This contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 6, Episode 5: “The Door.” If you’re not caught up, well, it’s probably too late. But leave anyway!

Game of Thrones aired one of the most astonishing episodes of its six-season run last Sunday night, paying off a seed that author George R.R. Martin planted 20 years ago when he named the Winterfell stable boy Hodor in his book Game of Thrones. But what does Martin think about the HBO series getting to deliver a twist he’s spent decades working on? A Game of Thrones fan claims to have found out Monday night.

According to a post-episode interview with show-runners Dan Weiss and David Benioff, Martin tipped them off to the origin of Hodor’s name during a meeting in a hotel room. “We had this meeting with George Martin where we’re trying to get as much information as possible out of him, and probably the most shocking revelation he had for us was when he told us the origin of Hodor—or how that name came about,” Benioff said. “I just remember Dan and I looking at each other when he said that and just being like, ‘Holy shit.’”

Many took this to mean that what we saw play out on-screen was exactly what Martin had in mind. But, maybe not. Monday night, Martin appeared at an event for author Joe Hill and a Game of Thrones fan claims to have gotten some more information from Martin during an informal Q&A. The fan posted on Reddit (so, grain of salt), “He said that his name reveal in the books will differ in the context and how it happens. So while the name will still mean the same thing (Hold the Door), it will be very different from the show’s reveal.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Martin has promised a plot development in the books that’s different from what’s already been on the show; he even told IGN in February that he had decided to add a twist to his upcoming novel, The Winds of Winter, that the HBO show will never be able to pull off because it killed a character he kept alive in the novels. Since the show passed his saga by, Martin has repeatedly asserted that there will be a fresh story to be found in his pages.

So while the phrase “hold the door” will be in the text, based on what Martin already told Weiss and Benioff, the exact events of the cave attack may not be. In the post-episode interview, Weiss said, “It was just one of the saddest, most affecting things—even sitting in a hotel room—having someone tell you that this was going to happen in the abstract in some way. That ‘hold the door’ was the origin for the name Hodor. We just thought that was a really, really heartbreaking idea.” The “in the abstract” language leaves Martin plenty of wiggle room. (The same is true of the death of Shireen and Stannis Baratheon.)

According to this Redditor, Martin’s plan for Hodor is even older than the books themselves. “He said he came up with the name idea in 1991 and seemed depressed that the show got to reveal it before he did. He said he had no one to blame but himself for his slow writing. He joked about how jealous he was of Stephen King’s writing speed . . . He did defend the show writer’s need to make major cuts to the books.”

Martin’s relationship to this TV series is one that’s unprecedented in American pop culture. Never have we seen someone’s decades-in-the-works story be completely overtaken by other storytellers. And, clearly, this was not Martin’s plan. He’s always been a somewhat slow writer (how else could he come up with all that intricate backstory?), but, in 2013, Martin revealed to Vanity Fair that he still had a detailed plan to keep ahead of the show:

The season that’s about to debut covers the second half of the third book. The third book [A Storm of Swords] was so long that it had to be split into two. But there are two more books beyond that, A Feast for Crowsand and A Dance with Dragons. A Dance with Dragons is itself a book that’s as big as A Storm of Swords. So there’s potentially three more seasons there, between Feast and Dance, if they split into two the way they did [with Storms]. Now, Feast and Dance take place simultaneously. So you can’t do Feast and then Dance the way I did. You can combine them and do it chronologically. And it’s my hope that they’ll do it that way and then, long before they catch up with me, I’ll have published The Winds of Winter, which’ll give me another couple years. It might be tight on the last book, A Dream of Spring, as they juggernaut forward.

As we all know by now, things didn’t shake out that way on either HBO’s end or Martin’s. After failing to deliver The Winds of Winter in advance of Season 6, Martin told IGN, “The show has caught up and is in the process of passing me. Ideally, I would have liked to have finished all seven books and have the story complete, but the show moves at a faster pace than I do and that’s partly because I am a slow writer.”

Publicly, Martin has been fairly sanguine about how he feels to lose control over his life’s work. (His editor, however, has been very vocal in her displeasure over some of the show changes). But despite Martin’s diplomacy, there are some hints that he’s struggling with the whole process. Last month, he released a Dorne-centric chapter of his upcoming novel that some (including me) interpreted as a direct dig at the show’s disastrous handling of this particular plot. His response to questions about the Dorne chapter Monday night—“this is a character that isn’t in the TV show”—seems to confirm Martin is still trying to exert some ownership over his saga.

But, truth be told, while Martin may have thought of it 25 years ago, the “hold the door” reveal now belongs firmly to Weiss, Benioff, and HBO. With the help of director Jack Bender, they delivered an emotionally resonant moment that somehow managed to top the resurrection of Jon Snow (something everyone saw coming) and Daenerys’s inferno (something everyone’s seen before).

Though it seems improbable given the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Sunday night’s episode, Martin could yet concoct a version that would top the drama of the Night King’s invasion, Summer’s sacrifice, Meera’s panic, and Bran’s heartbreak. But even if he does, he’ll do so without the tools of the television medium. There will be no emotional music, no rapid cuts back and forth. And there’s no way anyone who has seen the show will be able to read Martin’s version without seeing the interplay between Kristian Nairn (old Hodor) and Sam Coleman (young Hodor) in their minds. Just like the Children of the Forest with the White Walkers, Martin has created something incredibly powerful that, through his own self-admitted folly, he can no longer control. That may be the biggest A Song of Ice and Fire tragedy of them all.

VanityFair.com reached out to George R.R. Martin for comment but has not heard back at this time.