Daes Dae’mar is the second to last episode of The Wheel of Time Season 2, and it doesn’t feel like one. That’s Mrs. Know-It-All’s point, and I think she’s right. It’s still a good hour. I asked her how she was feeling about it before we started and she said, “Good, actually.”
If you know anything about this world, you know the title. Daes Dae’mar translates out of the Old Tongue as the game, or the great game, otherwise known as the Game of Houses. By the end of the hour you can see why they picked it.
I’m not doing a big deep recap on this one. The episode checks in with everybody, so I’ll do the same.
Siuan Brings Rand to Heel
Rand meets up with the Amyrlin Seat, and Siuan has gone astray. Poor thing has decided that tower law has been in place for 3,000 years, so she tries to keep Rand and bring him to heel. They’re going to take him back to Tar Valon. Moiraine has other plans.
Lan takes a good look at all of it and figures there’s got to be more going on here. So he goes to see Logain and offers him the promise of freedom, and what he finds out is that Logain sees threads around Moiraine. That implies she maybe hasn’t been stilled at all. It immediately made me remember that the Forsaken have the ability to tie off weaves. It’s an ancient skill that’s been lost, and seeing it resurface on screen, I was like, oh my gosh, that’s right, I remember that. Very exciting to see that development.
Rand, meanwhile, is dealing with the fact that he’s trapped. So he calls on who else. Lanfear. He asks for her help, and she just starts stalking through the town. She’s ruthless. The same way she popped that dude’s head a few episodes back, she’s flicking fire left and right and blowing things up. She’s such a beast. She’s amazing.
Checking In With Everybody
We get a quick touch base with Perrin and Aviendha, who’ve met up with a couple of her sisters who had traveled with them. Somebody had died as a result of Aviendha’s problem, and I want to get this right. She technically had toh, but she was able to pay back her ji, which is different from the toh. So they just beat the hell out of her. Mrs. Know-It-All was like, what’s going on, and I said trust me, they’re going to explain. She thought maybe she’d missed something. She hadn’t.
Then there’s Egwene. Last week she was just coming to terms with who and what she is right now, and this week they take her out in a field, and she’s an atomic bomb, bro. They literally take her out to Los Alamos. I love that Renna explains it to her like it’s nothing. This is a test we do, it’s not very difficult, it gauges your power, and don’t worry if you don’t do that good a job. And Egwene knocks them back on their asses. It goes to show how powerful she is.
Elayne and Nynaeve are trying to track down anything they can, and Elayne’s the one who says, where’s your friend Loial? They let him walk free, so we’re going to go find him. Let’s be for real about that scene. Elayne put Nynaeve in her place. This time you listen to me and do exactly as I say. We tried it your way and it didn’t work, so shush, we’re doing it my way now. You could tell Nynaeve looked like she’d swallowed something bitter. Fine, whatever. And she does it. It’s great.
Mat, Ishamael, and the Tea
Mat has a major experience with Ishamael, who gives him this funky tea. (Mrs. Know-It-All asked if we spill tea. No.) The tea is supposed to show him who his true self is.
For a second I was concerned they were confusing some storylines. In the original story, shortly after Mat blows the horn, he begins to understand and remember past lives, so I thought maybe that’s where this was headed. It really just turned out to be Ishamael trying to get into his head, and somehow succeeding, and getting under his skin.
On the horn, I’m getting less and less sure it happens at the end of this season. I’m hoping it does. It may very well happen at the beginning of next season, or they may just set it up. We’ll see.
The Ultimate Boop
Back to Rand, and that storyline is pretty simple. He breaks out. Lan wants to tell Moiraine what’s going on, and he gets Rand to cut these weaves that were tied by a man. Rand cuts Moiraine free, and it’s more or less a poke. The ultimate boop.
And the look on her. It’s almost orgasmic, because she can touch the Source again. I’d imagine it’s like being completely refreshed, like life got breathed back into her, and that’s almost exactly how they describe it. You feel life all around you. It’s also why it’s so easy to get burned out, because you want to absorb all of that so you can feel more of it.
The Oath, and Lanfear’s Little Hand Flip
The Amyrlin shows up first. Real quick she shields Rand and ties it off, and then she uses Moiraine’s oath against her. Every Aes Sedai takes three Oaths, and one of them is that they will obey the Amyrlin. So she literally commands Moiraine to close the Waygate, and Moiraine does.
The expression Moiraine has is one akin to what I’d imagine someone who’s been violated feels. On any level. It doesn’t have to be an Aes Sedai thing. A violation of trust, of identity, of any of those things. The look she gives Siuan is how dare you.
And then Lanfear strolls up like it’s nothing, exactly as powerful as she is. You want to talk about someone who owns it. So what does the Amyrlin do? She tries to be all big and bad, and Lanfear does one of her little hand flips. Nothing big. It just blows her back. I don’t know if she killed her or broke something, but Siuan was in rough shape when they left. And they left together: Rand, Moiraine and Lanfear. That can’t look good if you’re the Amyrlin and you’re still alive to watch it happen.
Moiraine’s Nephew
Then there’s the red, Liandrin. She’s so dirty. Mrs. Know-It-All wanted to call her Lanfear, knew that wasn’t right, and said it might as well have been.
But that scene comes with a really awesome reveal, and I let her tell it. Moiraine’s nephew, the slimy punk, is a Darkfriend.
That’s probably in the books. Those of you saying oh yeah, it’s totally a thing, it probably is, and I may have forgotten. I was just blown away, because he had me so fooled, and to see him be that cheap about it. And how about his mom hearing the whole thing through the wall, like down a pipe? Then what does she do? She gets everybody else in the house and tells them all, because the only way to get anybody in her favor right now is to let them know he’s sworn to the Dark One. That’s a death sentence. Anybody who isn’t also a Darkfriend falls in line, so she immediately has them on her side. He goes to kill his mom, they trick him, and they lock him up. It’s bad. It’s real bad. That one shocked me just a bit.
I don’t know what Liandrin thought she was doing. I think she was just taking the opportunity, because it wasn’t her job to go kill Moiraine. She’s vile. Wicked and violent at the same time.
The Collar That Shouldn’t Close
Two things we almost forgot.
Nynaeve and Elayne realize there’s only one way they’re getting near the kennels, and that’s by having someone collared. So the collar gets shoved onto one of the sul’dam. If you know anything, you know that’s the moment I was talking about last week. A sul’dam shouldn’t be able to wear a collar. That shouldn’t be possible, because it’s only supposed to go on a damane. That’s the first sign of what’s really going on with them. I can’t wait to see the end result next week.
Mrs. Know-It-All remembered the other one. Renna comes in to Egwene, and after the washing, Egwene looks her dead in the face and says, “I will kill you. I will kill you.” I feel like she’s smart enough to realize she just has to say it in a way that doesn’t mean right now, aggressively, so the collar doesn’t stop her or cause her pain. And Renna leaves mad, because she was in the middle of washing her pet. Remember, that’s what they are to them.
The Verdict
The Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 7 is an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
We’d already discussed it, and we both agree. I think it’s well deserved, and the number doesn’t mean anything bad. They’ve done a fine job setting us up.
Mrs. Know-It-All brought up a good point, though. She was expecting more. For a penultimate episode it should’ve been a little more, and she was careful to say that’s a different thing from bad. That’s what almost kept her from giving it the eight. It got the eight because it led us directly to where we need to be. Nothing really threw her off. She liked the way we checked in with everybody before next week, and everybody’s where they’re supposed to be. They’ve set the stage.
They’re obviously not going page for page with the books. They’re pulling in events from future books, and we even saw a flashback out of some of the ancillary works. So here’s my outlook on the finale. They’re going to leave us on a cliffhanger, and it hinges on the horn. Either the horn gets blown and we don’t see the result, or he gets his hand on it and they have him blow it at the beginning of next season. What I don’t believe is that we get the event and the resolution all in one episode. I think that’d be a bad move on their part. You’d be trying to shove too many things into one.
It’s funny, because I’m really happy with the pacing at this point. The first season felt rushed. A ton of events had to be smooshed in, and they had to bring things forward from future books so the story could make sense. This season has paced itself really nicely, and I’m excited for what’s coming.
Tell me your guesses for the finale. Where do they leave us, and does the horn get blown this season or next? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
