into the world of the past, in which Hodor (then known as Wylis and able to speak normatively) suffers a sort of seizure, falling to the ground in convulsions while repeating “hold the door, hold the door, hold the door,” until they converge into the contracted “hodor,” thus revealing how Wylis becomes Hodor.
Simultaneously, present-tense Hodor succeeds in holding the door against the wights, sacrificing himself to what we now realize is/was his life purpose. As Bran will later become king of Westeros, this is no insignificant feat.
Game of Thrones is full of heroes and villains and every shade in-between. As with all great fiction, the aspirational or cautionary aspects of the characters’ actions/arcs offer different insights depending on who is experiencing them—and when. Obviously the closing of Hodor’s character arc was poignant when I first saw it, but that was May 2016 and the world was quite different—hell, the notion of a “President” Trump felt preposterous. 8 years later I find myself returning less to the flashier characters in GoT and more to the metaphorical heft of Hodor.
Now more than ever, we need heroes like Hodor; heroes who aren’t plucky or glorious, but will hold the door for as long as possible, even in the face of making the ultimate sacrifice and never personally seeing the outcome.
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Check out a recent episode of the Urgent Futures Podcast with scientist/mycologist Danielle Stevenson, where we talk about the ins and outs of mycoremediation, the politics of pollution, and more:
Why do I think Hodor should a prevailing hero archetype for us right now? Because we face a daunting, multifaceted polycrisis—the term to describe the many different but interconnected crises that pose major, even existential risks to humanity’s survival. Among these are global heating, catastrophic weather events, pollution, social inequality, systemic oppression, ocean acidification, coral reef bleaching, microplastics in everything, the threat of nuclear exchange, food deserts, increasing energy costs, brittle public infrastructure, attacks on queer and trans people, attacks on body sovereignty, rising authoritarianism, fragile supply chains, consolidating resources and power among the ultrawealthy, information echo chambers…the list goes on. None of these are problems with quick fixes. With some of them, even if we were to magically stop every associated harmful behavior today and enact rapid change, they still wouldn’t be “solved” in any of our lifetimes.
Our principle aim for the moment, then, ought to be mitigation. This might sound defeatist but I don’t mean it that way—every extra bit we do counts. If we want a chance of maintaining and regenerating a livable Earth for humans (and the countless other earthlings whose fate is inextricably tangled in our actions), it is imperative that we mitigate the speed and scale of the crises however we can, with the intention of mitigating as much suffering as possible.
Mitigation doesn’t often deliver quick wins, flashy headlines, or oodles of cash. You can’t track it in the language of quarterly returns. It’s a slog. And we probably won’t even see our efforts culminate in their intended outcome. In these cases, the question is no longer, “Can we fix [insert: breaking system] or return it to normal?” but rather, “Can we buy enough time to develop critical interventions and mitigate as much suffering as possible?” By doing so, we buy more time for future generations to subsequently buy more time, such that over the course of generations we begin to regenerate a healthy, livable planet and human societies under whatever the respective conditions happen to be.
In a recent episode of The Great Simplification, solar oven expert Luther Krueger describes “Goldilocks technology,” that is, technology that can be developed with basic or reused materials and require minimal energy to run (such as solar ovens). Developing and using Goldilocks tech is one example of Hodor heroism in action.
I also contend that the concept of “holding the door” offers a decisionmaking framework regarding choices that involve Band-Aid fixes, or require us to hold our noses and accept a suboptimal outcome rather than expressing ourselves fully, or driving for the most satisfying outcome. I’ll have more to say on this particular point in a future piece.
This can obviously take many forms, and for those who currently have the luxury of abundance, it’s a cri de cœur: use your outsized ability to hold the door. Humanity won’t solve any problems right away, and many solutions will prove to have their own externalities which then need to be addressed (set, repeat). The path to healing and regeneration is inevitably a thorny one. We’ll need as much time and space to develop ideas as we can possibly get. The narratives and heroes we champion are one piece in a larger puzzle of maintaining livable habitats for ourselves on this planet, but they matter—so let’s celebrate the Hodors. For my part, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them on Reality Studies and Urgent Futures in the weeks and months to come, so stay tuned!
Subscribe to the Urgent Futures podcast on YouTube. Here’s the latest episode with polymath artist-researchers Eryk Salvaggio and Caroline Sinders: