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“The Wheel Of Time” Teases Season Two Trailer With New Images

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.

As I’m sure most of my readers are well aware by now, SAG-AFTRA recently joined the WGA in a historic dual strike as a result of every major studio in Hollywood refusing to protect or even pay their actors, and therefore the cast and showrunner of Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time will not be in attendance at San Diego Comic-Con to promote the fantasy series returning for its second season this September. The release of the season’s first full-length trailer, likely originally scheduled for Thursday to coincide with the now-canceled SDCC panel, has now been moved to Wednesday, and now Nerdist as well as Entertainment Weekly have been given permission to share official screenshots from the trailer and the new season.

Madeleine Madden as Egwene al'Vere in The Wheel Of Time season two, standing in a tropical forest with Ceara Coveney as Elayne Trakand just behind her. Both wear plain white dresses and cloaks. Egwene's dark hair is loose, and she is facing down an unseen opponent, channeling golden threads of the One Power to form a levitating hoop encompassing her, while Elayne is turning to run away, with a frightened expression on her face.
Egwene al’Vere and Elayne Trakand | nerdist.com

But before we proceed, I want to acknowledge that there has been a great deal of confusion amongst fandoms over how to support the strikes while still hyping up new releases, because while the WGA did not ask for non-union members to halt promotion and discussion of upcoming struck work, SAG-AFTRA is asking for union ‘Influencers’ – and Influencers who plan to join the guild one day – to refrain from doing official promo for any of the AMPTP member studios. What constitutes ‘influence’ and ‘promo’ became the subject of unnecessarily heated discourse on Twitter yesterday and the day before, when in fact SAG-AFTRA has a definition of ‘Influencer’ posted elsewhere on their site, and it very clearly refers to “popular content creators who have amassed a social media following that they capitalize on by making deals with advertisers to promote brands through the Influencer’s creative content which they distribute through their social media feeds [emphasis mine]”. By this definition at least, neither I nor the vast majority of fans using social media to talk about The Wheel Of Time (for example) are Influencers. If you’re still wary, trust the actual members of SAG-AFTRA and the WGA who have had to go online and clarify that there is absolutely nothing wrong with fans discussing struck work, cosplaying characters from struck work, or making fan-art and fanfiction of struck work, as long as you are not accepting advertising deals with AMPTP studios to do so at this time (if you’re already under contract with one, SAG-AFTRA is not telling you to break that contract).

Of course, you can decide not to talk about or engage with struck work in any capacity; just keep in mind that at no point has SAG-AFTRA asked for fans to organize a media blackout as a show of solidarity with the strike, and they have explicitly encouraged audiences not to boycott new releases, so you won’t be a better or worse person whatever you choose to do. That said, you can actually help SAG-AFTRA and the WGA by raising awareness about the strikes on your social media platforms and on your blog/podcast/channel if you have one; donating to the Entertainment Community Fund if you can; and joining actors and writers on the picket-line if you’re able.

Now, back to the new images from The Wheel Of Time. There are six in total, and three are either different angles of shots we’ve seen before. This includes Lan riding a horse through a forest (does he spend all season on his horse?), Perrin brooding, and Ishamael riding with High Lady Suroth and her masked attendant on a Seanchan palanquin. The one that immediately caught my attention depicts Egwene al’Vere standing in a tropical forest, channeling golden threads of the One Power to form a levitating hoop around her, as she faces down an unseen enemy. Book readers should be able to guess what’s happening in this scene adapted from The Great Hunt, but if it’s not immediately clear, note that both Egwene and Elayne Trakand, standing in the background, are wearing their White Tower Novice robes, even though they’re obviously not in the Tower, and Elayne is turning to run away. Yep, this is THAT scene. I don’t want to spoil anything for fans who haven’t read the books, but let’s just say that Madeleine Madden is about to become a star off this scene  in particular and I am ready for it.

Can we also take a moment to appreciate how much more visually appealing the One Power looks this season? I didn’t even mind the threads being white throughout the first season, partially because Rosamund Pike’s interpretation of channeling was so elegant and beautiful that quite frankly I hardly noticed, but now that I’ve seen Egwene encompassed in spun gold, I understand at last what we were missing. I want every action sequence from now to include Aes Sedai wielding all the colors of the rainbow (or at least as many colors as there are Elements in the world of The Wheel Of Time, those being fire, water, earth, air, and spirit). And remember, this is just a glimpse of the redesigned female half of the One Power, saidar. The male half, saidin, ought to look completely different because it’s been tainted by the Dark One’s touch…no less colorful, but perhaps more sickly? However it looks, I’m just excited for the show to delve deeper into the Robert Jordan’s complex magic system.

Zoe Robins as Nynaeve al'Meara in The Wheel Of Time season two, standing in the White Tower kitchens wearing a plain gray apron over a long-sleeved white dress, with her hair pulled into a braid. She has a troubled expression on her face. In the foreground, Priyanka Bose as Alanna Mosvani stands facing her, away from the camera, wearing a dark green vest over a white blouse, with her dark hair tied up in a bun adorned with green ornaments.
Nynaeve al’Meara and Alanna Mosvani | ew.com

I think that’s exactly what’s happening in the image above, which shows Nynaeve al’Meara and Alanna Mosvani of the Green Ajah meeting in the White Tower kitchens. The only reason Nynaeve would be doing chores there, wearing the same plain gray apron sported by Egwene in a previously-released image, is if she’s still a Novice in this scene, but in The Great Hunt Nynaeve is rushed into her Accepted test almost immediately after arriving at the Tower, before she has time to become a Novice. My theory is that in the show, Nynaeve will initially try to avoid taking the Accepted test for two reasons: firstly, to stay close to Egwene and protect her, but secondly, because the thought of becoming an Aes Sedai, of becoming a stranger in the eyes of the Two Rivers folk she’s tried for so long to fit in with, still terrifies her. And so, even as she begins training with the Power, the ‘block’ she first developed unconsciously as a child to prevent herself from channeling will grow stronger, more indestructible, and seriously impede her progress…which I’m sure is why Alanna is here, to try and nudge Nynaeve along, maybe even to see if her block can be broken down with empowering assurances that she’s stronger than she knows, destined for greater things than being a Wisdom (and it’s a smart choice to build a relationship between these two characters, given that they share a crucial scene down the line).

There’s also the distinct possibility that Alanna is scouting on behalf of her Ajah. In season one, Liandrin Guirale expressed interest in recruiting Nynaeve for the Red Ajah, to which Moiraine Damodred (herself of the Blue Ajah) responded by pointing out that the Wisdom’s extraordinarily powerful Healing weaves might make her a better fit for the Yellow Ajah, but I’m sure that every woman in the White Tower will be vying for her time and watching carefully to see which Ajah she gravitates towards, because any one would benefit immensely from counting her amidst its ranks, while all the others would stand to lose. Never before has the Tower been so weak or so divided against itself that the arrival of one woman, even with potential as great as Nynaeve’s, could incite a conflict between Ajahs for ownership of her allegiances, but that’s just how things are done now. It’s another sign that the Last Battle is coming, and nothing built to last will be left standing in the wake of that long-awaited cosmic duel between the Dark One and the Dragon Reborn.

Speaking of the Dragon Reborn, Rand al’Thor has acquired some nice new clothes and shaved his head since his confrontation with Ishamael at the Eye of the World in season one, presumably to avoid being recognized by Darkfriends or mistaken for an Aiel in his hiding-place of Cairhien, a kingdom still recovering from invasion by mysterious red-haired warriors who came across the Spine of the World one day to take vengeance on Cairhien’s former king for a crime he never knew he had committed, and returned by the way they had come once he was dead and his city lay in ruins. In the years since, though the Aiel seem to have no further interest in what happens there, Cairhien has not ceased to be used as a battlefield in the complex interplay of swords and subtlety that the Cairhienian nobility call Daes Dae’mar, the Game of Houses, a dangerous game where ulterior motive and hidden agenda is applied to every person’s actions and words, however trivial, and all the Houses respond in turn with assassins.

Josha Stradowski as Rand al'Thor in The Wheel Of Time, standing in an open field. His head is shaven. He wears a beautifully embroidered black coat over a white shirt.
Rand al’Thor | ew.com

Rand has no understanding of how the Game works when he first enters Cairhien wearing a fancy coat that accidentally marks him as a lord, but in the books he’s accompanied by Hurin, a Shienaran sniffer conveniently well-versed in the rules of Daes Dae’mar. Because Hurin is less of a fully fleshed-out character than he is a walking encyclopedia spouting exposition, I don’t expect to see him in season two, and it will almost certainly be Moiraine who acts as Rand’s mentor in his place, which only makes sense seeing as she actually belongs to one of Cairhien’s noble families, played the Game of Houses frequently as a girl and still relies on the skills she picked up there even now, as an Aes Sedai of the surveilling Blue Ajah, and remains to this day a potential contender for the kingdom’s throne. Ruling Cairhien is the last thing on Moiraine’s mind, I’m certain, but having been shielded by Ishamael and exiled from the White Tower, she is in desperate need of allies heading into season two, and House Damodred would be happy to welcome her back if she could lead them to believe that she was sent by the White Tower to facilitate their conspiracy against the current king. That’s where Rand comes in, I’m sure, lying for her (because even shielded, she’s still bound by the Three Oaths), and maybe even using the One Power to cover for her.

What do you think of the new images, and what do you hope to see in season two of The Wheel Of Time? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

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Genshin Impact Just Revealed The Cast Of Fontaine’s Archon Quest

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year since the map of Teyvat, the world of Genshin Impact, expanded to include the region of Sumeru. In some ways, it feels like just yesterday, and I can clearly recall how I charged through the overgrown tunnel connecting Liyue to Sumeru moments after logging in that night (having positioned myself at the border of Liyue the day before) and found the landscape changed before my very eyes; and yet, it seems like so long ago that Sumeru’s lush green jungles and blazing golden deserts were unexplored still, almost inconceivable that there was a time when Withering Zones were still an issue for me and Dendro reactions were still strange and unfamiliar (today, I’m nearing 100% completion on all of Sumeru, I can hardly remember the last Withering Zone I encountered on my travels, least of all one that posed a problem, and it’s rare that I step out without at least one Dendro character in my party).

Official screenshot of Clorinde from Genshin Impact, a tall woman with long blue hair and purple eyes, aiming a white revolver at the camera. She wears a blue tricorn hat, a blue-and-white uniform, and white gloves.
Clorinde | dotesports.com

But while I can’t definitively say if my time in Sumeru flew by or passed slowly, it is coming to an end now, that much is indisputable. With the Fatui plot to install one of their own as Sumeru’s Archon foiled and their allies in the Sumeru Akademiya stripped of their titles and banished to the forests, Sumeru is in the hands of its “rightful” Archon, Nahida…and while I don’t trust her or any Archon to govern humans better than a Fatui Harbinger would, the game is downright insistent that I should, so I suppose I’ll just headcanon that Nahida delegates most of her responsibilities to Alhaitham and other sages while she and Scaramouche do the work that mortals cannot, burrowing deep into the Irminsul Tree in search of answers to their (and our) questions about Khaenri’ah, Celestia, the Traveler, and the truth of Teyvat.

Until they stumble across something big and call us back to Sumeru, however, the Traveler has no pressing business in the Nation of Wisdom and must continue their own journey of discovery, which leads northwest to Fontaine, where the deep blue waters of an inland sea are darkened by the ever-present shadow of Celestia, home to the Heavenly Principles that have for centuries watched silently over humanity, distributing Visions almost as freely as gifts, but not with good or generous intentions, if they’re anything like the Gnoses that Celestia uses to pull the strings on Teyvat’s seven Archons…or used to, perhaps. Four Archons have recently exchanged their Gnoses with the Fatui, whose Tsaritsa is the Cryo Archon and in possession of a Gnosis already. Just two remain, and one of these is in Fontaine. But the Fatui would be fools to try and take the Hydro Archon’s Gnosis literally out from under Celestia. I guess that would explain why the name of their organization is derived from the Latin word fatuus, meaning fool.

That being said, the Harbinger Arlecchino doesn’t strike me as a fool, not based on what we saw of her in A Winter Night’s Lazzo last year and certainly not after the release of a new trailer for Fontaine just last night, titled The Final Feast, that sets her up to be the Fontaine Archon Quest’s main antagonist. The governess of Snezhnaya’s House of the Hearth, where children forcibly taken from their homes are shaped into Fatui assassins and encouraged to kill everyone close to them who could become a potential weakness for them in the future, Arlecchino has experience with covering all her bases, and I can’t imagine that the Tsaritsa would entrust her with this delicate task if her plan wasn’t waterproof (get it, cuz Fontaine is the Hydro Archon’s nation?). I’m personally invested in Arlecchino’s success, because if she fails, my character will have to kill her, and I don’t know if I can physically bring myself to do that again, not after La Signora died for good. I’m sick and tired of HoYoverse killing off their villains unceremoniously when they know damn well that people would spend their entire life-savings on a devilishly hot evil woman. In a suit, no less!

Anyway, back to Arlecchino’s plan for capturing the Hydro Gnosis. Fascinatingly, it may involve Lyney and Lynette, two of the three characters from Fontaine who will become playable in Version 4.0, all three of whom are siblings. Lyney, a five-star Pyro bow-user, is a renowned magician who performs most nights at the Court of Fontaine (apparently a theater and opera-house, not to be confused with the Opera Epiclese, which amusingly is the only actual court-house in Fontaine, a paradox that cleverly illustrates the degree to which justice and spectacle have become hopelessly intertwined under the current Hydro Archon), with his eerily emotionless sister Lynette, a four-star Anemo sword-wielder, acting as his “Multi-Function Magic Assistant”. If you’ve been following leaks, you may have already been aware that Lyney, Lynette and Arlecchino are…acquainted, but the trailer essentially confirms it, with the siblings putting on a show for the Harbinger that earns stiff, short applause before she ascends to the stage herself and steals the show.

Official screenshot of Arlecchino from Genshin Impact, standing between Lynette on the left and Lyney on the right. Arlecchino is a tall, very pale woman with short, spiky white hair streaked with black, and red eyes. She wears a high-collared, long-sleeved white suit-jacket over a gray bodysuit. Lynette and Lyney have their heads bowed. They both have ashen hair, and similar magician's outfits, though Lynette's has teal-blue bows and Lyney's has wine-red bows, and Lynette has cat-ears in her hair.
(left to right) Lynette, Arlecchino, and Lyney | videogames.si.com

I’m also curious as to what role the third sibling, four-star Cryo claymore-user Freminet, plays in all of this, and why the trailer opens with him apparently drowning, given that he’s supposed to be one of Fontaine’s most accomplished and professional deep-sea divers (though I suppose if we’ve learned anything this past month, it’s that experience with the ocean doesn’t make it any less perilous). I assume it’s his voice that whispers the words “My mission…” as his body hits the water heavily and begins to sink, which is interesting because his official biography states explicitly that “as a classic lone wolf, [Freminet] never accepts commissions from others”, meaning this mission of his is likely something personal, something related to his siblings and the Fatui scheme in which they’re entangled. I guess we’ll have to wait for more details, but my mind is racing as I run through all the potential avenues this story could take.

And that’s before we factor in a dozen other characters, whom the trailer introduces in a cleverly-edited and cheerfully-scored montage that moves briskly through the streets and sewers that bridge the gap between the two sides of Fontaine’s capital city, the side belonging to the ruling class, all airy plazas, clean boulevards, and houses built to endure, and the side begrudgingly allocated to the working class, a dark, grimy, hazardous maze of tunnels and catacombs. All the while, Lyney is explaining to his audience how a cunning magician wins control of the surprisingly gullible human brain by fooling their senses – “People don’t realize how much they expect their eyes to tell them the truth”. I have to wonder if this magician’s strategy will be used on a much grander scale in Fontaine by the Hydro Archon herself, and if Genshin Impact has the courage to make a firm stance against political propaganda, censorship, and the aggrandization of law-enforcement.

The characters introduced in the trailer presumably comprise the main cast of Fontaine’s Archon Quest, and include Charlotte, an upbeat journalist from The Steambird whom many players will have already encountered in Version 3.7; Navia, a fancily-dressed woman with a Geo Vision (I’m only being slightly hyperbolic when I say that Genshin Impact remembering to make new Geo characters is more shocking than anything else I’ve seen thus far from Fontaine); Wriothesley, a handsome fellow named for the historical figure Thomas Wriothesley, remembered primarily as a power-hungry advisor to King Henry VIII who happily betrayed Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, to his death; Clorinde, possibly a police-captain by the cut of her uniform, who carries a revolver, earning a name derived from the female warrior Clorinda in Jerusalem Delivered, an ahistorical account of the First Crusade, by way of frigates in the French navy during the Napoleonic War; Siegwinne, a half-Melusine character whose name, according to one source, comes from the Medieval German epic poem Wolfdietrich, the titular protagonist of which is a dragon-slayer; and Neuvillette, the Chief Justice of Fontaine, who shares a name with a small town in northern France.

With the exception of the Hydro Archon, Neuvillette is probably the most powerful person in Fontaine and also the most interesting, not only because he’s tall and attractive with a veritable mane of white hair and a deep, luscious voice (though he is interesting for all of those reasons, don’t get me wrong), but because of the peculiar arrangement between him and his Nation’s Archon, who sits in on trials and apparently has a habit of being loud and disruptive, presumably swaying the opinions of jurors, intimidating witnesses, and throwing tantrums if “her side” doesn’t win. Her very presence in the courtroom is a stark reminder of the ways in which the Nation of Justice has failed to live up to its own Ideal, but Neuvillette can’t throw her out if she won’t go, so he tolerates the complaints and rude remarks she hurls at him from her theater-box, perhaps by assuring himself that the public will rise up against her and clear his path to the top.

Genshin Impact has gone back-and-forth and back-and-forth again on the subject of Archons, what ought to be done with them and what can be done with them, but if any an Archon deserves to be deposed, it’s Focalors or Furina (the former is her “true name”, also that of a demon in the Ars Goetia who sinks warships, while the latter is the name she uses in her day-to-day life, and belongs to a little-known Roman goddess of springs). That’s not a bad thing. I adore Focalors and I’m tempted to start saving for her debut banner based solely on the fact that she has the personality of a gremlin. But I also know that Genshin Impact has a tendency to try and hand-wave away every Archon’s mistakes with elaborate excuses for why they didn’t know and couldn’t possibly have known what was happening under their watch. That worked once, just barely, with Ei, but even in that case I was disappointed that the game didn’t allow her to be truly morally ambiguous, and I don’t think they can realistically get away with it a second time. It’s okay for characters to be really rotten!

Official screenshot of Focalors from Genshin Impact, waving a burning photograph in front of her face. She has short white hair, with streaks of light-blue through it, and blue eyes, the left somewhat darker than the right. She wears a small blue top-hat perched on the left side of her head, a dark blue jacket with a frilly black collar and large golden cuffs, and gloves, one black, the other white.
Focalors | pockettactics.com

And that’s not to say Focalors can’t have noble motives for doing really horrible things. I have to assume that she’s been living in fear of Celestia for a long time, and that she’s so quick to condemn others, even many of her own citizens, to a life of suffering in the shadows because it’s better for everyone if the gods in Celestia only see perfection when they look down on Fontaine, or they might decide one day to wipe the entire nation – and its people – off the map, just as they did with Khaenri’ah when they disapproved of what they saw there. Hence the need for all these layers of illusion, all the smoke and mirrors…maybe it started as a way to keep Fontaine safe (as an Archon should), and inevitably spiraled out of control as more and more people were condemned for increasingly smaller and smaller crimes. Ironically, when this environment Focalors has created becomes unsustainable the nation will collapse in on itself and then they’ll be screwed, but change is needed and however it comes about, the people of Fontaine will probably be better off rebuilding their nation from scratch than they are with an Archon passing judgement on every move they make.

Well, I’ve rambled long enough. What do you think of the trailer for Fontaine, and the drip-marketing for Lyney, Lynette, and Freminet? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

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Everything We Learned From The Genshin Impact Version 3.8 Special Program

Before Genshin Impact players leave behind the golden sands of Sumeru for the fjords of Fontaine, HoYoverse has prepared one last desert adventure for the Traveler to undertake in Version 3.8, meaning that this year there will be no sojourn to the Golden Apple Archipelago that has traditionally brought players so much joy every summer since the game’s launch. Still, we’ll have a new map to explore for a limited time that will provide rich rewards ahead of Fontaine’s release, a grandly whimsical Event Storyline which we can safely assume will segue into the upcoming nation’s Archon Quest, a main cast of four seemingly random characters with entire chapters worth of hidden lore between them, and a voice cameo from the Hexenzirkel’s mysterious leader, Alice. So it’s basically the Golden Apple Archipelago, in all but name and aesthetic.

A screenshot from Genshin Impact Version 3.8. A small wooden vessel, shaped vaguely like a boat with helicopter blades on top, propels itself forward along a slender wooden track suspended in mid-air above a jungle.
Adventures in Bottleland | gematsu.com

“Bottleland” is perhaps not the cleverest name for the setting of this summer’s cornerstone Event, whose participants have been personally selected by Alice to fill the roles of archetypal characters in an in-game series of short plays collectively titled The Magic Bottle, but the area itself is visually distinct, an emerald-hued oasis encircled by the desert, where an abandoned theater and carnival rides in various stages of dilapidation are linked by the circuitous track of a treacherous roller-coaster that I can’t wait to climb onboard. The Traveler has appropriately been cast in the prominent role of the “Adventurer” seeking the Magic Bottle of legend, with Paimon, Collei, Eula, and Sangonomiya Kokomi joining the ensemble in bit-parts, but the stars of the show are Alice’s own daughter, Klee, playing the “Little Mage”, and Kaeya, the “Dagger Thief”, who are also the only two actors who have made any effort to get into-character with new outfits, soon to be available as alternate skins (Klee’s can be purchased in the shop for roughly $30, while Kaeya’s is a reward for collecting tokens scattered throughout Bottleland).

Other activities in Bottleland include minigames galore, and if tons of easily obtainable Primogems aren’t incentive enough for you to shoot balloons with a water-cannon, dance in the spotlight to burn up enemies on the theater’s stage, or play pinball with finches (I didn’t fully understand that last one, either, it’s not just you), then a free copy of Layla might sweeten the deal. No new characters will join Genshin Impact‘s roster in Version 3.8, but players will have the extremely rare chance to pick up Cryo claymore-user Eula, who holds the record for the fewest reruns of any five-star character (exactly one, over five-hundred days ago) in a game that has the ability to rotate character banners either more frequently, or consistently, but won’t, for whatever reason. If you don’t pull on Eula’s banner now, there’s no knowing when she’ll come back, if ever, but is it worth it when Fontaine is right around the corner and even in Version 3.8, other tantalizing options include Sangonomiya Kokomi, who synergizes beautifully with Bloom-reaction based teams, Wanderer, an exceptional Anemo unit, and Klee, who is not great but might see more use with her new alternate skin coming out?

Version 3.8 will wind down with a couple of smaller-scale Events – Shared Sight, in which players will use an experimental device to locate animals by seeing through their eyes; Perilous Expedition, a classic combat Domain; and a rerun of Adventurer’s Trials, a really fun Event where specific characters’ special abilities must be utilized to complete challenges tailored just for them (for instance, using Heizou’s unique combination of punches and high kicks to play soccer with Slimes). Additionally, a Hangout Event for Kaeya was announced, but very little of the story was teased. It’s not much, but there’s never much to do in the last few weeks before a major update, which I figure is intentional as it encourages players who didn’t speed-run an entire nation upon release to go back and finish up outstanding quests.

A screenshot from Genshin Impact. Melusine, a diminutive pink creature wearing a blue police uniform, strolls down a wide boulevard between rows of tall, elegant buildings advertising, among other things, fine clothes and whimsical mechanical toys. Outside the stores, colorfully-dressed aristocrats are window-shopping, small dogs wearing wigs and hats wait for their owners, and golden robots trudge along carrying heavy bags for their owners. The atmosphere is one of lazy opulence.
Fontaine | Twitter @GenshinImpact

But I can’t blame any player for having their sights set on Fontaine, to the exclusion of all else, especially today, following our first (official) look at the upcoming Nation of Justice, where colorfully-dressed ladies and gentlemen waited on by servient automatons flaunt their exorbitant wealth on the wide, straight, boulevards and in the plazas, for the most part blissfully unaware or deliberately ignorant to the fact that their pride and joy, their beautiful, modern capital city, stands precariously poised above a seething crowd of lower-class laborers who make their cushy lifestyle possible, but are forced to live in the sewers that sunlight does not breach. Why does the Hydro Archon allow the scales of justice to be unbalanced, and who does she serve; her people or the gods who reside above Fontaine? Perhaps she is to them what her nation’s poor and oppressed are to her, barely of note? Whatever’s going on, one thing is for certain: Fontaine’s glittery façade hides ever-widening cracks in the nation’s foundations that could swallow all of its people, rich and poor, gods and mortals alike.

Also, mermaids. Fontaine has mermaids. Specifically melusine, a lesser-known sea-spirit from Western European folklore that has as much in common with descriptions of dragons as with mermaids, typically being depicted as a woman with a fish’s tail and wings, often with the ability to shapeshift. The Melusine of Fontaine are a diminutive species like the Aranara and Pari of Sumeru, not particularly humanoid but fully integrated into human society and working alongside them, and I can’t wait to find out how that came to pass, and whether the connections between the French melusine and dragons implies a similar link between the Melusine of Fontaine and the dragons that once ruled Teyvat.

Screenshot from Genshin Impact. Melusine, a diminutive pink creature in a blue police uniform, creeps through the dimly-lit sewers of Fontaine, where underpaid laborers in aprons toil away at dangerous jobs. In the distance, a circular window lets in a little natural light.
Sewers of Fontaine | Twitter @GenshinImpact

But now you know what I think, I want to hear what excites you about Version 3.8 and about Fontaine, as well as what worries you, like the possibility of some infuriating oxygen mechanic hindering endless underwater exploration, or of squid enemies that hit you with ink and leave you blinded, hopelessly disoriented, in the dark (can you tell I have thalassophobia, a fear of the deep ocean, and teuthiphobia, a fear of squid?) As always, I’ll ask you to refrain from discussing leaks regarding unreleased content, but feel free to share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

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New Images From The Wheel Of Time Season 2 Tease Exciting Developments

With The Wheel Of Time‘s second season premiering less than eighty days from now, the marketing campaign for Amazon Prime Video’s underrated epic fantasy series is finally in motion, and Wheel of Time Wednesdays on Twitter for the next few weeks ought to be very interesting, as the release of a teaser trailer appears imminent and word on the street is that the series will have a presence at San Diego Comic-Con in July, just as Amazon’s The Rings Of Power did last year. Until then, four new images from the second season will hopefully give fans plenty to talk about.

Marcus Rutherford as Perrin Aybara in The Wheel Of Time, bloody and bruised, glowering with bright golden eyes at something offscreen. He wears lightweight leather armor over a pale red shirt, and is carrying a round studded shield in front of him.
Perrin Aybara | Twitter @TheWheelOfTime

And so what if most of the new images are technically just different angles of images we’ve seen previously? This is still the first time we’re seeing Perrin’s new and more realistic golden eyes, Nynaeve’s Accepted robes, and Mat wielding a quarterstaff, which altogether is more than enough to put the entire fandom into cardiac arrest. My only gripe is that al’Lan Mandragoran, for such an iconic character from Robert Jordan’s series who makes such a strong impression in the early books, hasn’t changed all that much since the first season and is still visually the least interesting of the seven protagonists. That’s not to say his dialogue won’t again be exquisite and his scenes raw and powerful, but I think seeing him alongside Moiraine or Nynaeve would be more exciting than seeing him alone, and in a nondescript setting, again.

Speaking of Nynaeve, let’s talk about her, or rather, what she’s wearing, because her costume changes are a reflection of where her character arc takes her this season. At first glance, it’s a fairly plain garment, but closer examination reveals that the sleeves of her white dress are decorated with the teardrop symbol of the Aes Sedai, the Flame of Tar Valon, embroidered in the vibrant colors of the seven Ajahs or factions – red, green, gray, brown, yellow, blue, and white. On her left hand resides a Great Serpent ring, such as those worn by full-fledged Aes Sedai, but crucially missing the colored gemstone that would tie her allegiance to a specific Ajah, confirming to book readers that this scene with her, Egwene, and Elayne Trakand carrying lanterns through a dark corridor takes place after Nynaeve has passed her Accepted test, the perilous trial which Novices at the White Tower typically undergo many years into their training to determine whether they’re strong enough to become Aes Sedai. As in the books, it seems that Nynaeve will be rushed through her test upon arriving at the Tower, while Egwene and Elayne’s unadorned white gowns suggest that for the duration of this season, they will remain Novices.

(left to right) Madeleine Madden as Egwene, Zoe Robins as Nynaeve, and Ceara Coveney as Elayne in The Wheel Of Time, wearing nearly identical white gowns with capes, standing in a dark cellar holding lanterns. Nynaeve's dress has stripes of vibrant color on the sleeves, and she wears a prominent gold ring on her left hand.
(left to right) Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne | Twitter @TheWheelOfTime

Book readers can probably make an educated guess as to the contents of this scene, but I won’t say anything more for fear of spoiling…certain major plot-twists. Moving right along, a bloodied Perrin Aybara with eyes the color of burnished gold glowers at an unseen opponent over the rim of a round shield, presumably during the same action sequence in Falme where we know he’ll fight alongside Aviendha, Maiden of the Spear. In the first season, Perrin’s eyes only flashed gold for a moment as he and Egwene escaped sadistic Whitecloak Questioners with unexpected aid from a pack of wolves, and he quickly tried to put that traumatic event behind him, but season two will follow the blacksmith on a journey of reluctant self-discovery as he begins exploring what it truly means to be a “Wolfbrother” – the name given to men who can communicate with wolves and hunt alongside them in Tel’aran’rhiod, the World of Dreams. This rare and mysterious ability is said to be unrelated to the One Power, possibly even predating it.

And then there’s Mat Cauthon, who’s changed since season one in the sense that he’s now played by Irish actor Dónal Finn, but literally hasn’t changed, by which I mean he’s still wearing the same grimy old clothes he wore when he left the Two Rivers in The Wheel Of Time‘s very first episode. This new image of the lovable prankster, probably a slightly wider shot of a moment from the New York Comic-Con teaser trailer, shows Mat facing down a warrior with ornate shoulder-guards, easily identifiable as one of the Seanchan, invaders from across the Aryth Ocean who intend to colonize the lands once ruled by Artur Hawkwing in the name of their Empress, Hawkwing’s only known descendant. Though their Ever Victorious Army is formidable, augmented by carnivorous beasts pulled from alternate realities, the Seanchan rely heavily on their female channelers, every last one of whom has been rounded up, enslaved, abused, and reduced to a barely-sentient weapon of mass destruction, her every movement and thought dictated by a Seanchan handler through the use of a leash named the a’dam. It should come as no surprise that the Seanchan are some of the most terrifying characters in The Wheel Of Time.

Donal Finn as Mat Cauthon in The Wheel Of Time, wearing an olive-green coat and loose shirt of the same color, both very worn and ragged. In his right hand he grips the wooden hilt of a quarterstaff. In the foreground, very blurry, part of a soldier's golden shoulder-guard is visible.
Mat Cauthon | Twitter @TheWheelOfTime

What immediately drew everyone’s attention to this picture of Mat, however, was the quarterstaff in his hand – a weapon he uses throughout the books, most notably to trounce a couple of cocky Andoran princes during a particularly homoerotic fight in The Dragon Reborn that pretty much has to be adapted this season, or I can’t imagine when we’d ever get the chance again. Famously, a quarterstaff was the weapon used by an unnamed farmer to defeat Jearom, the greatest swordsman (and, in the television series’ canon, also the greatest Warder) to have ever lived. The staff wielded by Mat curiously bears the carven symbol of a bird, probably a raven, which has some…personal significance to Mat as well as being the emblem of the Seanchan empire.

What do you think of the four new images, which is your favorite, and when do you expect to see a trailer for The Wheel Of Time‘s second season? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!