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“The Wheel Of Time” Season 2, Episode 4 – An Underwhelming Mystery Unravels

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME, SEASON 2, EPISODES 1 – 4, AND BOOK 2, THE GREAT HUNT, AHEAD!

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.

Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time has one bad habit it needs to break. You may recall that the first season was structured around the premise that one of its five main characters was unwittingly walking around with the power to save the world or break it – a high-stakes mystery with the potential to be extremely engaging. In Robert Jordan’s fourteen-volume series of books by the same title, it’s fairly obvious from the first chapter of The Eye Of The World which of these five is the so-called “Dragon Reborn”, because we go on to spend roughly 75% of the book in his head, and there are only two other contenders, but the Chosen One story has been told a million times and more, so for the show, screentime was divided (somewhat) fairly between five potential Dragons to encourage the intriguing idea that it could be any one of them. All good changes, honestly.

Josha Stradowski as Rand al'Thor and Natasha O'Keefe as Lanfear in The Wheel Of Time, standing outside at night. Rand is channeling golden threads of the One Power that wind around his arms, while Lanfear hovers over his right shoulder, her face partially obscured by her long jet-black hair.
Lanfear and Rand | polygon.com

But an engaging mystery is one that allows for some degree of…well, engagement. And that can’t happen when all of the relevant information is being withheld. Obviously, some deception and misdirection is to be taken for granted, but when the general audience has access to none of the clues that the characters do, they become passive observers instead of active participants. Throughout The Wheel Of Time‘s first season, this is pretty much exactly what happened. Fans new to the series weren’t given the chance or the means to figure out the answer on their own without resorting to the books, while fans of the books waited impatiently for the reveal, inevitably underwhelming given the smaller amount of screentime allotted to him in the show, that Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) was the Dragon. Then again, perhaps it was obvious after Barney Harris left the show that the only other white man in the main cast would turn out to be the protagonist (they are all of them ta’veren, to be fair, but I don’t expect the average person to know what the heck that means, yet).

Anyway, while The Wheel Of Time‘s quality has improved massively from the first season to the second as a result of the writers learning from their early missteps, this is one area where they need to do better, because in a much stronger second season it’s all the more jarring when the show falls back, even briefly, into old habits – and mercifully, the time spent delaying the reveal that Natasha O’Keefe’s character “Selene” is the alias of the Forsaken Lanfear is relatively brief, though that arguably only makes it harder to justify when every second counts; a philosophy we’ve seen reflected in the decision to drop the series’ beautiful animated intro for an extra minute and a half of screentime per episode.

Once again, fans of the show were given little to none of the information they would need to solve the mystery. Once again, book readers didn’t gain much from the experience except frustration at watching others struggle to speculate and theorize. And once again, the mystery was ultimately detrimental to the characters entangled in it. Most egregiously, this was not a mystery that needed to exist in the first place.

For comparison, while Lanfear does not make her identity known to Rand in The Great Hunt, it is at the very least abundantly obvious that the woman she claims to be, a Cairhienin noblewoman named Selene, does not exist, and there are enough clues pointing to her being Lanfear that, long before it’s officially revealed at the end of the book, the observant reader will have started to suspect a connection. Around the same time Rand first encounters her, conveniently trapped with him in a mirror-world that can only be accessed by channeling at a Portal-stone, Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden) dreams of a woman standing over Rand – “her face was in shadow, but her eyes seemed to shine like the moon, and Egwene had known she was evil”. And although she can’t place a name to the woman, we can, because the name Lanfear is mentioned early in the book; much earlier than in the show, where it’s not until the opening of episode four that viewers will hear the name amidst other words in the Old Tongue recited by Ishamael (Fares Fares) as he shatters the ancient seal containing Lanfear.

It’s only about an hour later that the name is repeated, this time with some context, when the Warder Ihvon (Emmanuel Imani) – oddly – becomes the first character in the show to read aloud the so-called Dark Prophecy that has been in al’Lan Mandragoran (Daniel Henney)’s possession since episode two, intercut with shots of Selene tying Rand to a bed and of Lanfear rising, drenched in blood, from the cave-floor where Ishamael found her, Ishamael’s voice in the background gradually superseding Ihvon’s to finish the verse. The whole scene is terrifically entertaining, but the reveal itself lacks weight. We’re told that Lanfear is Forsaken, which at this point in the season still has only a vague meaning for those who haven’t read the books (or my post on the subject). We don’t know anything about who or what she is, specifically, and we don’t have any sense of her potential power. Up to this point, we’ve known her as a fun-loving free spirit, and not much else.

Now, to be fair, I’m sure many folks assumed Selene was a Darkfriend like the last innkeeper who tried to seduce Rand (remember Dana?), so there may have been a bit of connecting-the-dots going on already, but O’Keefe plays her innocence almost too well in response to Rand’s tearful confession that he can channel at the end of episode four, to the point where it’s unclear exactly what her character is trying to accomplish, even in retrospect. She acts shocked and scared, pushes Rand away, and then starts reeling him back in when he actually tries to leave. I’ve watched this scene enough times now that I feel like I should understand what she wanted from Rand here, and I can only guess that she was steering him towards making a declaration of love for her – which she does get out of him eventually, albeit in a roundabout way.

Unfortunately, whatever emotional impact this moment could have had on Rand is short-lived, as Lanfear is seemingly killed just a few minutes later by Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike), who is able to get close enough to the Forsaken to stab her and cut her throat before she has a chance to react – unexpected perk of being shielded or stilled; she’s practically invisible to other channelers now. It strains plausibility slightly that one of the Forsaken, especially one as dexterous with the Power as Lanfear, would not instinctively counterattack at the exact instant that Moiraine’s blade pierced her skin, but I can’t be mad about it, not when it’s just such a powerful moment for Moiraine, who hasn’t had many this season. To add insult to literal injury, she actually tosses the Forsaken headfirst onto the hardwood floor with a sickening thud. Marking a major deviation from the books, however, Moiraine clarifies to Rand as they run for their lives that killing a Forsaken with mortal weapons would be impossible, which at least heightens the stakes exponentially.

I would have liked to see whatever it was that led Moiraine to the conclusion that Selene was Lanfear (though I wouldn’t entirely put it past her to stab a woman based on nothing more than a hunch). She spends some time in the Foregate of Cairhien, asking after Rand, but I can’t help but feel the writers missed an opportunity for her to investigate the innkeeper with him. However, Lanfear was smart to disguise herself as someone so lowly no one would even think to question where she came from (if a Cairhienin noblewoman had been traipsing around the Foregate with a commoner, that would surely have received attention), and understandably, Moiraine’s focus was on locating Rand, to the exclusion of all else, even her own sister.

Rosamund Pike as Moiraine Damodred in The Wheel Of Time, sitting in a room with gold-and-black paneled walls. She has a saucer resting on her lap, and is lifting a black tea-cup to her lips. She is wearing a wide-sleeved dark blue robe cinched at the waist with a wide blue-and-gold cloth belt over a long-sleeved white knitted blouse. A single blue gemstone sits on a slender golden diadem above her brow. The Great Serpent ring on her left hand sports a larger, darker, polished blue gemstone.
Moiraine Damodred | press.amazonstudios.com

Much to Moiraine’s obvious discomfort, it’s her sister, Anvaere Damodred (Lindsay Duncan), to whom she ultimately has to turn for information about Rand’s whereabouts, when her own eyes-and-ears network produces few results. Pike has mentioned in interviews that The Wheel Of Time‘s guest-stars are always given some of the juiciest material to work with, and no lies were told. Duncan’s performance is, of course, powerful, but it helps that she’s working from a script that favors her character. The episode opens on Anvaere as she prepares to face another exhausting day as head of the fractured Damodred household, piling her snow-white hair under a wig and applying makeup before receiving visitors, the first of whom on this particular day is Moiraine, whom we learn has not come home to Cairhien in roughly twenty years, ever since her hunt for the Dragon Reborn began. The stiff reunion between long-estranged sisters is cut short by Moiraine declaring she has business in the city that takes priority over having a cup of tea – a remark that Anvaere files away for later, when she forces Moiraine to sit and share tea with her before telling her where Rand has gone.

Their iciness is presented in stark contrast to the warmth and acceptance that Lan finds when he returns to the abode of Alanna Mosvani (Priyanka Bose), the sensual Aes Sedai of the Green Ajah to whom his care was entrusted by Moiraine. The parallels don’t end there. Alanna’s homestead on the grasslands of Arafel is compact, with narrow rooms and hallways, built from humble sun-bleached stone around a central courtyard, whereas Moiraine’s childhood home in the center of urban Cairhien is massive, its labyrinth of rooms each richly furnished, with tiled floors and paneled walls. Most significantly, Alanna’s home is crowded with members of her extended family who manage all the housework and cooking between them, while Moiraine’s is practically empty but for her and Anvaere, a butler, and the servants in the kitchen.

We don’t get to see many examples of Aes Sedai having family-lives outside the White Tower in Jordan’s books, so in theory I should have loved these scenes with Alanna, but I found Lan’s subplot to be a drag on the episode. He’s never been my favorite character, on account of being the silent, stoic, noble type that I generally find uninteresting, but I tolerated him throughout the first season because I enjoyed his dynamic with Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins), and how they were able to chip away at each other’s facades. This season, that relationship has been put on the back-burner. While Lan is used as a motivating factor for Nynaeve (and we saw during the Trial of the Arches that she would abandon the Aes Sedai for him), Lan has not mentioned her even once, and it’s getting on my nerves. That and the fact that the lessons he’s been learning from Alanna’s Warders about honesty and emotional vulnerability are lessons he started learning in season one as a result of Stepin’s death, making much of this feel redundant.

Some of it is also attributable to Maksim (Taylor Napier) and Ihvon, Alanna’s Warders, being two of the dullest characters on The Wheel Of Time, with an exorbitant amount of screentime each. I suppose I should be thankful that two explicitly queer male characters, our only two with the possible exception of Ishamael, are being given a bit more screentime, but neither actor, Napier least of the two, comes across as well-equipped for dramatic scenes. They’re now so inextricable from Alanna that I want to see less of her as a result, which is a shame, because Bose herself is everything an Aes Sedai ought to be – self-assured, powerful, enigmatic, with an innate and devastating elegance.

Another Aes Sedai coming to serve this season is Jennifer Cheon Garcia’s Leane Sharif, the Keeper of the Chronicles, who has maybe two minutes of screentime, tops, and still stands out due to her statuesque posture and impeccable taste in fashion. Her unconventional high-collared top, palest gold with dark blue peacock-feather embroidery, coupled with a flowy floor-length dark blue dress, is a combination that will live rent-free in my mind for a long time. She also has an extensive arc throughout the books, and I hope that The Wheel Of Time was foreshadowing that with some of the…ominous dialogue between her and Liandrin Guirale (Kate Fleetwood). I’d love to see Leane become the fan-favorite supporting character for viewers that she is for book-readers, though it might take time: her name has yet to be used on the show, so most people probably just know her as the tall, stylish Aes Sedai.

I have high hopes, given how well other minor characters from the books have fared on the show. Liandrin being not merely a likeable character but a fascinating one was unthinkable to me before the season aired. The books never developed her. She was a Darkfriend, a fairly petty and incompetent one at that, and nothing she did in The Wheel Of Time‘s first season gave me any reason to believe that had changed. But Fleetwood and the writers have shaped her into one of the series’ most compelling antiheroes. Yes, she’s still a Darkfriend, as we learn in this episode when she breaks the Three Oaths and takes Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne Trakand (Ceara Coveney) captive. But the betrayal cuts so deeply because Fleetwood had us all starting to trust her, against our better judgment. Even Nynaeve had come to respect her, begrudgingly. Liandrin knew that, exploited it, but every word she spoke to Nynaeve was laced with bitter sincerity, delivered with an unmistakable tinge in her voice of regret and crushing shame that she knows she won’t do anything to prevent herself from making unforgivable decisions when the time comes.

In episode four, Liandrin and Nynaeve share a particularly powerful scene in the testing-room beside the three Arches, where in the previous episode Nynaeve lived a whole life alongside Lan and lost him, her friends, and her daughter. Liandrin’s advice for coping with the pain is to “find a piece of this world that belongs to you, and you hold on to it…and then, when it’s finally gone, you find another”, but of course, she still can’t let go of the first thing in her life that ever belonged to her; her son, now an old man whose death she has delayed as long as humanly possible, even turning to the Dark in the desperate hope that one of the Forsaken could heal him. She never really intended to find another piece to hold on to, until Nynaeve entered her life and accidentally became her treasured student. And when Nynaeve asks her point-blank what she’s found to replace her son, Liandrin switches the subject, reminded in that moment that her orders are to bring Nynaeve to Falme and deliver her to Ishamael.

Liandrin tells Nynaeve that Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford) was captured by the Seanchan on the western coast – which is technically true, although she leaves out, or more likely wasn’t told, that Perrin already escaped from the Seanchan with Elyas Machera (Gary Beadle) and is now wandering around in the woods, trusting the older, more experienced Wolfbrother to guide him to Falme. I’m biased, because early-book Perrin was one of my favorite characters from The Wheel Of Time (early-book Perrin, before he became insufferable to read about), but his one scene with Elyas and the wolf-pack is my favorite of the entire episode, and its chief redeeming factor. Something about seeing him smile for what feels like the first time, as he tentatively starts to accept who he is, resonates with me as strongly now as it did in the books, though it took him much longer in the books to work through the initial fear that he would devolve into something less than human.

Priyanka Bose as Alanna Mosvani in The Wheel Of Time, standing in her outdoor kitchen and smiling as she leans over a large pot.
Alanna Mosvani | press.amazonstudios.com

There’s a lot of queer subtext in Perrin’s storyline (in retrospect, I think that was always a large part of why it spoke to me), and the only thing that could conceivably make me happier with the show’s adaptation is if The Wheel Of Time leans into that. Perrin’s borderline canonical boyfriend Gaul needs to get here fast, because the show already has me shipping Perrin with Dain Bornhald to fill the void in my heart, and that’s simply unacceptable. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t toyed with the idea of shipping them before, given Dain’s vaguely homoerotic obsession with Perrin in the books, and I can’t deny they’re both very attractive in the show, and I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to them helping each other work through their internalized homophobia-adjacent traumas, but…it’s still Dain Bornhald. Anyway, that’s a subject best left for my review of episode five.

To conclude: episode four, Daughter Of The Night, just barely earns its title, building slowly to an underwhelming reveal and restraining Natasha O’Keefe until the last few seconds before the credits roll, when Lanfear’s eyes snap open, filled with swirling black specks of the True Power called saa, to indicate (again though, only to book-readers) that she’s exerting all her strength to hold her soul in her body and recover from the wounds Moiraine inflicted. Only then does the episode live up to what was promised with that title. Were those few seconds worth the time I feel was largely wasted getting to that point? In a season consisting of just eight episodes, some not quite an hour long, frankly, the answer is no. Thankfully, episode five hits the ground running and delivers on the Lanfear front. And if the last two episodes can stick the landing, I’ll barely recall this bump in the road when all is said and done.

Episode Rating: 7.9/10

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“The Wheel Of Time” Season 2, Episode 3 – Nynaeve Steps Into The Spotlight

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME, SEASON 2, EPISODES 1 – 3, AND BOOK 2, THE GREAT HUNT, AHEAD!

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 would not exist.

It’s fair to say that the first season of Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time was carried through its highs and lows by Rosamund Pike, the epic fantasy series’ Oscar-nominated star and producer. Not only was she front-and-center in all the marketing, her name alone a major draw for casual viewers unfamiliar with the acclaimed yet inaccessible source material (fourteen weighty novels and a prequel, published over the course of three decades by two authors), but in seven of eight episodes she was the clear lead amongst an underdeveloped ensemble cast, despite her character Moiraine being something of an enigma in the early books. While her young castmates had moments to shine, it was only in episode three that they had the run of the place to themselves, so to speak, while Moiraine was unconscious. It was New Zealand-born actress and relative newcomer Zoë Robins who stepped up then to fill her place, going above and beyond what was asked of her to earn her top-billing alongside Pike and Daniel Henney, two established stars. And in the second season, though all the cast have returned much stronger and more confident to their roles, it is Robins once again who tethers The Wheel Of Time to her perfect performance in a third episode that follows the pattern of sidelining Pike and Henney.

Nynaeve al'Meara, wearing a plain white shift with her hair braided, standing in a darkly-lit stone chamber, looking over her shoulder to the right with an expression of concern. Behind her stands a silver-gray arch with wide columns.
Nynaeve al’Meara | Twitter @TheWheelOfTime

Pike and Henney may be the bigger stars, and Josha Stradowski may play the main protagonist of the books, but Robins is this adaptation’s beating heart, her soulful eyes the window through which we see most clearly all the workings of the world laid bare, because her Nynaeve al’Meara, while arguably even more likely than the other four villagers from the Two Rivers to reach some wildly wrong conclusion based on the limited information at her disposal and act on it before anyone can stop her, to be fair, is usually much closer to the truth of the matter than she has any right to be.

With a lesser actress in the role, I can easily imagine where this would become aggravating to watch, like one of those infuriating ads for a home-renovation mobile game that doesn’t resemble the actual game in the slightest, the ones where the “player” is presented with an extraordinarily simple problem yet somehow makes all the wrong choices and inevitably kills their character while all you can do is scream at the screen. It can still be like that, sometimes, watching Nynaeve metaphorically pick the sledgehammer to fix the bathroom sink, except that in her case, I know from the subtleties of Robins’ performance that it’s because Nynaeve has a relatable bad habit of deluding herself to the truth while simultaneously insisting that she couldn’t possibly be deluded, and not because she’s trying to make me download some generic match-three game.

Nynaeve is not one to be impressed by the artifices of the White Tower or the insufferable pageantry of its occupants, the Aes Sedai. She respects those who speak the truth plainly and mean what they say, no more, no less, so bending the truth without breaking it does not – and likely never will – come naturally to her. As a former Wisdom (the closest thing to an authority figure that existed back home in the Two Rivers), she particularly detests being made to feel like a pawn in all the ridiculously intricate mind-games Aes Sedai play at the Tower; a valuable pawn but a pawn nonetheless, to be used and cast aside by one woman, then another, as they all vie for higher seats in the Hall, with the ultimate goal of ascending to the Amyrlin Seat itself. And for all these reasons, The Wheel Of Time never made a better choice than when it paired Nynaeve up with the phenomenal Kate Fleetwood as Liandrin Guirale, an Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah who has had decades to practice the art of confounding young women by oscillating unpredictably between seeming like the least genuine person in the Tower and the most.

We don’t even see much of the masterful interplay between the two actresses in episode three, which opens with Nynaeve attempting the perilous Trial of the Arches alone and becoming trapped in a “mirror-world” for the entire duration of the episode, yet while Robins is occupied with selling Nynaeve’s growing desperation, Fleetwood, with a tremor in her proud jaw and a twitch of panic in her steely eyes, never allows us to forget that it was Liandrin’s ostensible confidence in Nynaeve’s abilities – and Nynaeve’s reluctant trust of Liandrin, formed through manipulation – that led her to this point. Whatever ulterior motive she may have had is irrelevant to her now as she watches this girl she’s come to regard with respect and pride be pulled apart, stitched back together, and thrown back into the meat-grinder in a ritual that will ultimately determine not whether she has what it takes to be Aes Sedai, but whether she is willing to sacrifice everyone and everything for the White Tower.

And in the first two mirror-worlds behind the silver Arches, Nynaeve heeds Sheriam Bayanar (Rima Te Wiata)’s repeated warning that “the way back will come but once” and successfully returns to the real world, at the price of abandoning her mortally wounded parents in one mirror-world and the disease-ridden population of the Two Rivers in another. But the callous attitude of the Aes Sedai enrages her as she heads into the third and final Arch, which leads her…straight back into what seems to be the real world, clinging to a blood-soaked lock of al’Lan Mandragoran (Daniel Henney)’s hair. Unable to remember what happened in the third Arch, she blows up at Liandrin and the other Aes Sedai, rejecting the Great Serpent Ring they offer her for completing the Trial and stating that she won’t be an Aes Sedai if it means turning her back on the people she loves. She says farewell to Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden), leaves the Tower, and unexpectedly reunites with Lan, who takes her in his arms and assures her that they can go wherever she wants, together. And Nynaeve agrees, dismissing the small voice whispering urgently in her head that “the way back will come but once”, and the misty outline of the silver Arch dissipating swiftly behind her as she steps out of the Pattern, into a different life.

Meanwhile, in the real world, there is nothing that Liandrin, Sheriam, and Leane Sharif (Jennifer Cheon Garcia) can do but stare helplessly into the roiling depths of the third Arch, all three of them silently praying that they haven’t just gone and killed the most powerful channeler the Tower has seen in a thousand years, and probably wondering how they can cast the blame on each other…until the ter’angreal goes quiet and any chance of Nynaeve returning has disappeared. Leane skedaddles (she’s the Keeper of the Chronicles, she can’t be seen to have been involved in this debacle), Sheriam berates Liandrin and hurries away to clean up the mess, and Liandrin, in another disarming display of genuine affection for Nynaeve, stays behind, tears welling up in her eyes, before angrily flinging a clay pot on the floor and storming away in search of somebody she can take out her pain on, specifically Mat Cauthon (Dónal Finn), who barely has time to crack a joke before Liandrin is lacing into him with a monologue so scathing, so demeaning, and delivered with such brutal sincerity that Mat has no choice but to become a background character for the next two episodes.

What for Nynaeve feels like five or six years in the mirror-world is only about a day in the real world, yet even in that brief time the world comes close to falling apart without Nynaeve around. Liandrin leaves the door to Mat’s cell ajar and tells him to go find his friends or die in the Blight for all she cares, he makes a halfhearted effort to seek out Egwene and actually comes upon her crying for Nynaeve but turns away at the last moment and instead returns bashfully to his cell, where it falls on fellow prisoner of the Red Ajah Min Farshaw (Kae Alexander) to persuade him that being of little consequence to the Pattern is something to be envied, and that they should run off together…only for the audience to discover that Min is actually moving Mat out of Tar Valon at Liandrin’s explicit instruction. Egwene, distraught over Nynaeve’s death, refuses to be consoled by her new friend Elayne Trakand (Ceara Coveney), telling her “I don’t even know you!” as she slams a door in the Daughter-Heir’s face. She then seeks out Liandrin and actually channels at the far older and more experienced Aes Sedai – notably, without using her hands – but Liandrin effortlessly unravels her weaves of fire and only barely resists the urge to push Egwene off a balcony (forget the Last Battle, the Amyrlin Seat needs to do something about the lack of guard-rails at the White Tower).

Far west of Tar Valon, Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford) and the Shienaran soldiers seeking the fabled Horn of Valere are made prisoners of the Seanchan Empire, whose representatives stand atop a pyramidal palanquin, wear fabulous scale-patterned robes, ornate masks and bladed fingernail covers, and speak with the most unnerving accent to hear in a high fantasy setting – a thick American Southern drawl. The Seanchan, we soon learn, are invaders from across the Aryth Ocean who have come to reclaim the lands that belonged by birthright to the founder of their mighty empire, Luthair Paendrag (everything from Toman Head in the west to the Spine of the World in the east). They could perhaps accomplish this goal with their massive armies, fleets, and the element of surprise alone, but they also have a…unique approach towards the use of the One Power, fastening unbreakable golden collars on women who can channel and leashing them to women called sul’dam who claim to be able to manipulate the use of the Power without dirtying their hands by touching the True Source. To the Seanchan, there is no distinction between an untrained channeler who believes she’s merely “listening to the wind” and an Aes Sedai, or between channelers of their land and another; there are only damane (those who have been collared) and marath’damane (those who will be collared).

Josha Stradowski as Rand al'Thor in The Wheel Of Time, standing with his hands folded in a room with fancily decorated walls. He is wearing a high-collared, long-sleeved dark red coat with golden herons in flight embroidered around the cuffs and collar, over a red vest and dark brown trousers. His head is shaven.
Rand al’Thor | winteriscoming.net

The Seanchan claim the first major casualty of the season, fan-favorite Uno (Guy Roberts), who dies gorily but not without dignity, spitting at the feet of High Lady Suroth (Karima McAdams) – or as close to her feet as he can aim from the bottom of her pyramid – uttering The Wheel Of Time‘s first F-bomb, and having a large curved spike driven through his mouth shortly thereafter as an incentive for Perrin and the other Shienarans to swear the Seanchan oaths of fealty without further complaint. They wisely decide that mumbling something about obeying, awaiting, and serving is preferable to choking on a tusk, but instead of letting them go, Suroth has her new subjects chained and shipped off to Falme, the first major city captured by the Seanchan. Perrin is able to slip away from the convoy with Elyas Machera (Gary Beadle) and his wolf-pack, but what waits for him in the wilderness maybe worse than what’s behind, if Ishamael (Fares Fares), the Dark One’s right-hand man, is to be believed when he tells Perrin that his wolf-senses are derived from the Dark. It may seem counterintuitive to let Perrin escape, given that Ishamael is already posing as Suroth’s advisor, but he seems to care about letting people come to the Dark through their own choices, not through force.

It’s a more carefree version of Perrin who inhabits the mirror-world where Nynaeve found herself, and he’s not the only one of the Two Rivers folk for whom the ter’angreal has created something more pleasant than reality. Mat is a lord, by the looks of it, and quite dashing. Egwene is already an Aes Sedai of the Green Ajah. Nynaeve herself has returned to the Two Rivers, married Lan, and given birth to a daughter. Lan has grown out his hair (it looks terrible) and put down his sword. There’s no sign of Moiraine, conveniently, and the Last Battle must not have happened (yet), because everyone is happy. The highlight of this comforting sequence is seeing Rutherford and Finn play Perrin and Mat as two fun, dorky uncles to Nynaeve’s adorable daughter, and I’d be down for more exploration of mirror-worlds in the future if it allows the other actors to let loose a bit and play around with what might be – which is, fittingly, the title of the episode.

But this is The Wheel Of Time, and as I explained in my review of the previous episode, the titular Wheel doesn’t give many options to ta’veren, individuals like Nynaeve who are spun out into the Pattern to hold it intact. And the mirror-worlds are reflections for a reason – they may seem serene, some of them, but they are the versions of the world that the Wheel cannot allow to exist, where something went wrong: usually because someone made a choice that cannot happen in the real world without weakening the integrity of the Pattern, as I understand it. Nynaeve is meant to pass the Trial of the Arches and become Accepted, because she is meant to do…all of the things that she does later in the books that I won’t spoil here, but she can’t do any of them if she leaves the Tower now.

That doesn’t necessarily mean every version of the world where she leaves ends as this one does, with a horde of ravening Trollocs slaughtering Nynaeve’s friends and family before her eyes while she watches on, powerless to stop the carnage, but there’s no version of that world that results in the “official” triumph of the Light over the Dark at the Last Battle that the Wheel is turning towards in the real world, however it may have seemed to her in the Two Rivers. Already, she was hearing rumblings that Egwene was taking Aes Sedai north to the Borderlands to deal with incursions from the Blight. That version of Egwene will likely die and Trollocs will overrun the world without her, Nynaeve, Perrin, Mat, or Lan around to stop it. The people of that mirror-world could still conceivably defeat the Dark One – after all, they should still have a version of Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) hanging about somewhere – but it will be a bleak and miserable world by the end, hardly worth saving.

Real world Rand, if you’re wondering, is busy tracking down an expensive bottle of red wine to bribe Logain Ablar (Álvaro Morte) into teaching him how to wield the One Power without going mad, which turns out to be a pointless endeavor because Logain is – surprise – already mad. The anticlimax is intentional and intriguing, though there were likely more effective methods by which we could have reached the same low-point in Rand’s arc where he feels time slipping through his fingers without us having to necessarily share the sentiment. At least there’s some fun to be gotten out of this slight diversion – Rand and Selene (Natasha O’Keefe) posing as outland lords to sneak into a fancy party; Rand unwittingly causing a commotion by throwing out invitation-letters from the great Houses of Cairhien; the subtle introduction of Moiraine’s younger sister Anvaere Damodred (Lindsey Duncan); and a fireworks-display, courtesy of Aludra and the Illuminators Guild. Rand isn’t enjoying any of it, however, and he leaves Selene to watch the fireworks by herself, which earns him an aggressive, sexually charged scolding later that night.

If there’s a version of Rand in Nynaeve’s picture-perfect mirror-world who’s any happier than the real world’s Rand (unlikely, seeing as he would still be the Dragon there, which pretty much guarantees that he’s traumatized and depressed), Nynaeve never met him and will never get the chance. Overcome with grief and rage unlike anything she’s felt before, she channels the One Power – something that is supposed to be impossible within the Arches – and wills the portal back into existence, years after it vanished. She can’t explain how she did it, Robert Jordan couldn’t explain how she did it when something similar happened in the books, and nor can I. Suffice it to say that Nynaeve is a force of nature, and although you’ve probably heard her referred to as “the strongest channeler the Tower’s seen in a thousand years” about as many times, it bears repeating. With her raw power and her determination to protect people, she can do the impossible, which is why breaking her block is crucial. If she can’t bring herself to channel until she’s angry or extremely sad, chances are someone she loves is going to have to die or get hurt in front of her before she can do anything to help.

And despite escaping the mirror-world, Nynaeve endures another terrible loss on the way back – that of her daughter, who survived the Trolloc attack only to disappear as Nynaeve staggered through the silver arches holding her close to her chest…the only trace of her a fresh bloodstain on the front of Nynaeve’s dress. Robins portrays the unimaginable horror and agony of this situation without reservation, her body contorting around the empty space that used to be her child, haunting screams issuing from her mouth while her eyes remain fixed on something ahead of her, something gone and soon to be forgotten. Memories of the mirror-world visited in the Arches fade quickly, like dreams, and the years Nynaeve spent in the Two Rivers with Lan, raising her daughter, will blur together. In time, she’ll only remember with certainty that she once remembered something more.

A sul'dam and damane from The Wheel Of Time. The damane, a young woman with intricately braided blonde hair and dark makeup around her eyes, wears a golden collar over a long-sleeved gray gown, with a golden gag in her mouth. The sul'dam, standing behind her, has long dark hair in two braids falling down her chest, and wears brown leather armor over a teal-blue dress with a golden gauntlet on her right arm. They are walking down a long line of women in dirty white gowns, whose eyes are downcast.
Sul’dam and Damane | nerdist.com

As The Wheel Of Time inches closer to adapting the lengthy sections of the source material that feature very little of either Pike or Henney’s characters, it is an encouraging sign for the series’ future that the ensemble cast surrounding them are now not only capable of carrying episodes on their own, but that a few like Robins and Fleetwood have been hailed as the season’s shining stars. The outstanding performances they deliver may not earn them any Emmy nominations, because awards show voters tend to overlook the fantasy genre entirely unless it has the Game Of Thrones title attached (and even House Of The Dragon received fewer nominations than were arguably warranted), but they have accomplished something greater than any trophy could honor, bringing The Wheel Of Time‘s most iconic characters to life. “It was about them all”, reads a famous and enduring quote from the books. That has never felt more true of the show than it is now.

Episode Rating: 9.5/10

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Fate And Free Will Clash In “The Wheel Of Time” Season 2, Episode 2

MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME, SEASON 2, EPISODES 1 – 3 AHEAD!

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.

“The Wheel doesn’t want anything. It can’t. Any more than a river or the rain can want something. It’s people who want.”

Those words, spoken in The Wheel Of Time‘s first season by Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike) in rebuttal to Logain Ablar (Álvaro Morte)’s whimpered insistence that the Wheel “wanted” him to be the Dragon and the carnage he left in his wake was therefore unavoidable, have never sat right with me, and I think I have finally found the words to explain why while mulling over the events of the second season’s second episode, Strangers And Friends, which brings each of the main characters to something of a turning-point in their respective arcs where they realize that all the “wanting” in the world will avail to nothing if the Wheel of Time never gives them opportunities to assert their agency in the first place, and the Pattern, the complex product of the Wheel’s endless turnings, is practically inescapable for those unlucky individuals called ta’veren who find themselves woven into positions where they are responsible for holding the Pattern intact through the duration of a crisis. Even if they were somehow able to make a choice of their own free will, they would never know, because the Wheel would simply course-correct and keep turning. The Wheel doesn’t want, it can’t, but it was set in motion for a purpose by its Creator, and it will serve that Creator’s purpose as long as it is not prevented from doing so by the Dark One.

Natasha O'Keefe as Selene in The Wheel Of Time, sitting outdoors at a table underneath a wooden sign for her inn with a painted crescent moon. She has long black hair, and is wearing a dark blue robe over a lacy black dress, holding up a cup.
Selene | polygon.com

For some, like Logain, fate has convenience as a shield, an excuse for dark deeds, but accepting foregone conclusions is not in our human nature, and most of us would become enraged or inconsolable if we could analyze our every action to discern which we made freely and which were made for us with the express purpose of guiding us to an end – and we don’t even live in a universe where a Wheel of cosmic proportions periodically requires something of us, at least not as far as we know. And maybe it’s for the best that we remain blissfully unaware of our metaphysical surroundings, because for Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) it’s the knowing, as much as the impending madness brought on by channeling the tainted male half of the One Power, that has him on the verge of collapsing every day.

As Rand sees it, the Pattern should be done with him. He defeated the Dark One at the Eye of the World, and Moiraine let him leave so he could safely isolate himself from his friends before going mad and killing himself, as he was sure he would, sooner or later, when he first touched the True Source and felt the madness clawing into his head. And yet…five months later, he’s still alive, still mostly sane, and still haunted by recurring nightmares of the man he believed to be the Dark One, but was actually Ishamael (Fares Fares), strongest of the channelers derisively named Forsaken who served the Dark One before the Breaking of the World. The Rand we meet in episode two is one who is still just tentatively starting to accept that he might have been granted a few more months, weeks, or days in the world to do some good, and is now realizing he doesn’t want to work up the courage to face madness and death a second time. But the harder he fights to bring his powers under control, the more the madness grows within him. And no one can help him, not even the enigmatic innkeeper Selene (Natasha O’Keefe) who sidles up to him in his moments of doubt.

What Selene offers Rand, however, is the physical affection he desperately craves but wouldn’t dare to ask for from anyone he truly cares about. Although their arrangement is sexual in nature, it is not exactly a romance, and I’m surprised (but then again, not really) that some reviewers interpreted it as one when The Wheel Of Time goes to great lengths to make it evident that Rand is with Selene for reasons of his own, and vice versa. Now, there is a moment in episode two during a candid conversation between the two where something in Selene’s eyes suggests she’s disappointed in Rand when he admits he’s only with her to try and forget someone else, but she merely sighs and assures him that if that’s the way it has to be, then she’ll gladly help him to forget. She confesses to fantasizing he’s someone different as well, someone she wants to remember. Will we ever get clarification on that? Perhaps.

In the meantime, Rand begins working his way through the ranks of the caretaking staff at a depressingly decorated sanatorium in Cairhien that houses patients from all over the Westlands, including veterans of the local Aiel War and male channelers gentled by the Red Ajah. As we soon discover, it is also where Logain has been residing for the past several months; not at the White Tower, as in Robert Jordan’s books, which means the fan-favorite character may play a different role in the story going forward, but the explanation given in the show is that Logain comes from an exceptionally wealthy and influential family in Ghealdan (canonically accurate), and they arranged more comfortable accommodations for him to live out his last days, still watched day in and day out as Siuan vowed he would be, but free to swagger about the gardens and boast that he used to be a Dragon. Rand’s only hope for enduring the madness or avoiding it altogether now rests with Logain, certifiably a madman.

To my surprise, the tender scenes between Rand and an elderly patient at the sanatorium (played by Nasser Memarzia) did far more to engage me in his storyline than any amount of watching him grapple with the Power after leaving a generic bully lying bloodied in an alleyway, though I feel it’s a matter of personal preference and Stradowski being at his most convincing when his Rand has a faint remnant of his sweetly rugged former self to cling to and build around.

A group of soldiers standing in front of a stone building, looking up at a black-cloaked faceless corpse nailed to a wooden door several feet off the ground.
A Fade nailed to a door | moviesr.net

On the other side of the world, Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford) is struggling to make sense of his own rare abilities, which manifest primarily as golden-tinted afterimages crowding any space where violence has been done and blood has been spilled, disorienting the somewhat squeamish young blacksmith. In the books it’s Rand, following the trail of Padan Fain, who comes upon a farmhouse in the land between Shienar and Cairhien, and stumbles into a looping vision of the previous occupants being slaughtered, while in the show, this moment has cleverly been repurposed for establishing Perrin’s wolf-senses, and the setting moved to the small village of Atuan’s Mill in Arad Doman that becomes the site of our protagonists’ first brutal skirmish with the Seanchan invaders introduced in the closing moments of season one.

It’s an excellently choreographed action sequence that uses to its advantage the diversity of fighting-styles and philosophies amongst its participants: Perrin is a follower of the pacifistic Way of the Leaf and reluctant to kill or hurt even his enemies for fear of becoming more wolf than man, while the Shienarans take great joy in combat and the Seanchan have a callous disregard for anyone occupying the land they believe to be rightfully theirs, matched only by their monstrous treatment of female channelers, whom they collar and leash like animals. These women, the damane, have had their agency stripped away from them and placed in the hands of women called sul’dam, who claim to be unable to wield the One Power themselves but can manipulate its use by others.

Outside the White Tower, channeling may still be dangerous for both women and men with the ability, but for someone as strong in the Power (and as strongly ta’veren) as Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins) or Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden), none of the options before them are free of risk, because their options are limited at this point to what moves them both closer to becoming the most powerful and second-most powerful Aes Sedai, respectively, that the Tower has seen in a thousand years, something of which their teachers are eager to remind them at every opportunity – particularly Egwene, who understandably tires of hearing that her power is incomparable to Nynaeve’s, and that there’s no closing the gap. In need of a shoulder to cry on, she turns to the Tower’s newest Novice, Elayne Trakand (Ceara Coveney), the Daughter-Heir of Andor, who is true bestie material.

Elayne’s lofty titles are dropped into casual conversation with great weight, as if they should mean anything to the majority of non-book readers, who have no way of knowing yet, without a map to refer to, that Andor is the largest kingdom in the Westlands, encompassing the Two Rivers and a hundred other towns and cities, or that its current Queen, Morgase Trakand, was once a Novice at the Tower herself and is now attended by the powerful Red Aes Sedai Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan, soon to emerge as one of The Wheel Of Time‘s greatest antagonists. With the title of “Daughter-Heir” only vaguely defined and none of the political tensions between Andor and neighboring nations established, Elayne is likely just a princess to most viewers, but hopefully that changes if and when the show traces her familial connections to various other characters on the show. Regardless, she’s immediately endearing and cleverly written not to come off snobbish or entitled.

While Egwene and Elayne have sleepovers in each other’s rooms and sample strong alcoholic beverages brewed with the One Power via experimental weaves, Nynaeve has no one to turn to for shelter and thus finds herself coerced into taking a guided tour of the Tower’s seven Ajahs with Liandrin Guirale (Kate Fleetwood), who exploits their time together to try and make Nynaeve see the benefits of taking the Trial of the Arches, which all Novices must pass before being “raised” to Accepted and presented with a Great Serpent ring, albeit one bereft of the colored gemstone that Aes Sedai wear as a visual marker of their chosen Ajah. As Liandrin explains, with that disarming hint of genuine passion and pride in her voice, Accepted are permitted to learn from the Ajah of their choice – Healing from the Yellows, diplomacy from the Grays, spy-craft from the Blues, and so on. Sadly, our time with the different factions is limited to brief glimpses into the workings of the Yellow Ajah hospital, where Nynaeve discovers that the incurable illnesses of her village are easily treated in Tar Valon.

Madeleine Madden as Egwene al'Vere sitting across from Ceara Coveney as Elayne Trakand in a small room with stone walls, lit by candles burning in niches. Both are wearing gray aprons over long-sleeved white gowns, and wear white boots. They are raising glasses filled with a light-orange beverage, and smiling.
Egwene al’Vere and Elayne Trakand | Twitter @TheWheelOfTime

For Nynaeve, however, that’s the only time on the tour that’s not wasted. She has no interest in the Yellow Ajah as an organization, but the first time she ever consciously channeled was to Heal the Aes Sedai and Warders wounded, some almost mortally, by Logain in season one, and she channeled again to protect her friends in the Ways. Long before she knew what she could do, she was drawn to the life of a Wisdom, and never regretted sacrificing companionship for the privilege and honor of protecting the people she loves. The duties of the Yellow Ajah come closest to aligning with her own desires, and it’s only after seeing the work they do that Nynaeve starts seriously considering the Trial of the Arches. She makes up her mind after following Liandrin later that night (having clocked the Red sister stealing poisonous herbs from the hospital), and realizing that even the cold and emotionless Aes Sedai have people in their lives besides their equally enigmatic Warders they would do anything to protect.

Liandrin’s happens to be her son, a man about eighty or ninety years of age, whose long-overdue expiration she has staved off with toxins that Nynaeve warns her will only cause him more pain. We don’t know what the Tower would do about it if they found out, but we can reasonably assume (and Nynaeve certainly does) that a lot of Liandrin’s more…questionable choices are the result of trying to hide her precious boy and keep him alive as long as possible, at least until she finds something else worth living for. How far will Liandrin go for her son, and who will get hurt in the process? That question has been answered in the latest episode, but I wouldn’t dare spoil it for those who haven’t watched yet. The long, tumultuous, and often uncomfortable emotional journey viewers will take alongside Kate Fleetwood’s Liandrin, for whom you can’t help but feel a begrudging form of admiration and respect despite all the writing on the wall telling you not to trust a single word that leaves her permanently pursed lips, is something you must experience for yourself – and if, by the end of it, you don’t understand why I am adamant that Fleetwood deserves an Emmy nomination for her work here, well, I can’t change your wrong opinion but know that I will judge you for it.

Seemingly central to Liandrin’s schemes is Mat Cauthon (Dónal Finn), whom we learn has been imprisoned at the Tower for months now, but is digging an escape-route through the wall of his cell that eventually leads him to…an adjacent cell. Disappointing for him, but great for us viewers, because it facilitates a meeting between Finn’s Mat, who has a genuine warmth and sense of humor that Barney Harris, in my honest opinion, lacked, and Kae Alexander’s Min Farshaw, a charismatic bartender born with the unenviable ability to see pieces of the Pattern like images attached to people – sometimes cryptic, sometimes frighteningly clear. Mat has refreshingly little interest in learning his fate, however, and Min has no inclination to tell him what she sees; a vision of him stabbing Rand with the cursed dagger from Shadar Logoth, something that has no precedent in the books. Whether you interpret it as platonic, romantic, or playfully erotic, the palpable chemistry between these two is no joke (personally, I want them to kiss before the end of the season, but that’s just me).

Mat’s approach to life is to pretend he’s dodged the weavings of the Wheel of Time entirely, and to avoid looking too long at his own reflection, which would show him he’s bound up in threads of the Pattern as tightly as a fly in a spider’s web. The confidence he gains from thinking that only strengthens his resolve to escape the White Tower dungeons, but leaving the confines of his cell is exactly what the Wheel expects of him and has taken into account already. He can’t escape, not really; no one can. And if he and the other four ta’veren have it especially bad, they are not alone in feeling helpless. Moiraine, once the most self-assured character on the show, is trying to come to terms with the fact that, at this critical juncture, she’s expected to do something not in her nature and surrender to the will of the Wheel. She’s seen the threads that bind her; seen even further, all the way to the brink of the abyss where she’s being pulled, swiftly and inexorably. She’s prepared for that. What she can’t cope with is the thought of anyone being dragged down with her, because of her.

Meera Syal as Verin Mathwin in The Wheel Of Time, sitting in a chair outdoors with a smile on her face. She has gray hair bunched up on top of her head, with loose curly strands falling around her face. She is wearing a silk brown dress clasped at the front with a large golden teardrop-shaped brooch, over a white blouse with long, frilly pleated sleeves.
Verin Mathwin | nerdist.com

And thus we come to the most painful scene in the episode, in which Moiraine dismisses her Warder, al’Lan Mandragoran (Daniel Henney), after nearly twenty years of service. It’s for his own safety, which he can’t bring himself to comprehend through anger and frustration, but Moiraine doesn’t tell him that, or try to assure him of anything. She’s very much like Rand in that way. They are both extremely protective of the people they love, and see themselves as inherently unworthy of receiving that same love and protection in return because anyone close to them is in danger of being hurt, possibly by their own hand. When Moiraine tells Lan they “were never equals”, Lan interprets it one way but Moiraine, I think, phrased it as she did specifically so she could lead him to a conclusion at odds with the truth: that in her eyes, she was never deserving of his loyalty, because for as long as she’s known Lan her only purpose in life has been to serve and protect the Dragon Reborn, and, as was pointed out to her by the alarmingly perceptive Verin Mathwin (Meera Syal), there is no telling who she’ll have to hurt or kill to help the Dragon achieve his victory over the Dark One at the Last Battle. She knows she can’t bring herself to hurt Lan and that he would all too willingly sacrifice himself if it were ever necessary, so rejecting him is the only option left to her.

The unfortunate consequence of this choice is that it sets up an aimless subplot with Lan and Alanna Mosvani (Priyanka Bose), the Aes Sedai to whom Lan is handed for safekeeping like a parcel by Moiraine, that begs for a swift resolution. Alanna’s sensuality and apparent openness juxtaposed with Lan’s stoicism and silence could have provided insight into both their characters as well as entertainment, but I feel that The Wheel Of Time is perhaps focusing too hard on establishing Alanna before it has the need, or the ability to do anything particularly meaningful with her. Until Lan inevitably returns to Moiraine (and, short of killing him herself, which she will never do, there is nothing she can do or say to prevent that from happening one way or another, because the Wheel has willed it), this storyline was bound to drag – but we will discuss that in greater detail another time.

The philosophical questions raised in episode two are unlikely to be definitively answered in our lifetimes, much less in this season of The Wheel Of Time, but the speculative answers put forward in the pages of Jordan’s books offer arguably less comfort than the uncertainty we endure. In the world he envisioned, certain events must happen and ultimately will happen in every Age for as long as the Wheel keeps turning, but they cannot happen on their own, therefore requiring that the people statistically most likely to make the “right” choices are spun out into the Pattern at the “right” time to ensure said choices will be made, as anything else could potentially lead to the breaking of the Wheel and the dissolution of the Pattern.

This would be bad, we’re meant to understand, because no one’s choices would have any meaning then. But what meaning does a choice actually have, if the Wheel only allows those that either directly serve its goal or have no consequence, and can spin out ta’veren to “correct” the rest? What meaning is there in the Wheel itself, if it wants nothing, works toward nothing, achieves nothing in any Turning except its continued self-preservation? If humanity can never advance so far that all their progress can’t be reversed in the next Age, all their accomplishments reduced to the stuff of legends? If the so-called Last Battle between the Dragon and the Dark One only acts as a catalyst for further upheaval, and all the blood shed, all the tears spilled, all the sacrifices made by our protagonists, not only won’t prevent it from happening again, but rather, ensure it will? Is the promise of rebirth any comfort, if the world into which you’re reborn is still fighting the same war you fought in all your previous lives?

(left to right) Gregg Chilingirian as Ingtar, Arnas Fedaravicius as Masema, Hammed Animashaun as Loial, and Guy Roberts as Uno from The Wheel Of Time, standing with weapons drawn in a village at night. Ingtar, Masema, and Uno wear light armor.
(left to right) Ingtar, Masema, Loial, and Uno | imdb.com

I don’t mean to burden my readers with these and other questions that keep me up at night wondering what Jordan potentially found soothing in this unique interpretation of the cosmos, and I’m not trying to parrot the Dark One’s own talking-points (breaking the Wheel is his only solution to everything, and while it sounds revolutionary on paper, in practice, it would achieve nothing), but these are questions which The Wheel Of Time‘s writers should spare some further thought, seeing as they’ve expanded on Jordan’s themes in countless ways already and always with a care and consideration for the essence of the source material coupled with a desire to be forward-thinking that makes me genuinely interested in what they have to say through the retelling of this particular story. I’m not saying the protagonists should necessarily break the Wheel by the end of the series; I just think there are a lot of shapes that time could take and something as simple as adjusting it to a…Straight Line of Time, for instance, would solve a lot of this world’s problems.

Episode Rating: 8.5/10

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Nynaeve’s Accepted Test Begins In New “Wheel Of Time” Clip

SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME BOOK TWO AHEAD!

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.

Every day from now until September 1st, fans waiting with bated breath for the release of The Wheel Of Time‘s second season can seemingly expect to be treated to a full scene from the first three episodes being released on social media, each one focusing on a different member of the series’ large (and ever-expanding) ensemble cast. Yesterday, it was a conversation between Rand al’Thor and Logain Ablar, Dragons true and false, in the “sanatorium”, described by Josha Stradowski in interviews, where Rand will be working, undercover, to help male channelers gentled by the Aes Sedai. It was a good scene, very well-written and well-acted, but today’s scene is more special to me personally. The Accepted Test of Nynaeve al’Meara is not only one of the most iconic sequences from The Wheel Of Time‘s second book, The Great Hunt, but from the entire width and breadth of Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series, which spans fourteen volumes and a prequel novel.

Nynaeve al'Meara, wearing a white dress with a wide leather belt, standing framed between the stone pillars of a silver archway standing on a dais in the center of a round stone chamber underneath the White Tower. Candles burn in sconces on the far wall. Behind Nynaeve are Sheriam Bayanar, Leane Sharif, and Liandrin Guirale.
Nynaeve al’Meara | Twitter @TheWheelOfTime

And The Wheel Of Time‘s showrunner, writers, and actors have actually done it justice; evidence alone, if you ask me, of why they deserve everything the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have been asking for, because this was no easy feat. Although not every line of dialogue has made it into the show’s version of this scene, all but a few of the actresses’ lines are lifted either directly from the book, or with only the most minor tweaks. The scene opens with Nynaeve, wearing Novice-white (because in the show, I believe she does choose to train as a Novice for Egwene’s sake), warily approaching the three silver arches standing on low daises arranged in a semicircle in the White Tower’s basement. She asks what they are, just as she does in the book, and receives a similar, arguably more informative, answer from Sheriam Bayanar, the Tower’s Mistress of Novices, and Liandrin Guirale of the Red Ajah, who has taken a suspiciously active role in Nynaeve’s training. Below, I’ve quoted the passage from the books, and highlighted in bold the parts that made it into the show, with original dialogue in parentheses. Please forgive my rather, uh, messy presentation.

“Ter’angreal do many things, child. Like angreal and sa’angreal, they are (from before the Breaking, made during a time when women could create objects from the One Power itself) remnants of the Age of Legends that use the One Power, though they are not quite so rare as the other two. While some ter’angreal  must be (are) made to work by Aes Sedai, as this one must (like this one), others will do what they do simply with the presence of any woman who can channel….We don’t know why they were made. We dare use only a handful of them, and the ways in which we do dare to use them may be nothing like the purposes the makers intended. Most, we have learned at our (great) cost to avoid. Over the years, no few (Many) Aes Sedai have been killed or had their Talent (been) burned out of them, learning that.”

– The Great Hunt: Chapter 23; The Testing, by Robert Jordan

As you can see, with just a few tiny alterations, excisions, and additions here and there, that entire passage has made it into the show. And with just one new line of dialogue, the show not only clarifies what ter’angreal actually are for general audiences (without sacrificing any of their mystery in the process), it also subtly establishes that the art of creating ter’angreal is lost to the Aes Sedai of the present day, as well as signaling to attentive viewers that Liandrin is a highly unreliable narrator (possibly Jordan’s favorite writing-device), because her implication that only women ever created ter’angreal is, well, totally in-character for her but simply untrue. That’s good writing right there.

Nynaeve is taken aback by the mention of women burning out, having almost experienced that fate worse than death in the first season, and asks if they expect her to just walk into the arches after that. Leane Sharif of the Blue Ajah, who was not present for this scene in the books, responds to her with a line borrowed from Sheriam, to say that they know how the arches work; entering them brings a woman face-to-face with her greatest fears, which Nynaeve can keep secret to her grave, if she wishes. Dividing the dialogue between these three women helps to break up what would otherwise be a very long and exposition-heavy monologue from Sheriam, giving the scene a little more dynamism, and providing Leane with screentime she was sorely lacking throughout the first season. It’s Sheriam, however, who still delivers some of my favorite lines in the scene.

“Two things I (we) will tell you now that no woman hears until she is in this room. The first is this. Once you begin, you must continue to the end. Refuse to go on, and no matter your potential, you will be very kindly put out of the Tower with enough silver to support you for a year, and (but) you will never be allowed back.”

Kate Fleetwood as Liandrin Guirale in The Wheel Of Time season one, wearing red and brown, with her long white-blond hair flowing down her back in a mane of intricate braids, standing surrounded by similarly-dressed women in a rugged landscape.
Liandrin Guirale (center) and members of the Red Ajah | arstechnica.com

I genuinely did not expect most of this detail to make it into the show, but I’m so glad it did, because the rock-solid worldbuilding of The Wheel Of Time is one of many reasons why it’s considered a fantasy classic, and while the first book had to be slimmed down a great deal to work as a season of television, with much of that rich detail subsequently being shed for the sake of new fans and casual viewers, the second season won’t suffer from those same limitations and is free to delve deeply into Jordan’s world and mythology. But of course, these words aren’t merely decorative. They hold great relevance for Nynaeve, as she has been looking for an escape-route from the Aes Sedai, and now one is being dangled right in front of her. And at the same time, this entire scene is quietly setting up future storylines involving certain characters who actually took that escape-route.

“Second. To seek, to strive, is to know danger. You will know danger here. Some women have entered, and never come out. When the ter’angreal was allowed to grow quiet, they – were – not – there. And they were never seen again. If you will survive, you must be steadfast. Falter, fail, and…” Her silence was more eloquent than any words.

These lines are intriguingly delivered by Liandrin in the show; further evidence that she is beginning to care for Nynaeve, or have concern for her well-being at least, something that never occurred in the books. I’m all for this change, if only because it gives the phenomenal Kate Fleetwood much juicier, more compelling material to dig into as an actress, if her character isn’t innately cold and callous, as seemed to be the case throughout the first season. Obviously, she’s Aes Sedai, and Red Ajah at that, so there’s a lot of calculating going on behind her eyes, but the Aes Sedai are still human at the end of the day, and they ought to have human vulnerabilities. I look forward to later scenes between Nynaeve and Liandrin that build off this dynamic.

“This is your last chance, child. You may turn back now, right now, and I will put your name in the novice book, and you will have only one mark against you. Twice more you will be allowed to come here, and only at (on) the third refusal will you be put out of the Tower. It is no shame to refuse. Many do. I myself could not do it, my (the) first time here.“

Leane steps forward to speak these words. Again, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that so much of this monologue made it from page to screen. I don’t care in the slightest that it’s Leane in the show, not Sheriam, who declined to take her Accepted test once. It’s never going to be relevant again, I suspect, but what it does is it gives viewers a little bit of background information about Leane that they can use to start forming an attachment to her, which is important because she’s important, more so than Sheriam I’d argue.

Finally, Liandrin comes back with the one and only line in the entire scene that’s completely new, as far as I can tell. “If you are doing this for someone else, you will fail,” she tells Nynaeve, with an expression of genuine compassion once again flitting across her steely features. “Do this for you, or not at all.” Is she…trying to protect Nynaeve? After all, if Nynaeve passes the Accepted test, she comes one step closer to being “raised to the shawl” and made a full Aes Sedai, and with her raw power and status as ta’veren (able to bend the weavings of the Wheel of Time around her) there is nothing the Dark One and his minions will not do to prevent the White Tower from weaponizing her. It also sounds like this is a continuation of some conversation Nynaeve must have had with Liandrin earlier, where Nynaeve must have revealed (or Liandrin must have discerned) that Nynaeve came to the Tower primarily to protect Egwene, though she herself is still opposed to the Aes Sedai and distrustful of her own abilities. Again, it’s surreal that it’s Liandrin bringing this up, but I’m not at all upset.

Zoe Robins as Nynaeve al'Meara in The Wheel Of Time season one, sitting outside on a cliff-edge above water, with her long dark hair pulled into a braid falling down her back. She is wearing a dusty-green tunic. She is smiling faintly at something off-camera, to her left.
Nynaeve al’Meara | vaguevisages.com

Silence falls after she speaks, and the camera lingers on Zoë Robins’ Nynaeve, in whose dark, expressive eyes you can catch glimpses of all the emotions swirling within her – fear, frustration, curiosity – before they finally coalesce into steady determination, and she speaks the words that start the trial: “I’m ready”. She’s passed the point of no return, and now we must wait until September 1st to follow her into the arches. But hopefully we won’t have to wait that long for the next clip from The Wheel Of Time! If the pattern holds, tomorrow we could see either Egwene, Perrin, or Mat, followed by Moiraine and Lan, and then perhaps Elayne, Aviendha, and Min. On the one hand, I don’t want to see that many scenes from the first few episodes before the season premiere, but on the other hand…I kinda do, and I definitely won’t be able to resist watching them if they’re out there. Who are you hoping to see next? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!