MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME THROUGH BOOK FIVE, THE FIRES OF HEAVEN, AHEAD!
Wheel Of Time Wednesdays are back! And according to Amazon, they’re here to stay, at least until the premiere of The Wheel Of Time‘s third season on March 13th, a little less than two months away. We still don’t have a full trailer for the fast approaching season, but we have been receiving casting announcements left and right over the last couple of weeks: Shohreh Aghdashloo and Olivia Williams are among those joining the epic fantasy series’ sprawling ensemble cast, which also boasts Oscar-nominees Rosamund Pike and Sophie Okonedo. And today, Amazon welcomed five more cast-members — Isabella Bucceri, Nukâka Coster-Waldau, Salóme Gunnarsdóttir, Björn Landberg, and Synnøve Macody Lund — all of whom will play significant roles from the pages of Robert Jordan’s saga. As has been the case with every casting announcement thus far, all five of these actors and actresses were already known or rumored to have been cast in the series, and some, like Bucceri, had already been linked to the characters they’re actually playing, but there are also some interesting new details tucked away in Amazon’s press release that hint at changes fans could not have predicted.
While there are over 2700 named characters in The Wheel Of Time, and it’s extremely easy to get them mixed up, no one who’s read the series will need to be reminded of Faile Bashere, the character Isabella Bucceri will portray in season three: everyone has an opinion on the sharp-tongued Saldaean adventurer who becomes Perrin Aybara’s love interest, and those opinions range anywhere from “love her, would die for her” to “hate her, please die” with people like myself falling somewhere in the middle; I generally like Faile individually, but her and Perrin together are unbearable to read about for more than a few sentences, in large part because the book versions of their characters are, like, sixteen, seventeen, and incapable of having a conversation without Perrin putting his foot in his mouth because he inadvertently ‘smelled’ Faile’s emotions (one of the drawbacks to having heightened senses) and confidently misinterpreted them, causing her to get angry, in turn causing him to get angry, and for them both to storm off, the one mumbling that ‘women are so confusing’ and the other grumbling that ‘men are such idiots’. I have to trust that one of the reasons for aging up the characters in the show was to avoid the mind-numbingly repetitive teenage angst that The Wheel Of Time is unfortunately notorious for, but then again, there was a random (and mercifully short-lived) love-triangle subplot between Perrin, Rand, and Egwene in season one, so anything’s possible.
In Amazon’s press release, as in the books, Faile is described as a Hunter for the Horn whose search for the artifact has led her to the Two Rivers. This presumably means we’ll lose the bit where Perrin tells Faile to stay in the city of Tear while he goes to check on things back in the Two Rivers because it’s too dangerous for her to go, she’s just a woman, blah blah blah — advice which she ignores. But otherwise, her description reads the same. Faile is introduced as a Hunter for the Horn in book three, The Dragon Reborn, and interestingly, tells Perrin about her theory that the Horn could be found in the Two Rivers amidst the ruins of the ancient kingdom of Manetheren. In the books, the Horn is already on its way to Tar Valon for safekeeping by that point, but the show made a subtle but potentially significant change when they had Amaresu, one of the Heroes of the Horn, take the Horn from Mat Cauthon at the end of season two: meaning that for the time being, it is somewhere in Tel’aran’rhiod, the World of Dreams, and not in the physical world.
Speaking of the World of Dreams, the next two characters — Bair (Coster-Waldau) and Melaine (Gunnarsdóttir) — are both ‘dreamwalkers’: women with the ability to enter the World of Dreams at will, and to an extent navigate its ever-changing paths. The ability to dreamwalk does not only manifest in women who can channel the One Power; Melaine cannot channel, while according to Amazon’s press release, Bair can (an odd change from the books, where it’s the other way around). Both women belong to the red-haired, desert-dwelling Aiel people, and hold positions of great status in their respective clans. They are called ‘Wise Ones’, and their words hold equal weight to those of their clan chiefs. There are many Wise Ones with the ability to channel and/or dreamwalk (likely outnumbering the Aes Sedai) but some can do neither and still be held in high esteem. Whereas Novices training to become Aes Sedai often spend years preparing for the perilous Accepted Test that decides whether they can advance any further, women who seek to become Wise Ones are immediately expected to pass a test very similar in structure, which involves entering a ter’angreal in the ruins of the city of Rhuidean that will show them the possible routes their lives may take.
A similar test awaits Aiel men who intend to become clan chiefs. With permission from the Wise Ones, these men will enter a separate, inverse ter’angreal in Rhuidean which forces them to relive events from their ancient history through the eyes of their direct ancestors. In this way, they will learn the truth of the ‘Sin’ that led to the Aiel becoming a patchwork of warring clans banished to the Wasteland beyond the Spine of the World. Few men return from the ter’angreal, fewer still with their sanity intact, but those who do come back bearing a dragon tattoo on their arm that marks them as their clan’s new chief, and are forbidden to speak of their experiences in Rhuidean. The current chief of the Taardad clan is Rhuarc (Landberg), an experienced warrior who has two wives, both Wise Ones. You’ll see more of the Taardad Aiel in the show than any other clan (besides the especially violent Shaido), as the Taardad are the clan to which Rand al’Thor’s parents belonged, and in which he would have been raised if he hadn’t been born on a battlefield and adopted by Tam al’Thor of the Two Rivers. Aviendha is also a member of the Taardad Aiel, though her friends Bain and Chiad belong to the Shaarad and Goshien Aiel, respectively.
Probably for simplicity’s sake more than anything, the show has also chosen to make the character of Melindhra (Macody Lund) a member of the Taardad Aiel rather than the Shaido, but that isn’t even the biggest change that’s been made to this Maiden of the Spear’s backstory. The press release describes her as a Malkieri refugee who was taken in by the Taardad, setting her up to have a very different role in the show than in the books, where she’s romantically involved with Mat Cauthon for a short while. While there’s no evidence that Mat will go to the Waste in season three, we know that Lan Mandragoran, faithful Warder to Moiraine Damodred and heir to the lost throne of Malkier, will go there alongside Moiraine, Rand, and Egwene al’Vere. It seems obvious that, with Melindhra being a former citizen of Malkier herself, the two will bond. The question is: will their relationship be purely platonic, or is The Wheel Of Time overlaying Mat and Melindhra’s romance onto Lan and Melindhra? And if they do go that route, what does that mean for Lan’s ambiguous relationship with Nynaeve al’Meara? And what is Mat doing in season three if he’s not going to the Waste, where much of his character development occurs in the books?
I’m very curious to see how The Wheel Of Time answers these questions when the series returns, but in the meantime, I’d love for you to share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!