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“The Wheel Of Time” Season 2, Episode 6 – Just Give Madeleine Madden The Emmy Already

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME SEASON TWO, EPISODES 1 – 6, AND BOOKS 1 – 3, AHEAD!

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the series being covered here would not exist.

Nearly the entire ensemble cast of Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time are deserving of Emmy-award nominations and wins for their work in season two; and in a fair and just world, where awards-show voters actually respect the fantasy genre, they might have a chance. Realistically, it’s a long shot. Practically the entire cast of Game Of Thrones were nominated every year that the show was running, and still only Peter Dinklage ever took home a trophy for the role of Tyrion Lannister (four times, which in my opinion is simply egregious when Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, and Maisie Williams were all right there). Thrones‘ critically-acclaimed spin-off House Of The Dragon and Amazon’s grandiose Lord Of The Rings prequel The Rings Of Power have eight and six Emmy nominations, respectively – neither of them for their qualified casts. So The Wheel Of Time, with its relatively smaller fanbase and cultural impact, definitely faces an uphill battle.

Madeleine Madden as Egwene al'Vere in The Wheel Of Time, standing in a dark room wearing a large golden collar and breastplate, all of one piece, over a long-sleeved gray dress. Her dark hair is pulled back into a braid. Her face is bloodied and bruised.
Egwene al’Vere | moviesr.net

But its arsenal includes at least five actors who stand a cut above the rest of their peers, who might actually have a chance at a nomination if Amazon campaigned them aggressively. We’re talking Oscar-nominee and Emmy-award winner Rosamund Pike (whose phenomenal performance in season one, made up of countless microexpressions and miniscule yet purposeful mannerisms, was quite frankly snubbed); Zoë Robins (who anchored the series’ best episode in her fragile depiction of rage and vulnerability), Peaky Blinders star Natasha O’Keeffe (who, besides being delectably monstrous in her role, also confidently models the costume department’s finest assortment of outfits, from ostentatious black leather to sophisticated pantsuits); Tony-award nominee Kate Fleetwood (who plays The Wheel Of Time‘s most complex character and has some of the best lines of dialogue), and of course, Madeleine Madden. It’s Madden, I think, who has the best shot, given the overwhelmingly positive reception from critics and audiences to episode six, Eyes Without Pity, which hinges on her intricate, multi-faceted portrayal of a woman beaten into believing she is less than human.

The episode opens with Madden’s Egwene al’Vere being dragged by a leash to the so-called “kennels” where the Seanchan keep damane (women who can channel the One Power), and that’s arguably the least of what she endures over the next hour of brutal psychological torture inflicted by her sul’dam, or handler. The golden collar placed around Egwene’s neck, called the a’dam, immediately restricts her from channeling except when her sul’dam permits it, and sends her into full-body spasms if she tries to hurt her sul’dam, or touch anything she intends to use as a weapon against her sul’dam. The a’dam – and by extension the damane – is controlled through a matching golden bracelet worn by the sul’dam, which also cannot be touched by the damane. The sul’dam seemingly never has to touch the One Power herself to manipulate its use by the damane under her control.

These rigid rules are clearly laid out and demonstrated for Egwene and the audience in an episode which masterfully expands on a single sentence in The Great Hunt, where Egwene recounts being unable to touch a pitcher of water for three days straight because she once thought of breaking it over her sul’dam’s head. Madden delineates every emotion that passes across Egwene’s bloodied face and through her trembling hands as she’s made to reach, again and again and again, for the pitcher, causing her to convulse in pain; the initial anger and sense of injustice at her situation, giving way to hopelessness and desperation, the wave of relief and even pride when she succeeds, followed by disgust at herself for feeling that, and worst of all the paralyzing doubt that maybe this is what she is, what she deserves to be, what she was meant to be. Egwene is unbreakable, so we’ve heard, but this episode tests that theory and utterly shatters the illusion that anyone can stay entirely sane and self-assured under this kind of ceaseless physical, mental, and emotional duress. The seed of doubt, allowed to germinate in a person’s mind, can break even the strongest and proudest – as is confirmed when we see Maigan (Sandy McDade), formerly of the Blue Ajah, now glass-eyed as she sits in her cell, emotionlessly repeating back to herself the rules of being a damane – and the Seanchan are particularly good at planting those seeds and nurturing them.

The scenes with Madden’s Egwene, heartwrenching as they are from her perspective, would be not much more than traumatic if her scene-partner – her sul’dam Renna (Xelia Mendes-Jones) – weren’t equally formidable and complex. Reading the books, I pictured Renna as just shy of stereotypical: nauseatingly bubbly, speaking down to Egwene in a cheerful American Southern accent, treating her as one might a miniature poodle. People like her exist, and they’re terrifying, but her dehumanization tactics are exaggerated to the point where it’s almost too easy to write her off as unrealistic. The television series did something ingenious with Renna, not by making us feel for her (never that; Renna is herself a victim of brainwashing as well as its perpetrator, but that by no means absolves her of guilt), but by showing us how her inhumanity is rooted in the most easily exploited human emotions – because she’s not merely coming from a place of callous disdain for Egwene, but of genuine disappointment in her for not understanding that the Seanchan just want her to serve her true purpose, and that she will be happy when she learns to be obedient.

The Seanchan rank high amongst author Robert Jordan’s most original creations, and the depiction of them in the adaptation – from their customs down to their costumes – is not lacking. If the Roman Empire were ruled by Texans from the future, that would be the Seanchan. Their High Lady Suroth (Karima McAdams) governs the captive city of Falme from a chaise lounge in the palace, where she entertains minor nobility by showing off the “exotic” Westlanders she’s reduced to the position of da’covale (essentially slaves) in her household, including Ingtar Shinowa (Gregg Chillingirian) and the Ogier Loial (Hammed Animashaun), the latter of whom she pulls out as a party trick, demanding that he sing for her…and not just any old song. Treesinging, the ability to manipulate the growth of plants and other living things with one’s voice, is a Talent now exclusive to the Ogier. This marks the first time we’ve seen Treesinging onscreen in live-action – though the animated Wheel Of Time: Origins shorts released alongside season one did briefly touch on it – and it’s mesmerizing both visually and sonically. Suroth, however, soon grows displeased with the attention being on Loial, and interrupts him with demeaning applause and shrill laughter.

Elsewhere in Falme, Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins) and Elayne Trakand (Ceara Coveney) lay low and investigate the secrets of the a’dam itself, working on a bracelet and collar stolen from the Seanchan by Ryma (Nyokabi Gethaiga), an undercover Aes Sedai of the Yellow Ajah who leaves a large and lasting impression in just a few minutes of screentime. Gethaiga has an extended action sequence near the end of the episode that is not only imaginatively choreographed, with Ryma reversing Yellow Ajah-specific Healing weaves to blind, burn, and break attacking sul’dam, but laced with some of the episode’s most poignant, quietly devastating moments, as she begs her injured Warder Basan (Bentley Kalu) to kill her before the Seanchan can get their hands on her; too late, ultimately, to prevent either his death or her collaring. Nynaeve, watching from the window of the safe-house where moments before Ryma helped her channel through her Block, is deeply affected (and perhaps inspired to join the Yellow Ajah herself one day?).

Nyokabi Gethaiga as Ryma in The Wheel Of Time, from the shoulders up. She is wearing a brown vest over a bloodstained yellow floral-patterned blouse, and has a gold collar around her neck. She has dark hair piled up on top of her head. She is sobbing.
Ryma | Twitter @QuoteOfTheWheel

There’s a stark contrast between Ryma’s understanding approach to Nynaeve’s Block and how Aes Sedai at the White Tower pressured her to follow their methods, berated and beat her when those methods inevitably failed, and wrote her off as a lost cause because they ultimately decided they couldn’t mold her into what the Tower believes an Aes Sedai should be: cold, distant, aloof. From Liandrin Guirale (Kate Fleetwood), if nothing else, Nynaeve learned that the myth of Aes Sedai detachment from the world is just that, a myth, and that even the most seemingly heartless woman at the Tower only is the way she is because she was forced to leave behind something she loved. But the Tower in its current form is an unsustainable and self-destructive institution, rooted in exploitation and manipulation. Liandrin literally swore fealty to the Dark One because underneath her frigid exterior, she’s still human, and she can’t let go of her son, the only thing that’s ever been hers. But through encountering Ryma, Nynaeve may be realizing that there is another way forward, that this is not how the Aes Sedai have to operate, and in fact they cannot if they are to survive the upcoming Last Battle.

That brings us to Siuan Sanche (Sophie Okonedo), the current Amyrlin Seat, under whose reign the cracks in the Tower have only continued to spread, growing wider and deeper. Siuan has done her best to bridge the divides between conflicting Ajahs and assure her political opponents that she knows how to bring the Aes Sedai intact through this latest catastrophe, but it’s also been seven episodes since we last saw her fulfilling her duties as Amyrlin, and in that time the Tower has only fractured further. Aes Sedai sent unprepared to deal with the Seanchan threat, captured or killed; Accepted and Novices kidnapped on Tower grounds; rumors swirling of a secret eighth “Black Ajah” made up entirely of Aes Sedai sworn to the Dark; and all of it met with apathy from the Amyrlin and her administration. To be clear, I would not personally have written Siuan, one of my favorite characters in The Wheel Of Time, to be this removed from goings-on at the Tower, but I understand there was likely difficulty in getting the busy Okonedo back for season two, and her slim screentime then had to be narratively justified. We’ll get into my problems with Siuan’s (mis)characterization in my review of episode seven.

For the time being, I just wish we could have seen more of what Siuan was doing that necessitated her being away from the Tower for so long in-universe, because the “visit to Caemlyn” excuse has been used twice now, and even I, as a book reader, have no clue why Siuan would be spending more time in Caemlyn than in Tar Valon with the Last Battle imminent and the Dragon Reborn counting on her to rally support for him amongst the Aes Sedai. Queen Morgase, Elayne’s mother, is in Caemlyn at this early stage in the story, but more importantly, so is Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan of the Red Ajah, Morgase’s advisor and a future antagonist. Is it possible that Siuan is receiving advice from Elaida on matters related to the Dragon, behind Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike)’s back? It would certainly explain her own hostile attitude towards both Moiraine and the Dragon, Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski), in episode seven, without removing her agency entirely; which would be the case if she were under Compulsion, say.

Moiraine, by now accustomed to giving Rand directions from the passenger seat of their little clown car, begrudgingly trades her preferred place at his side for the far less comfortable backseat in episode six, as Rand stops to pick up the Forsaken Lanfear (Natasha O’Keeffe) in the World of Dreams, trusting her judgment over Moiraine’s. There’s a fascinating push-and-pull dynamic between Moiraine and Lanfear, these two highly intelligent and calculating women; the one with Rand’s best interests (arguably) closer to heart never as effortlessly sincere-sounding as her (ostensibly) self-serving rival despite being bound to tell the truth at all times. It’s an interesting commentary on how women are expected to make themselves more “approachable” if they want to be listened to…but not too much so, or they’ll be demonized for it.

In the real world, Rand is mostly paired up with Dónal Finn as Mat Cauthon; the first time that Finn, who replaced Barney Harris, has shared substantial scenes with one of the main cast (although he had fantastic chemistry with Zoë Robins and Marcus Rutherford’s Perrin in the mirror-world). He and Stradowski are easily believable as lifelong friends, and their reunion is moving. Min (Kae Alexander), who by this point in the books has already resigned herself to falling in love with Rand because he’s ta’veren, is in close proximity and dissuades Mat from staying with Rand because of what she’s seen in her prophetic visions, but – oddly – doesn’t encounter Rand at all, meaning that general audiences will have gone another whole season not realizing they’re fated to be romantically involved. And I don’t know if they’ll meet again until season four, roughly halfway through what was initially planned to be an eight-season series.

I’m of the possibly controversial opinion that Rand and his first love Egwene are uniquely magnetized to each other, and I think it’s evident from their brief meeting in the World of Dreams, a meeting facilitated by Lanfear, that The Wheel Of Time always had its most powerful romance in this coupling of two characters that can never be together because the books put them on diverging paths. Even Lanfear herself can feel the electricity racing in the air as Rand and Egwene reach for each other across the very fabric of reality – the pained half-smile on her face betrays her stomach-turning realization in this moment that Rand’s heart will never be hers, that she’ll gladly make Egwene suffer for it, and that in so doing she’ll hurt Rand too.

Natasha O'Keeffe as Lanfear in The Wheel Of Time, sitting with her legs crossed on a black stone throne in the middle of the desert. She is wearing a black dress that leaves her left arm bare, thigh-high black lace-up boots, and a black leather harness. A black lace crescent-moon headdress sits on her head. She has short jet-black hair.
Lanfear | winteriscoming.net

I have nothing else to add or reiterate except that the acting on this series really is phenomenal, and it’s not hyperbolic to say that several members of the main cast – Madeleine Madden most of all – deserve Emmy nominations, at least. I’m not expecting much (awards show voters being pretty notorious for watching very little television in general, much less high fantasy), particularly this year with the long gap between the second season’s release and awards season, but I remain hopeful that as The Wheel Of Time gradually gains popularity and becomes more mainstream, it will grow harder and harder for awards shows to justify shutting out the cast entirely. Either way, I’ll keep clamoring.

Episode Rating: 9.5/10

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High Camp Meets High Fantasy In “The Wheel Of Time” Season 2, Episode 5

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME SEASON TWO, EPISODES 1 – 5, AND BOOKS 1 – 3, AHEAD!

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the series being covered here would not exist.

I’m not sure how Robert Jordan would feel about me describing his books as campy. But that’s beside the point. His books are campy, and delightfully so. The Eye Of The World, the first book in what would grow to become a fourteen-volume series spanning decades, was published in 1990, and hailed as a radical return to the classic formula that initially made high fantasy successful after a decade of the genre being dominated by weird, esoteric science-fantasy and grim, hypermasculine sword-and-sorcery, but far from being just another tired take on the hero’s quest, The Wheel Of Time is distinctly fun, right down to the iconic, endearingly garish cover of the first book that depicts Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike) as a seemingly three-foot tall woman with a beehive updo sitting sidesaddle on a white pony, riding alongside a hulking samurai. It’s a colorful blend of the poetry and profundity of Tolkien and Le Guin’s seminal works, the vividly pulpy imagery of Brothers Hildebrandt artwork from the 70’s, and the wild romanticism of McCaffrey’s Dragonriders books, rolled up into the strongest, trippiest joint you can possibly imagine.

(Left to right) a Seanchan soldier; Fares Fares as Ishamael; Karima McAdams as High Lady Suroth; Jessica Boone as Alwhin; and a second Seanchan soldier. Ishamael is wearing a black leather vest over a long-sleeved white shirt with dark trousers. He has dark hair slicked back, and a dark beard flecked with gray. Suroth is wearing a rust-red scale-patterned coat with a long train bunched up around her feet, over an orange vest and teal-blue gown. She is bald apart from a strip of dark hair down the center of her scalp. Alwhin is wearing a bronze-colored scale-patterned jacket and a long rust-red gown. She has dark brown hair neatly arranged in geometric buns on the side of her head, and her face is partially covered by a mask. They are all standing under a teal-blue and rust-red canopy in a lavishly furnished room with hanging lamps.
Ishamael and High Lady Suroth | press.amazonstudios.com

Of course, grabbing a little bit of everything encompassed by the fantasy genre means that, inevitably, a few unsavory or downright icky ingredients make it into the mix. Every book in the series is as dense as the day is long, and the lore only gets more incomprehensible the deeper you go. The rules of Jordan’s gendered magic-system are extremely dated, and he writes women like he heard about them once from fragments of an ancient, poorly-translated myth. The queer representation, even if progressive for the time, is still abysmal. It’s a difficult book series to recommend for all these reasons. But if you happen to enjoy camp, there are the fabulously-dressed, morally-ambiguous middle-aged sorceresses to consider. The eccentric and overtly queer-coded villains who throw masquerade-balls and tea-parties in their spare time, fierce young women put through the ringer both emotionally and physically, and numerous hunks with romance novel-ready hairstyles, many of them stoic and brooding and deeply repressed, are a nice treat, too.

And of course, there’s the kink and eroticism, can’t forget all the kink and eroticism.

While Amazon’s adaptation of The Wheel Of Time may not be skewing close to the plot of the books in its second season, the series has never been more faithful to the essence of the source material than it is right now, simply by being unapologetically fun, bold, and at times a little bizarre. I mean, we were straying into surreal territory already with the Trial of the Arches, but I think Lanfear (Natasha O’Keeffe) donning a BDSM-inspired all-black leather outfit to seduce submissive farm-boy Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) in the World of Dreams might be what finally convinces the average viewer that this is not another Lord Of The Rings or Game Of Thrones, and it’s not trying to be, either. The Wheel Of Time was made for the girls and the gays. Unintentionally? Perhaps that’s what Jordan would say, but there’s no way showrunner Rafe Judkins – a gay man himself – doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Episode five is high camp from start to finish, opening on the masked High Lady Suroth (Karima McAdams) having her foot-long lacquered fingernails clipped with a sword to symbolize her fall from grace, and closing on O’Keeffe’s Lanfear debuting her dominatrix look. Every minute in between is practically dripping with the homoerotic subtext that Jordan injected into so much of his writing; somehow most palpable when Lanfear and Ishamael (Fares Fares) are onscreen together, going over their plans. While they circle each other with a hungriness in their eyes, both wearing oversized, open-collared nightshirts and sipping wine from enormous goblets, there’s one thing on both their minds, and it’s Rand al’Thor (an underrated hilarious aspect of The Wheel Of Time is the fact that Rand is Just Some Guy™ in this Age, but all these three-thousand year old entities with enormous power remember him as someone completely different, and much more impressive). The Forsaken take turns toying with each other’s emotions – and demonstrating their prowess in the World of Dreams – by conjuring lifelike images of the sheepherder lying in Ishamael’s bed, while they loom over him. Ishamael even snuggles up to him and caresses his face at one point. I legitimately believe things would have escalated further if Ishamael hadn’t been woken out of his pleasant dream by something in the real world that was no doubt far less interesting to him.

Mind you, this isn’t the first time Ishamael has shared an intensely erotic scene with one of the ta’veren boys – I have not forgotten how he force-fed Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford) in episode three while making uncomfortably prolonged eye-contact with him – nor is it the last, but this is the first time in the show I think it’s unequivocally clear that Ishamael’s obsession with them has an undercurrent of sexual attraction. There’s certainly a debate to be had over whether The Wheel Of Time has enough heroic queer male characters in its cast to get away with portraying the main antagonist as a gay man, but anyone who’s watched any Disney animated movies can tell you that it’s the campy, queer-coded villains who make the strongest impression, and there’s no denying that Ishamael has been a highlight of the second season, his jovial nihilism unexpectedly endearing.

The fact that he looks and dresses like the grizzled, older, sexually adventurous wealthy businessman on the cover of a very filthy Wattpad fanfic is another point in his favor – and I don’t just mean because he’s very attractive for those who are into that sort of thing. The trope of a queer male villain besotted with a straight male protagonist is quite common. It’s rare, however, to see a queer male villain portrayed with such raw sex appeal, and that changes the whole dynamic. There is nothing loathsome or pitiable about Ishamael, nothing ineffective about his preferred tactic of seduction. He is potent, affecting everyone who comes into his orbit and leaving them shaken even if they manage to pull away. Take Perrin, for example. If he wasn’t bisexual before meeting Ishamael, he is now.

Put a pin in that, we’ll get back to it later. I’d be remiss for not first praising the scene-stealing performance of Natasha O’Keeffe as Lanfear, a juggernaut in black leather thigh-highs. She was holding back on us in the role of Lanfear’s alias, flighty, free-spirited Selene, diminishing herself and her presence to match what Rand wanted from her, but as Lanfear she effortlessly dominates the screen, a dismissive flick of her wrist the most motion required to pop a man’s skull like soap-bubbles or stitch a woman’s mouth shut with intricate needlework. She seems to take joy in doling out these and other sadistic punishments for the minor offence of existing in her vicinity, but no pride. She does not swagger or brag to intimidate those she does not see as her equals. Everything humans have built and accomplished in the last three-thousand years since the Breaking is of little interest to her, or provokes a mild disappointment. But then, even the other Forsaken who survived the Breaking, powerful as they are, earn her derision – “Moghedien’s insane, Graendal’s a vain idiot, and the boys couldn’t execute a plan even if they were under Compulsion”. Rand has her respect, because of what he is, while Ishamael has her partial attention because he stands in her way.

Lanfear is iconic, and we love to watch her on a rampage, but she would not be half as interesting if she were simply evil for the sake of being evil. While the Dark One wants to break the Wheel of Time to restore the universe to its natural state of chaos, and Ishamael believes that breaking the Wheel will end the cycle of violence and suffering, Lanfear – unsurprisingly – could not care less what happens to the world, as long as she and Rand walk away from the Last Battle hand-in-hand. She loved the last Dragon before Rand, Lews Therin Telamon, and when he left her for his eventual wife, she turned to the Dark to get him back. With all that said, I do hope the show eventually delves a bit more into who Lanfear was before the Breaking, including her work as a quantum physicist and her involvement in releasing the Dark One, because there’s more to her, too, than her relationship with that scummy dude.

The Wheel Of Time has taken an empathetic approach to many of its villains (with the notable and appropriate exception of the imperialist Seanchan); Liandrin Guirale (Kate Fleetwood) is among the most three-dimensional characters in the series, which is incredible given that Robert Jordan wrote her to be the exact opposite, a mustache-twirling minor antagonist whose schemes were repeatedly foiled by her own unamusing incompetence. Fleetwood’s Liandrin, apart from being complex and compelling, is also extremely capable. She sidesteps every trap laid for her, and does what she can, with the limited power at her disposal, to walk a fine line through the gray area between Light and Dark. She turns Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoe Robins) and Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden) over to the Seanchan as prisoners, as expected of her, but frees her beloved Nynaeve just before exiting through the Waygate and stranding them there with High Lady Suroth – who is incompetent and only succeeds at collecting Egwene, letting Nynaeve and Elayne Trakand (Ceara Coveney) slip through her (now significantly shorter) fingernails.

Katie Leung as Yassica and Meera Syal as Verin Mathwin in The Wheel Of Time, seated next to each other on a couch, staring down at a piece of parchment. Yassica has short dark hair pulled into a low bun, and wears a brown sweater over a white blouse and a long brown dress. Verin has short gray hair, and wears a light brown gown over a white blouse. She is peering through a golden monocle on a chain around her neck.
Yassica and Verin Mathwin | press.amazonstudios.com

Back at the White Tower, the sudden disappearance of three very powerful Novices does not go unnoticed, but someone – Liandrin or another Darkfriend amongst the Aes Sedai – has already contrived a cover-story; that the girls received permission to attend Elayne’s brother Gawyn’s nameday ceremony in Caemlyn. Furthermore, the same someone used a forbidden weave of Compulsion (essentially mind-control) on the kindly Mistress of Novices, Sheriam Bayanar (Rima Te Wiata), to make her write the blatant lie into her log, breaking the Three Oaths…unless, of course, Sheriam is a Darkfriend herself? In a short amount of time, the show does a fairly good job of making the viewer feel suddenly unsure of who to trust, just as the books did when the so-called “Black Ajah” made up of Darkfriends first came to light.

I’m a little sad that Egwene and Nynaeve couldn’t participate in the investigation of the Black Ajah, as they did in the books, but I would gladly watch an entire spin-off series focused on Verin Mathwin (Meera Syal) and her fellow sisters of the Brown Ajah playing at being detectives in their stead, taking on a different Darkfriend each week. If the lovably quirky Brown Yassica seems familiar, by the way, that’s probably because she’s played by Katie Leung, best known as Cho Chang in the Harry Potter series and as the voice of Caitlyn in Arcane: League Of Legends (though as Yassica, Dundee-born Leung speaks with the strong Scottish accent she’s spoken in the past about wanting to use more frequently).

Another recognizable face in episode five is that of Will Tudor (Olyvar in Game Of Thrones, and Sebastian in Shadowhunters), who joins the ensemble cast of The Wheel Of Time as Moiraine’s foppish nephew, Barthanes Damodred, soon to be the King of Cairhien through marriage to Queen Galldrian. Moiraine’s interactions with her family continue to be surprisingly meaningful, probably ranking among her best scenes in the series despite having the least basis in the source material, though the very subtle references or allusions being made to the ruination of House Damodred during the Aiel War by Moiraine’s uncle will likely fly over most viewers’ heads, as I don’t feel the show has done enough to connect those dots. With the Aiel being introduced properly in this episode, you’d think this would be the perfect moment to expand on their lore.

But that’s why I’m here, to provide you with answers to all your questions. In short, the Aiel are a society of primarily red-haired warriors who come from the Waste beyond the Spine of the World, and follow a complex system of honor and indebtment called ji’e’toh. They are divided into several clans and subdivided into dozens of individual “septs” – Aviendha (Ayoola Smart), whom Perrin first meets as a prisoner of the Whitecloaks in this episode, is of the Nine Valleys Sept of the Taardad Aiel, for instance. She and many other Maidens of the Spear were sent west across the Spine in search of their prophesied Car’a’carn, or “Chief of Chiefs” (no bonus points for guessing who that might be). Aviendha is one of the most important characters in The Wheel Of Time going forward, and bringing her into the story at this early stage makes sense from a writing perspective, though I’m of two minds on how the writers actually went about it – lifting Aviendha out of her subplot with Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne and transplanting her in Perrin’s subplot, replacing Gaul as the Aiel he rescues from a cage, incurring much toh.

The change is logical in the short-term – Aviendha is by far the more relevant of the two characters, and needed a momentous opening scene – but in the long-run, it’s hard to believe that Perrin and Aviendha will have many more opportunities to interact, while her, Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne (colloquially referred to as the “Wondergirls”) form enduring connections in the books and share many of their greatest moments in future storylines between them. Losing Gaul also means changes to Perrin’s arc, though they might not be quite as consequential if Gaul is introduced early next season, before Perrin’s The Shadow Rising arc kicks off. And while I don’t necessarily expect anyone to take me seriously on this, it also means Perrin is missing the source of all the homoerotic tension in his storyline. Thankfully, Dain Bornhald (Jay Duffy) steps in to fill that role quite effectively.

Dain is one of these characters that got tiring to read about in the books after a while because his relationship to Perrin was just so tenuous and one-dimensional, but Dain in the show is a different story. Him and Perrin have chemistry, however you want to interpret it. Maybe they’re just totally platonic bros who share drinks by candlelight and give each other cute nicknames and bond over their trauma. I’m not sure I buy it, with the way Dain was checking Perrin out, but it’s possible. Either way, having them interact before the season finale – and the event that shapes both their futures – was a smart choice.

The Whitecloaks, of which Dain is a part, are extremely important in the finale, and I would have liked more setup for their storyline, but the episode was already juggling a large number of subplots and one more thing on top of the pile might well have been too many. We don’t even see Dónal Finn’s Mat, and still there’s a lot going on. Two scenes that definitely needed more room to breathe were the capture of Egwene by the Seanchan and the reunion between Moiraine and Rand – the former could have used an extra few minutes of action, the latter even just a few additional lines of dialogue. Of course, with more and longer episodes per season, this wouldn’t be a problem, but The Wheel Of Time is just one of many large-scale streaming series’ being undermined by time constraints for which there is no good reason. We’re past the middle-point of the season now. The people who are still watching are probably more likely to be put off by a lack screentime rather than by an overabundance of it. Amazon really needs to give its best fantasy show everything it’s earned with this incredible second season, including ten episodes (though I wouldn’t be opposed to twelve), each at least an hour and ten minutes long, and a larger budget so that the VFX isn’t spread thin and we can visit more locations.

Jay Duffy as Dain Bornhald sitting across from Marcus Rutherford as Perrin Aybara (whose back is turned to the camera) at a table outdoors, every inch of which seems to be covered with low candles providing a slightly romantic atmosphere. Dain is wearing a brown mantle over his clothes, and black leather gloves. He has short blonde hair swept to one side and a beard.
Perrin Aybara and Dain Bornhald | press.amazonstudios.com

What the writers, directors, cast, and showrunner have done with this episode is elevate The Wheel Of Time once again to a point you don’t think can possibly be surpassed – only to top themselves again the week after. Episode four was the exception, not the rule, and although with the season now completed I can say for certain that the seventh and eighth episodes don’t quite surpass the highest highs of episodes three, five, and six, my favorites, the difference is largely a matter of which characters I believe were underutilized or misrepresented as a book reader, and not really a reflection on the show’s quality. The Wheel Of Time is an excellent adaptation, the best kind in fact: one that takes risks by making bold, purposeful changes to the source material while honoring the themes and tone of the books. Nailing the blend of unserious, delightfully irreverent campiness and drama played completely straight was probably the trickiest part, but they got it. I walked away from episode five craving more of the Forsaken, their sexually charged interactions with just about everybody, and that unmistakable queerness that is woven into the very fabric of this fantasy world.

I can’t speak for all of us in the fandom, but I know that’s what I’ve been looking for from this adaptation. The Wheel Of Time has always been high camp. It’s just finally embracing it.

Episode Rating: 9/10

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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