The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend, but JordanCon continues and the cast and crew of Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time remains admirably committed to always showing up for the annual Atlanta-based convention celebrating the late author Robert Jordan and his monumental fourteen-book fantasy series. It’s a small event, hardly worth Amazon’s time in the grand scheme of things, but if nothing else, showrunner Rafe Judkins always has a video message for the fans containing a few tidbits of new information about the series, currently filming its third season in Prague. This year, while he was not at liberty to share the season two release date we’ve been craving for quite some time now, he did introduce four actors joining season two who will be playing important new characters.
Moiraine | amazonadviser.com
All four were previously rumored to be among the series’ cast, so the names of Jay Duffy, Rima Te Wiata, Ragga Ragnars and Maja Simonsen may already be familiar to those who have been following production closely. Nor did it come as a surprise that Te Wiata would be playing Sheriam Bayanar of the Blue Ajah, something that was first reported several weeks ago by WoTSeries, a highly reputable investigative fan-site. But I was stunned and delighted to discover that Duffy will be playing Dain Bornhald and not Gawyn Trakand as everyone seemed to think, and that Ragnars and Simonsen will be portraying the dynamic duo of Bain & Chiad, two fairly minor but endearing characters I feared would be missing entirely from this adaptation.
A little about each of the characters, starting with Dain Bornhald because his is the casting I’m most excited about. Dain is a character we meet in the books earlier than in the show, in the town of Baerlon to be precise, although it’s not at all obvious from his introductory scene what a prominent role he’ll have in the story going forward, especially as a foil to Perrin, so I can easily understand why they saved him for season two. This way, he can have a proper introduction and audiences will hopefully get to know him first and foremost as a sympathetic character; a young man brought up from childhood in a cult and indoctrinated by everyone around him, including his father Geofram, to believe that the Aes Sedai and all those who can use the One Power are Darkfriends. Dain is a distinctly queer-coded character from my point of view (so is Perrin, making their antagonistic relationship even more compelling), and I have a feeling that might not just be subtext in the show.
Eamon Valda interrogates an Aes Sedai | imdb.com
Sheriam Bayanar, an Aes Sedai and member of the Blue Ajah, is the White Tower’s Mistress of Novices when the story opens, instructing Nynaeve al’Meara, Egwene al’Vere, and Elayne Trakand upon their arrival at the Tower. She is particularly skilled at helping channelers overcome their self-imposed Blocks, and for this reason I suspect that most of her scenes in season two will be shared with Nynaeve, whose peculiar Block is an integral part of her character arc. In future seasons, however, Sheriam will get an unexpected promotion and take on a much larger and more pivotal role…and that’s all I’ll say on that subject.
As for Bain & Chiad, these inseparable Maidens of the Spear refer to themselves as “first-sisters”, which in their case means they have been Bonded by their Wise Ones in a ritual that – at least in the books – allows them to simulate the experience of being reborn from a single womb as close as two women can be. I do not believe for a moment that Robert Jordan was at all oblivious to the homoeroticism in his own writing, because the man was basically advertising his fetishes to the world every time a female character in his books found herself naked in Tel’aran’rhiod being chased around and spanked or flogged by other naked women, but I’ve said in the past and I’ll say it again that I don’t think he as a straight man ever seriously considered queer women as anything other than erotic. It’s very telling that most of the implied bisexual women in The Wheel Of Time, including Bain & Chiad by the way, are in polyamorous relationships centered around a single man, while the implied lesbians are mostly sexual predators. Queer men simply didn’t exist in the world of The Wheel Of Time until Brandon Sanderson generously added two to the books he completed after Jordan’s passing.
(left to right) Bain, Aviendha, and Chiad | reddit.com
I could go on about this particular subject for hours, but this really isn’t the time or place to be doing so, and I think I’ve rambled long enough anyway. In short, I’m very excited to see these four characters officially join The Wheel Of Time‘s ensemble cast when season two premieres (hopefully later this year), optimistic that we’ll learn who’s playing Lanfear, Elaida, Verin, Suroth, Egeanin, Gaul, Morgase, Galad, and Gawyn long before then, and curious to know whose introduction you’re most eagerly anticipating. Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!
SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME, BOOKS TWO THROUGH FOUR, AHEAD!
Did you know that JordanCon is a thing? Founded in 2009 to honor the life and legacy of fantasy author Robert Jordan, the convention has been held in the state of Georgia every year since (except for 2020, but as many appear to have forgotten, there was a global pandemic that year). Fans of The Wheel Of Time, the fourteen-volume fantasy series started by Jordan in 1990 and posthumously completed by Brandon Sanderson in 2013, flock to the convention in the hundreds to discuss the series with other fans and to attend lectures and panels by Jordan scholars on subjects ranging from the themes of his work to the Wheel Of Time adaptation which recently premiered on Amazon Prime’s streaming service.
Tigraine Mantear, an Aiel spear maiden | pajiba.com
Notable guests and speakers at JordanCon have included Jordan’s successor Brandon Sanderson, widow and editor Harriet McDougal, illustrator Michael Whelan, and a number of Jordan’s peers and proteges, including Patrick Rothfuss and Saladin Ahmed. But this year, excitement was through the roof, as the cast and crew of Amazon Prime’s The Wheel Of Time hosted a hotly-anticipated Q&A panel to talk about the high points of season one – and the direction of the series going forward.
The biggest announcement, which trended on Twitter for a while and received attention from mainstream media outlets, was the casting of Killing Eve‘s Ayoola Smart as Aviendha of the Nine Valleys sept of the Taardad Aiel. You can immediately tell which professional journalists covering this story didn’t read the books or do any research into the books by skimming through their eerily similar descriptions of Aviendha. If they refer to her by a certain title she doesn’t actually acquire until book twelve, you can bet your bottom dollar they just copied-and-pasted the very first Google search result for Aviendha into their articles without worrying about how much of her character development they were unintentionally spoiling for new readers.
When we first meet her in The Dragon Reborn, three books into the series, Aviendha is merely one of many Aiel warriors sent over the Spine of the World to find Rand al’Thor and inform him that he is the Car’a’carn, a prophesied “chief of chiefs” who is supposed to unite the scattered clans of the Aiel and lead them into a new age (what Rand himself wants is as irrelevant to the Aiel as it was to the Aes Sedai). Aviendha follows Rand to the city of Tear, where she and the Aiel joins forces with Rand’s army to help him defeat Be’lal, one of the thirteen Forsaken, and recover the legendary sword Callandor from the Stone of Tear so that Rand can complete a totally unrelated prophecy.
Rand al’Thor | leisurebyte.com
As inspiring as Jordan’s description of this battle is, I wouldn’t get my hopes up for a live-action adaptation just yet. The second season of Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time is expected to condense the events of The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn into roughly eight hour-long episodes, which means that at least one of those seven-hundred page novels is inevitably going to be prioritized while the other is only mined for its important character introductions and necessary story beats. And showrunner Rafe Judkins has done what I think any writer would do in that situation, prioritizing The Great Hunt over The Dragon Reborn. It has a clean and cohesive narrative, excellent character development, and an aerial battle over the city of Falme.
Judkins excitedly confirmed at the JordanCon presentation that The Wheel Of Time will be heading to Falme in season two, so we can probably rule out the possibility of the characters visiting Tear in the same season – unless by some miracle there’s enough time, space, and money left over to justify building sets for a second massive fictional city, populating it with extras and designing new costumes for all of them, choreographing a second elaborate city-wide battle, etc. Keep in mind that season one could only afford three main locations, leading to the characters and cameras bypassing the cities of Baerlon and Caemlyn entirely. Expect similar situations going forward.
That’s not to say that a lot can’t still be done on a $80M+ budget, and honestly the bigger problem is Amazon’s refusal to order the ten or twelve episode seasons we deserve from a show of this sprawling scope, but I’m getting off-topic now. To sum up everything that we’ve learned; we’re going to Falme in season two, not to Tear, but Aviendha has also been cast, which probably just means that she and the other Aiel will be involved in the battle of Falme rather than the siege of the Stone of Tear (curiously, that also means the Aiel scouts in the show will have traveled over two-thousand miles further west than the Aiel scouts in the books).
Without spoiling too much of book four, The Shadow Rising, I’ll just say that Aviendha plays a major role in the story going forward, and that despite her humble beginnings she quickly becomes a power player on the same level as Egwene al’Vere and Nynaeve al’Meara, with abilities beyond just her physical strength and prowess in combat that come to light gradually. I’m very excited to see her character come to life onscreen, and I trust Ayoola Smart to do a fabulous job.
Ayoola Smart | everymanplayhouse.com
What do you think of the casting? Was Aviendha one of your favorite characters in the books, and if so, how do you hope to see her adapted for Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!
SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME EPISODE EIGHT AND THE EYE OF THE WORLD AHEAD!
As if Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time didn’t have enough problems going into its very first season finale, between budget and time constraints, COVID-19 restrictions, and a lead actor leaving during filming, the harsh reality was that this season finale was probably always going to be difficult to get right (and therefore divisive with fans) no matter what…because there’s a precedent in the source material itself.
“The Dark One”, Moiraine, and Rand | winteriscoming.net
The convoluted and convenient ending of Robert Jordan’s first Wheel Of Time novel, The Eye Of The World, is widely cited as one of the main reasons that fans regard the book as weak in comparison to its sequels; well that, and the fact that tonally and stylistically, it reads more like Tolkien than Jordan, or that it’s heavy on exposition yet the complex magic-system remains vaguely-defined by the end of the book and main characters are just barely fleshed-out. But seriously, a lot happens in the last few chapters that is still confusing even by the end of the series.
Leaving aside the extremely random nature deity who literally appears out of nowhere, Jordan’s version of events involves two of the series’ most inconsequential Forsaken popping up out of the ground to challenge Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) to a magical battle at the Eye of the World. Things get really weird and trippy from there, Rand instantaneously teleports to Fal Dara and singlehandedly defeats an army of Shadowspawn because he can just…do that now, kills “The Dark One”, possibly talks to The Creator (a.k.a. God), then returns to the Eye to find the long-lost Horn of Valere and the banner of the Dragon Reborn.
Some of the questions that first-time readers have upon finishing The Eye Of The World are answered in later books. Some aren’t. The general consensus among fans is that while Robert Jordan had a lot of his story already figured out when he wrote that first book, the rules of his magic-system weren’t locked down at that point. On top of that, he wanted The Eye Of The World to work as a self-contained story in case he never got to publish the sequels, which explains the deceptive triumphant tone of the ending.
It’s unsurprising and understandable that Amazon’s Wheel Of Time adaptation didn’t aim for loyalty to the books in this instance, because frankly it wouldn’t have made much sense if they had. Jordan’s fourteen-volume series came to an end in 2012 with the help of Brandon Sanderson, so the magic-system is now fully-realized and the inconsistencies in The Eye Of The World are outliers anyway. And because Amazon greenlit The Wheel Of Time for a second season months ago, there’s no need for the writers to tack on a misleading happy ending as Jordan did.
But for every problem solved in the adaptation process, a new one arises that is exclusive to this medium – and hopefully to this first season, specifically. Amazon dictates have apparently been a thorn in showrunner Rafe Judkins’ side since early days of production, when the studio shot down his idea for a 2-hour pilot episode. Then COVID-19 happened, and when The Wheel Of Time was allowed to resume filming after a months-long hiatus with new restrictions in place, one of the show’s lead actors, Barney Harris, didn’t return to set, requiring Judkins and his team to rewrite the last two episodes to account for his absence.
Behind the façade of this otherwise mostly enjoyable episode hide patches of frantically-rewritten story and dialogue loosely holding the whole structure together – like puzzle-pieces that when assembled, form a picture of chaos behind-the-scenes. Most egregiously, the writers don’t seem to have finished removing Mat Cauthon (Barney Harris) from this episode, so the silhouette of what was clearly intended to be his subplot remains visible, awkwardly filled by the character of Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford).
Thematically, it makes no sense whatsoever for Perrin to confront the Darkfriend Padan Fain (Johann Meyers), or for their conversation to unfold the way it does, with Padan taunting Perrin about succumbing to the darkness. This entire sequence, which concludes with Padan Fain stealing the Horn of Valere from its secret vault under the throne of Fal Dara (in the books, it’s discovered at the Eye of the World), was very obviously intended to feature Mat – the only character with whom Padan ever interacted, whose potential for darkness was so strong that Padan guided him to the cursed dagger in Shadar Logoth.
Padan Fain | denofgeek.com
Presumably, in the version of the finale we’ll never get to see, Padan would have encouraged Mat to take the next step towards joining the Dark One, before stabbing him with the cursed dagger and leaving with the Horn of Valere after Mat inevitably fought back. In the version we did get, Padan randomly stabs Loial (Hammed Animashaun) and leaves him for dead, although Rafe Judkins has confirmed that Loial is alive. Either way, it would have set up the events of The Great Hunt and the connection that Mat has to the Horn more effectively than a split-second shot of Mat in Tar Valon while Padan is talking to Perrin.
Perrin actually spends most of the episode talking and running around aimlessly, while a battle rages outside the walls of Fal Dara that we barely get to see because apparently Perrin adopted the pacifistic Way of the Leaf at some point (never shown onscreen) and now refuses to fight. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be fully onboard with that character development if Perrin did anything cool or compelling instead, but the weak action scenes scattered throughout this episode really could have benefited from a character with the instincts, reflexes, and unique abilities of a wolf.
There’s a lot of buildup to the Battle of Tarwin’s Gap, and the characters even delude themselves into thinking that the Last Battle, Tarmon Gai’don, is upon them, but all the time spent developing Fal Dara’s warlords Agelmar (Thomas Chaanhing) and Amalisa (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) goes to waste on a “battle” that consists of one embarrassingly puny cavalry charge and a single barrage of arrows. Agelmar, who survives The Eye Of The World, is impaled within the first five minutes by a Trolloc, at which point the fortress at Tarwin’s Gap falls (they call it a fortress, I call it a glorified palisade).
Throughout this…skirmish, the camera refuses to linger very long on the close-quarters action, for good reason. COVID-19 restrictions prevented The Wheel Of Time from filling out the armies on either side with human extras, and even the actors who portrayed the Trollocs and Myrddraal in the first few episodes using extraordinary practical effects and prosthetics have been replaced by a patchy CGI swarm that pours into the flat wasteland before the walls of Fal Dara and is conveniently obliterated by Amalisa, Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins), and Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden) before they come into focus.
To the surprise of no one (including the VFX department, I’m certain), this unfinished army of Shadowspawn doesn’t look all that great even from a distance, in total darkness. But it still required money to build from scratch, and that’s money that’s clearly been siphoned away from the special effects in other areas, including the incoherent thunderstorm of saidar summoned by Amalisa (using Nynaeve and Egwene’s power) that eventually reduces the Shadowspawn to cinders in what is already one of the finale’s most confusing – and controversial – original scenes.
Let me try to break it down for you. During the final battle, as the Shadowspawn approach, Amalisa orders Nynaeve, Egwene, and a handful of weaker channelers to “link” with her, something we saw the Aes Sedai do in episode four to collectively gentle Logain. But as we learned from Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) in episode seven, Amalisa herself is weak, and clearly lacks the necessary Aes Sedai training to pull off this difficult maneuver. Instead of equally distributing the One Power amongst her teammates, Amalisa absorbs it all into herself and goes nuclear, quickly burning out.
The same fate befalls everyone tied to her by the link, as one by one the weaker channelers are ripped apart from within by the One Power, which leaves blackened craters where their facial features used to be (a delightfully grisly visual). But eventually Nynaeve wrests control of the One Power from the disintegrating Amalisa to protect Egwene, and burns out. For a moment it’s even implied that she’s dead…but then Egwene heals her anyway. And that, to me, is the only part of this sequence that warrants criticism, because honestly everything else is appropriately terrifying and exhilarating.
Amalisa and Agelmar | dragonmount.com
But seriously, another fake-out death? Really? This is a trope that is extremely difficult to write well even once in a story, and The Wheel Of Time has now “killed” Nynaeve twice. The first time around, when Nynaeve was abducted by a Trolloc, the manner in which she cheated death actually told us a great deal about her character – and as we learned from Padan Fain, she was never really in danger of being killed because the Trollocs planned to bring her to the Dark One. We don’t learn anything new about Nynaeve when she “sacrifices” herself to save Egwene; only that she’s apparently invulnerable.
Across all fourteen volumes in Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time saga, no burned out channeler ever has their ability to channel restored – and the fact that in this instance it’s Egwene (canonically one of the weakest healers) who miraculously saves Nynaeve makes this scene all the more amusingly inaccurate to the books. That’s not necessarily a problem for the time being, because The Wheel Of Time hasn’t established many of the laws of channeling yet, but down the line one would hope that we get an explanation for what Egwene did in this moment.
My fear is that the explanation, if we ever get one at all, will be in the form of some dismissive offhand comment to the effect of “she’s ta’veren; deal with it”. My hope is that The Wheel Of Time plans to actually explore the intricate mechanics of channeling in its second season, partially through Nynaeve and Egwene as they try to piece together what went wrong with their linking-circle and how they can learn from their mistakes (by training with the Aes Sedai in Tar Valon), and partially through Moiraine, who was unexpectedly humbled by “The Dark One” (Fares Fares) at the Eye of the World, losing her own ability to channel.
Fans are divided over what exactly happened to Moiraine. She can’t channel, but can still feel the One Power at her fingertips, indicating that “The Dark One” either “shielded” her or “stilled” her. The former is more likely, because the magic net that “The Dark One” cast over Moiraine was very similar to the shield that the Aes Sedai used to bind Logain in episode four, and nothing like the probes they used to rip the One Power out of his chest when they “gentled” him. Gentling and stilling both refer to the act of removing a person’s ability to channel entirely, and the consequences are believed to be permanent.
Shields, thankfully, can be undone – although the process requires patience, persistence, and in many cases assistance from another channeler, especially if the “weaves” used to create the shield were extremely complex or archaic (and “The Dark One” is many thousands of years old, so we can safely assume he learned his weaves sometime during the fabled Age of Legends). That’s good news for Moiraine, but keep in mind that women in Jordan’s world can’t see when men channel (and vice versa), so Moiraine doesn’t know what “The Dark One” did to her, or how deep the damage goes.
It’s reasonable to assume that Moiraine will have to search for help from other Aes Sedai in season two, seeing as Nynaeve’s mental block is now firmly in place, preventing her from channeling, even to heal, except when she’s angry, and Egwene, well…actually, this would be a lot simpler if Egwene were still really bad at healing, but…yeah, I don’t know how they’re going to explain why Egwene can’t just undo Moiraine’s shield the same way she undid Nynaeve’s burning out. This is why we need that explanation for what she even did to Nynaeve in the first place, and fast!
The Seanchan | collider.com
On top of all that, the Seanchan colonists make their first live-action appearance at the very end of the episode, leaving audiences with a frightening mental image of all the sadistic, creative ways in which the One Power can be abused. Women with the ability to channel, including captured and enslaved Aes Sedai, make up the lowest class in Seanchan society, where their movements can be controlled by non-channelers through the use of special collars (which in the show are coupled with golden gags). The Seanchan are seen using them to conjure a tidal wave in advance of their arrival on the western shores near Falme.
There’s not much I can actually say about the Seanchan without skirting around Wheel Of Time spoilers. I mean, I could just rant for hours about the production design and costume design failures that continue to plague this show, including the tacky skull helmets that I naively want to hope were stolen from the set of a 1990’s B-movie because the thought of any professional costume designer approving those in 2021 is frankly embarrassing, and the fact that every flat surface on the Seanchan ships is inexplicably covered in giant spikes, but nobody wants to hear me rant (unless you do, in which case I will happily oblige).
Besides, I actually have nice things to say about the production design, too. Not as many nice things as I would like to be able to say, but enough to fill out this paragraph at least, because for one brief flashback to the Age of Legends (hopefully the first of many), the eclectic sets, props, costumes, and production values are in perfect harmony with each other, united by a sleek and streamlined science-fantasy aesthetic. The actors even speak in the Old Tongue invented by Robert Jordan to immersive effect.
The scene gives us insight into the events that preceded the Breaking of the World three-thousand years before Rand’s time, when Lews Therin Telamon (Alexander Karim), in his arrogance, impatience, and desire to protect his loved ones, foolishly chose to try seal the Dark One away forever, ignoring warnings from the Tamyrlin Seat that he would expose the male half of the One Power to the Dark One’s corrosive influence in so doing. Rand al’Thor, Lews Therin’s reincarnation in the Third Age, similarly fails to see the bigger picture, which is why his victory at the Eye of the World is…incomplete.
And yet, Rand’s confrontation with “The Dark One” at the Eye is an unequivocal improvement on the world-hopping swordfight that concluded the first book in Jordan’s series. Usually, adaptations look for opportunities to expand on action and visual spectacle – but this is the rare instance where the opposite is true, and Rand finds himself battling not a physical opponent, but his own worst impulses. “The Dark One” tempts him with a tantalizing vision of the simple life he wanted with Egwene back in the Two Rivers, telling him that with his newfound power he can force the Wheel of Time to weave this fiction into a reality.
And he still wants it, desperately. The scene wouldn’t be effective if he didn’t. But his epiphany, which ultimately gives him the strength to turn on “The Dark One” and blast him out of existence with a blinding sunbeam of power, is that he wanted this future with Egwene because he loves her deeply, deeply enough to know that she doesn’t want it. She has her own hopes and dreams of becoming the village Wisdom someday, or even an Aes Sedai, dreams he may never understand but which he will always respect and accept because he loves her. And I just think that’s beautiful.
Of course, by giving up his one chance at the life he always wanted, Rand simultaneously shoulders the responsibilities and burdens of the lonely life he’s got. And Rand being Rand, instead of seeking guidance, he chooses to go into self-imposed exile after defeating “The Dark One”, instructing Moiraine not to come looking for him or even to tell his friends that he’s alive – because the way he sees it, he won’t be for much longer. All that’s left for him now is the slow descent into insanity that awaits all male channelers.
At least, that’s what he thinks. Without getting into spoilers for the books, all I’ll say is what’s already implied by Moiraine in the episode itself; that the events at the Eye of the World warrant close examination, because what Rand thought happened and what actually happened are not necessarily the same thing. This may not have been immediately obvious to readers back in 1990, but Robert Jordan’s series now has fourteen books, a prequel novel, and several spin-off stories, so there’s not much point in hiding that this is just the beginning of Rand’s story.
Well, let me rephrase that; it is not the beginning, for there are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.
Lews Therin Telamon and Latra Posae Decume | winteriscoming.net
But it is a beginning – perhaps even a new beginning for Amazon’s series, which will enter its second season free of the heavy baggage that season one struggled to carry. A recast Mat’s return will obviously restore some cohesion to the story, but on top of that the budget has been increased, and The Wheel Of Timeis now a proven success on streaming, which will appease the skeptical Amazon executives. The writing choices made throughout season one allow season two to hit the ground running and almost immediately branch out in exciting new directions.
If this season finale was messy (and don’t get me wrong, it absolutely was), it’s only so that season two doesn’t have to be.
SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME EPISODE SEVEN AND BOOKS AHEAD!
Tug a thread carelessly from any piece of fabric, and it will begin to unravel. The same is perhaps doubly true of story-threads, especially in a narrative as carefully and deliberately woven as The Wheel Of Time. Many of the major events and character moments in the fourteen-volume book series, written and published over a span of roughly twenty-nine years, were plotted out by author Robert Jordan from near the beginning of the series, allowing him to layer foreshadowing into the early books for story beats that wouldn’t transpire until after his death in 2007, when Brandon Sanderson completed The Wheel Of Time.
Moiraine in the Ways | arstechnica.com
This hasn’t prevented Amazon Prime’s adaptation from rearranging the order of events and character introductions, excising or swapping out characters and locations, or otherwise streamlining Jordan’s sprawling series, but until episode seven these changes haven’t dramatically altered the predetermined course of the story and individual character arcs. Most of the material in the Baerlon and Caemlyn chapters of The Eye Of The World, for instance, has simply been redistributed across the width of the first season – including the character of Min Farshaw (Kae Alexander) who’s been transported halfway across the map from Baerlon to Fal Dara.
But those changes were part of showrunner Rafe Judkins’ plan for The Wheel Of Time, and he and his team of writers had already comfortably integrated them into the story by the time filming began. By contrast, it does not appear that anyone foresaw Barney Harris’ abrupt departure midway through filming, and if I had to hazard a guess based solely on the quality of the scripts for the last two episodes, I’d wager that the writers were not provided anywhere near enough time by Amazon to try and work around Harris’ absence in such a way that it felt planned.
To be fair, it’s a miracle that the loss of a series lead – coupled with COVID-19 and budget constraints – didn’t halt The Wheel Of Time dead in its tracks, and that they were able to move forward at all with revised scripts and a new direction for Harris’ character, Mat Cauthon. Judkins wisely chose to put off the recasting process until he had time to fully devote himself to finding the right actor for the role, but the consequence of that decision is that Mat doesn’t appear again between episode six and a few moments worth of presumably repurposed footage in episode eight.
Now, anyone who’s read The Wheel Of Time knows that major characters often disappear for entire books to go do their own thing, and Mat is one of those characters. But that’s roughly halfway through a fourteen-book series, after readers have gotten to know, and to care for, and to love Mat Cauthon. The effect is quite different when you’ve only got to know a character throughout six episodes of a crowded debut season, the last four of which said character spent being driven mad under the influence of a cursed dagger. If I didn’t know why I should care about Mat by virtue of having read the books, I’m not sure I would.
And all of that is exacerbated by the shoddy justification for Mat’s decision not to enter the Waygate at the end of episode six; that he has an “inherent darkness” within him that’s apparently pushing him towards the Dark One. It only further alienates the character from the audience at a point where he’s not here to defend himself, and clashes with what we thought we knew about Mat given that his only firmly-established character trait was a selfless desire to help his family that was driving him away from his destiny, but certainly not to the Dark One’s side.
It’s a flimsy excuse and a hurtful one, not only to Mat but to the characters forced to halfheartedly state it as if it’s an irrefutable fact that Mat’s already succumbed to the darkness. I could perhaps get onboard with the idea that Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike), ever the wariest of the Aes Sedai, would be reluctant to bring Mat near the Dark One because of his exposure to darkness through the cursed dagger, but I can’t easily accept that she never actually intended to bring Mat to the Eye of the World, as she claims in hushed tones to Lan (Daniel Henney), until I understand why she brought Mat to the Waygate at all in that case.
If he hadn’t decided to stay put of his own accord, was she planning to kill him in the Ways or after reaching their destination? Did she have a reason for telling him where she was going if she genuinely feared that he would join the Dark One? And if she always planned to send the Red Ajah after him, why not do so back in Tar Valon, when she could have used the opportunity to appease Liandrin Guirale? If, on the other hand, she’s doing all of this for Mat’s protection, why not leave him in safe hands instead of stranding him in the middle of nowhere near a Waygate he can’t open even if he wanted to?
Perrin, Egwene, Rand, and Nynaeve | telltaletv.com
The one person you can usually rely on to see through Moiraine’s smokescreens is Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins) – so naturally in this situation, instead of demanding truth from the Aes Sedai or fighting to reopen the Waygate, she’s quickly convinced that that would be impossible and decides to follow Moiraine into the darkness of the Ways, remarking that they’ll find Mat once they’re out (a promise she doesn’t even attempt to keep once they reach the city of Fal Dara). Soon, the only character consistently standing up for Mat is Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski).
If the intent behind all of this was to endear Rand to viewers just in time for the big twist that he’s also the Dragon Reborn, it comes at the cost of exposing the lack of character development amongst all the Emond’s Field Five (well, four now), and is undermined by Rand himself. I get that Rand makes himself unlikable in the books to try and distance his friends from the fallout of his actions, but that plot-device is so poorly utilized here that it alienates us from Rand without providing any reason to keep sympathizing with him.
Gone is the quiet yet affable sheepherder whose presence we tolerated through the first six episodes; in his place is the sullen, irritable woolhead I fear we’ll be burdened with from this point hence. Not content with privately pushing his friends away one-by-one, Rand stirs up drama between them and stokes rivalries and divisions in the group under the pretense that he’s trying to unite them against Moiraine. He leaps at the opportunity to berate Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden), calling her out for doubting Mat and not having his back when Rand did.
But this argument – this entire subplot – hinges on the viewer knowing these three characters more intimately than The Wheel Of Time has actually allowed us to, even seven episodes deep. Egwene and Mat only shared a handful of scenes in the first two episodes before separating at Shadar Logoth, and never had any interactions in which Rand could plausibly have interpreted some sort of animosity on Egwene’s part, so everything they’re arguing over in episode seven is largely meaningless to us, based on stuff that I guess must have happened before we entered the story.
And, well, don’t even get me started on the other big revelation that comes out of this argument. At some point while everyone is fighting, Nynaeve blurts out that Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford) had an unrequited crush on Egwene while married to Laila, something that comes as a shock to Egwene, to Rand, and to us, the viewers. Technically, this is not a new development. Perrin was implied to have a slight crush on Egwene in The Eye Of The World, but Jordan never referenced it again afterwards. It was unbelievable even by his standards, and that’s saying something.
So obviously there was a great deal of shock and disappointment from fans (including myself) who felt that Perrin’s crush on Egwene maybe wasn’t the most vital part of the books to bring over into live-action. Don’t get me wrong, I like relationship drama in my fiction as much as anybody; when it’s just the right amount of juicy and spicy, that’s good stuff. But this is neither. It’s the bare bones of a love-triangle, which is already a generic trope, but on top of that Perrin never indicated any romantic interest in Egwene ever, and now I’m supposed to believe that his marriage was on the ropes because he couldn’t get over her?
Perrin’s wife, Laila, has lingered in the back of my mind as I’ve waited for The Wheel Of Time to reveal why she existed in the first place except to die horribly and motivate her grieving husband. Supposedly, part of the thought process behind her inclusion was that aging the main characters up from teenagers to twenty-something adults in the show required them to act more mature, and to come across as more comfortable in their love-lives than the helplessly awkward, angsty protagonists of Jordan’s books. A married Perrin exemplified that. The ham-fisted reveal that he was secretly crushing on his best friend…eh, not so much.
It’s obviously insulting to Laila. As if the poor woman didn’t go through enough, trapped in an apparently listless marriage and fridged by her own husband with an axe to the stomach (against Brandon Sanderson’s wishes), now the secrets she confided in Nynaeve to keep are shared with a roomful of her friends and enemies. Not to mention the fandom is still convinced she was a Darkfriend, no matter what Rafe Judkins might say. But perhaps The Wheel Of Time is even crueler to Perrin, who’s spent most of season one cycling through pointless subplots, patiently waiting for the show to remember that he’s a major character.
Hopefully he can hang in there a little while longer, because as Judkins himself revealed, Perrin was intentionally sidelined throughout this season to preserve the mystery around the identity of the Dragon Reborn, which Judkins worried non-readers might have solved on their own if The Wheel Of Time had explored how far Perrin’s connection to the wolves goes.
Personally, I feel like the guy who can literally talk to animals would have shot to the top of my list of potential Dragons if I didn’t already know it was Rand going in, but be that as it may, the mystery resolves itself at the end of episode seven and…Perrin still gets nothing to do with wolves in the finale, because he’s burdened with the role that was clearly meant to be Mat’s before these episodes were heavily rewritten.
That said, the mystery was effective in at least one regard. It got non-readers talking and speculating and having fun watching The Wheel Of Time, trying to guess the identity of the Dragon Reborn based on the limited clues that the writers were willing to spare. And at the same time, book readers got a good chuckle out of watching those reactions, or, alternatively, felt their hearts sink to their stomach when they saw how non-readers reacted with joy to the misdirect that Nynaeve was the Dragon.
I admit to being partially biased in this matter because I never liked Rand, and about five books into the series I basically had to reconcile with the fact that I was only tolerating him because the supporting cast was worth the blood, sweat, and tears required to make it through every one of his POV chapters. I proceeded to tolerate Rand for the next seven books. The experience left me tired – and in need of more likable and offbeat protagonists. Learning that some fans really adore Rand is something that invariably shakes me to my core, although I suppose after a couple rereads one grows numb to the pain.
But on a serious note, I really love hearing the various reasons why people like Rand because I can see the potential in his arc. For Rand, the responsibility of being the “chosen one” is claustrophobia-inducing, because he can never be free of it. Wherever he goes, his very existence alters the Pattern and causes irrevocable damage to the people he loves. He’s haunted day and night by the deranged musings of the last Dragon, Lews Therin Telamon. He’s hounded by the Dark One and the Aes Sedai. The corrupted male half of the One Power offers no escape, only a constant reminder of his duty to “cleanse the taint”.
Fittingly, Judkins stages the Dragon reveal in episode seven as a revelation for the audience, but not for Rand. A montage of flashbacks to recontextualized moments throughout the season tell us that Rand has actually suspected that he is the Dragon Reborn for a long time; since he channeled in the Ways to kill a Trolloc and let Egwene take the blame; since he used weaves of saidin to escape from Dana (Izuka Hoyle) in episode three; since the Battle of Bel Tine, when his delirious father Tam al’Thor (Michael McElhatton) revealed that Rand was actually born far from the Two Rivers, on the blood-soaked slopes of Dragonmount during the Aiel War.
Tigraine Mantear | decider.com
The cold-open for episode seven takes us back twenty years to that battle on Dragonmount (known simply as the “Blood Snow”), giving non-readers an indelible mental image of the ferocity and determination they should come to expect from the Aiel – and therefore from Rand. Vikings director Ciaran Donnelly brings an expertise in shooting raw and gritty action to the table, coupled with an almost painterly understanding of how to elegantly compose and choreograph scenes of brutal violence so that they remain one step removed from the hyper-realism of Game Of Thrones‘ early seasons.
The Wheel Of Time is the kind of fantasy show where a pregnant woman in labor can climb up a mountain in the middle of winter, leap through the air with a heavily-armored man in tow before killing him and several others in intense hand-to-hand combat, sustain a stab-wound to the stomach, and only finally die after giving birth to a healthy baby. It’s fantastical, which is refreshing in this case because the fantasy genre is usually known for mercilessly slaughtering mothers and their babies in numbers that rival Disney’s kill-count. Tigraine Mantear (stuntwoman Magdalena Sittova) reclaims agency over the last moments of her life and goes out like a warrior.
A private audience with the seer Min Farshaw confirms Rand’s suspicions that he was adopted by Tam in the aftermath of the Blood Snow, while tentatively establishing the groundwork for a romantic relationship between their characters. If they’re not quite as flirty off the bat as some fans had hoped, it’s only because Rand has just been informed that there’s a strong likelihood he’ll die the very next day, and it kind of throws a damper over any flying sparks. But Amazon’s Wheel Of Time is taking a slow-burn approach to the canonical romances, so I wouldn’t have expected Rand and Min to fall in love yet anyway.
Jordan had many strengths as a writer, but romance was not one of them. His canonical couplings often play out like some of the weirdest and most random “crackships”, with characters falling in love on their first meeting, or on a whim after several books. Even Nynaeve and Lan, whom most fans (including myself) agree are perfect together, are revealed to be deeply in love with each other almost as a side-note nearly fifty chapters into The Eye Of The World. Amazon ‘s Wheel Of Time follows that relationship more closely throughout the season, cluing us in to what both characters are feeling.
The mystery regarding the Dragon Reborn adds a sense of urgency to their relationship in episode seven, as Lan and Nynaeve are both aware that if Nynaeve is the Dragon, there’s a good chance the Dark One will kill her at the Eye, and if she’s not, she’ll almost certainly be obliterated in the clash between the Dark One and the actual Dragon. Either way, the outcome doesn’t look good, and Nynaeve resolves to die having loved Lan as fully as she can. Not content with longing from afar, she joins Lan at his home in Fal Dara, where she meets his foster-family, before returning to his bedroom with him.
Or rather, Lan returns to his bedroom without even kissing Nynaeve goodnight, and Nynaeve enters a minute or two later as he’s getting undressed for bed. Lan can’t bring himself to tantalize her with what they both know is beyond their reach, but Nynaeve is living in the moment, accepting that she’ll probably never have the chance to settle down with Lan or start a family – hell, she’ll be lucky if she survives one more day, but at least right now they can have this together. Before we cut away and leave them to their lovemaking, the unshakable, headstrong Nynaeve we adored is back.
Even in Jordan’s world, the Pattern comes undone sometimes, but it always finds a way to correct itself. That process usually involves ta’veren in the books, but seeing as Amazon Prime Studios doesn’t just have one of those hanging about the place to help out (that we know of, at least), the combined talents of Rafe Judkins and his creative team will make up for the lack of cosmic intervention.
Nynaeve and Lan | lrmonline.com
And of course they’ll make mistakes sometimes, but keep in mind that this and the next episode had to be rewritten in the middle of a pandemic to accommodate the absence of a lead actor, so the ending we got is not the ending that Judkins wanted to give us, and the slightly lower quality of these last two episodes is not indicative of where The Wheel Of Time is headed, only of how many obstacles had to be surmounted in order for this first season to see the light of day.
