Everybody in The Wheel of Time believes Rand has to be the one to blow the Horn of Valere, and in the Season 2 finale, “What Was Meant To Be,” Mat blows it instead. I predicted that one, and come on, you guys are fans. You knew it was going to come to this too.

We’re going to spoil the hell out of this, so if you haven’t seen it, go watch it first. I’m not doing a hardcore, inch by inch recap. Mrs. Know-It-All and I are just going to start talking, because my word, there’s an awful lot to get through.

Egwene Gets Herself Out

Mrs. Know-It-All started us off with a question. Why did it feel like a lot more happened with Egwene and Renna?

I can answer that one. We’ve had really strong, heavy Egwene episodes the last few weeks. In the original books it’s Min, Nynaeve and Elayne who rescue her, and what they do is manage to get collars around both Renna and Seta. Seta is the one they ended up using in the show. I believe in the book they help her get out. This is all part of molding the story together.

My first instinct was to say I don’t know about that. Then I thought about it, and this made for a stronger narrative. What we’re going to get from Egwene in future seasons, especially when she becomes Amyrlin, is going to require a level of strength her character needs to have and we need to believe. Mrs. Know-It-All can’t wait for that and neither can I. Having her find a way to escape on her own is brilliant.

And she deduces it. Renna looks her in the eye and tells her these things only work on somebody who can channel, and Egwene goes, “I know.” Then she rubs it in her face. You can channel, with a trickle, and that’s why they couldn’t detect you. That was a change I was okay with, and Mrs. Know-It-All was satisfied with it too.

Moiraine and Lan, Joined Back Together

There’s a lot of fun in the Rand and Lanfear material, with Lanfear kicking Moiraine and Lan out. But Moiraine and Lan have a beautiful moment where they reconnect, literally and figuratively. It’s deeper than love. It’s deeper than sexuality or any of those kinds of attraction. It’s a connection, and it was very, very intimate.

It was also a crystal clear look at how the magic works. The tips of the weaves look like needles, like they’re actually threading things in, and it goes through them. It’s funny, because the books describe the weave for bonding as very simple. It’s a simple set of weaves that anybody can do, and it doesn’t require much of anything. I love that you saw the wrapping go around them, and when it was finished it was like a cat’s cradle between them. That weave physically joined them together. Very cool.

Then Lanfear kicks them out on the shore not far from Falme, and they’ve got to walk the rest of the way. Moiraine is out of the prominence of the episode until the very end, when she comes down to help, and it was awesome. Rosamund Pike is doing beautiful work again. She’s been great, and I feel like everybody has come into their own.

What Television Makes You Forget About the Weaves

At one point all the kids are back together at the top of the tower. You need to watch it yourself to see how that happens. There are dudes attacking, and Egwene comes out of nowhere with a powerful shield, blocking the attack and defending hardcore.

I looked at Mrs. Know-It-All and told her the thing you lose sight of because it’s television. Neither one of them can see the other’s weaves. All he knows is there’s a woman standing in front of him with her hands up and his attacks are dissipating on something. All she sees is a man throwing his hands up and something hitting her shield.

For those of you playing at home, the books talk a little about how men get a kind of cold shiver when women channel, which is how they know it’s happening. Women have no such luxury. They can’t detect a man’s weaves other than seeing things happen. For us as the TV audience they’ve got to show it, but always remember that. Mrs. Know-It-All said she never would’ve thought of it.

So Egwene shows up and holds her own against one of the Forsaken. As her shield’s dropping, Rand can’t help, because he’s being shielded from far away by Suroth’s damane, who are on the deck of her ship out on the water. That’s when Moiraine does her thing, and it was just amazing. She sends what look like giant fire weaves to start blowing up the ships. They’re very dragon-like, though they don’t take form until later.

Mat, the Horn, and the Heroes

Mat shows up, finally getting his halberd, and I said yes. It looks so dope. All I want now is a hat. Can the man please have a hat? In the books he’s got this really cool flat style hat.

Everyone mistakenly believes Rand has to be the one to blow the horn, and they’re trying to save it for the Last Battle. They don’t know what the Pattern holds. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.

Mat’s running around and I said he’s going to get cornered somehow. He does exactly that. Mrs. Know-It-All will tell you her husband was losing his mind. He’s going to do it, he’s going to do it, he’s going to do it. Sure enough, he takes the knife, which can cut through stuff, burns the thing open and grabs the horn. He says we’ve got to get to Rand, he runs, he gets cornered, and he blows the horn.

It didn’t happen as epically as I thought it should have. I honestly believe the heroes of old should have ridden out of the clouds. But I like how they showed up. They appear around him, some of them current Heroes of the Horn and some ancient, and Mat remembers his past lives. A character I can only believe is Artur Hawkwing looks at him and says, “I have fought with you for countless ages,” and he’s like, “and I will fight with you again.” You see Birgitte Silverbow, the one with the platinum blonde hair and the bow. It looks amazing.

Hopper

There are wolf brothers in this, and you see Perrin with Hopper.

Our family lost a good friend, our hound Albert. People talk about triggering, and I did not realize how much that was going to trigger me. I had to tell Mrs. Know-It-All immediately, and spoilers if you don’t know: Hopper is dead, but he’s not gone. The wolf spirits live on in Tel’aran’rhiod. In the dream world he’s now a permanent dreamwalker, and eventually Perrin is going to be able to connect with him there, talk to him and interact with him. That struck us. You really don’t expect it.

Then Perrin goes full nuts and finally gets the axe we’ve been promised in the books and the series. He’s finally going to become the wolf brother, and he gets a wolf name. I guarantee that next season Elyas is going to say, oh yeah, we knew all about you, the one who runs with a big steel fang or something like that.

The Spider at the End

I’m floored by how good this was. The show has turned around so much. In Season 1 I was very, very skeptical and didn’t like a lot of the changes. This season has just continued to hit, and hit well. Mrs. Know-It-All is really happy with how it ended. She feels like she got tons of answers, and then they teased you right at the end with a new character who is creepy.

That’s Moghedien. Lanfear had promised Bayle Domon these big, complete pieces of cuendillar. She wanted the seals, and she wanted them thrown overboard, because the Forsaken have been trapped within them. She gets into Ishamael’s room, because Rand already killed him, and they’re broken.

The minute Moghedien locks her up in a web, I know who it is, because she’s the spider. She actually has a really long fantasy name, which I put on screen in the video. They call her Moghedien because that was the name of a spider back in the age they came from, and she was like a spider, always in the shadows.

She’s so creepy when she’s messing around with Lanfear, and Mrs. Know-It-All thinks she’s going to add a new dimension next season. As fabulous as Lanfear is, with her outfits and her regalness, Moghedien is very understated, and I love the way they showed her. I always envisioned her looking a lot like Wednesday Addams. Not in form and feature, but small and petite. She could pass for a very effeminate man or a really young woman, because she’s so non-aggressive looking. They did it absolutely perfectly. And her weaves look like a web, because what do spiders do? They weave.

So now I believe we’re going to get all of them. We’re going to see Caemlyn, we’re going to get Asmodean, we have her, and we’re going to get Graendal. The next few seasons are going to be an utter and total chaos fest. Ishamael totally knew, too. That’s why he unleashed the others. He figured she was probably going to betray him, so y’all need to go ahead and have at it.

Amazon’s committed to Season 3. I don’t know how the writers’ strike affected the timeline.

The Declaration They Saved

I’m glad they didn’t move it. Rand is supposed to declare himself, but there’s a better declaration moment coming, and you know what I’m talking about. Big spoilers for the books: it happens when the Stone of Tear falls. All I want to see is Rand holding Callandor, shouting in an augmented voice for the world to hear, “I am the Dragon Reborn.”

I was afraid they were going to tip that moment’s excitement into this episode. I would’ve still been okay with it, knowing what’s actually coming. The way they did it instead was amazing. Moiraine creates this genuine fire dragon, and they’re all standing up there together.

Which is what I had to explain when all of them were in one place. They’re ta’veren. The Pattern weaves around them and bends in their wake. The books go into so much more detail about what that means. When they’re in town, birds fly upside down. You can flip a coin and it’ll land on its side. Probability gets flipped on its head, because they force the Pattern to move around them. With all of them together in one place, Ishamael didn’t stand a chance.

The Verdict

The Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 8, “What Was Meant To Be,” is a 10 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index. Ten big bad ten, and Mrs. Know-It-All is at the same number.

It earned everything. We were setting up, turning the lights on and getting everything ready, and she said, “I don’t have anything bad to say.” I don’t either. I know how certain parts go in the book, and I don’t care. This show is going so hard.

I can’t wait to dig more into it between now and next season. Mrs. Know-It-All wants a discussion episode, so that’s next week, same Friday morning slot. It’s just going to be us talking through it. I’ll have Robert Jordan’s history of the world book with me and we’ll start looking at what the future might hold. There are a lot of explainer videos out there, and I feel like they’re explainer videos for explainer videos’ sake. I want us to have fan conversations about this stuff.

I love all of you who’ve joined me on this ride. Let’s stick it out together.

Tell us what you want us to talk about in the discussion episode. I’ll put your comments up on screen so everybody can see who’s talking. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.