Episode 4 of The Wheel of Time Season 3 is the best exposition dump you’ll ever watch. I told my buddy Gonzo that before we sat down to talk about it, and it turns out he’d already said the same thing to me, so we spent most of the conversation trying to work out how a show we’d both filed under fine got this good.
Two things before I get into it. There’s no score on this one. This was me and Gonzo talking, and the ratings live in my regular review of the episode. And we’re spoiling the episode, plus a few things from the books, which I’ll flag when we get there.
The Episode Is the Exposition
Gonzo said it better than I did. They told the exposition without a narrator. The episode was the exposition. If you didn’t know anything about this world, he said, even where it wasn’t exactly accurate it made you want to go see what the book says.
For those of you playing at home, they arrive at Rhuidean the night before, with the Wise Ones and Rhuarc and the rest of the Aiel, and Rand is told what a clan chief does when he goes in. The Wise One explores what’s coming so she can be prepared for it. The clan chief has to understand why they follow the way of the spear, why they don’t use swords, why they won’t touch the weapons of the wetlanders. Moiraine ends up going in too, for reasons I’ll leave to the episode.
Every step forward Rand takes, the story goes backwards in time. Gonzo said that for a split second he had to make sure that’s what was happening, because parts of it looked futuristic, with the ball floating in the air and all of it. It is going backwards. You find out why the Aiel are the way they are. You find out the Aiel’s connection to another group in the story. You find out how much Rand’s bloodline matters to him being the Dragon Reborn. A lot of this is information the books hand you in pieces, in books six, seven, eight and nine. Because Rand is supposed to have it, this became the way to lore dump on all of us at once.
I started to call it the fastest way and Gonzo stopped me, because it took the whole episode. It was the smoothest way. I was shocked at how smooth it was.
Is All of This in the Books
Mrs. Know-It-All has been under the weather and she’s just now getting caught up, and the first thing she asked me was whether all this stuff I’m excited about is in the books. My answer is no, but not the way everybody’s going to think.
Most everything we saw did come from the book. Anything that didn’t came from the extra material written from Robert Jordan’s work, the compendium and the world of the Wheel of Time book, which are based on his notes. So even where a conversation or a little nuance wasn’t in the novels verbatim, it’s from his stuff. I play Dungeons and Dragons. When I found out those other books were coming out I wanted to read them, and it’s all there. They stayed within the spirit of the book, which is what The Lord of the Rings did. The Lord of the Rings, not Rings of Power.
I know Brandon Sanderson was credited as an adviser on the first season, and I think the second. Gonzo and I watched a podcast he was on where he said they sent him scripts, and after a while they didn’t really send them anymore. He had to get used to the idea that this wasn’t exactly the thing he knew. But hey, the wheel turns.
It’s the same showrunner as far as I know, and he’s read The Wheel of Time. Gonzo saw an interview where he kept mentioning Robert Jordan, and that gave him more faith that the guy respects the author of a great story. Compare that to the article we saw about Ron Moore, who’s supposed to be adapting God of War, saying he doesn’t know how to work the controller. Everybody says he can read it or watch it. Come on. You’ve got to experience the story.
The Age of Legends Looked Like Science Fiction
Robert Jordan was essentially writing a type of alternate history for Earth. The way I understand it, we’re living in the sixth or seventh age now, the story takes place in the Third Age, and before that comes the Age of Legends. If I’ve got the count wrong, the comments are going to roast me, and that’s fine.
At some point humanity reached the pinnacle of its advancement. It learned to tap into the power, with women holding one half and men holding the other. The Aes Sedai of that time were basically scientists, and they wanted more. They found a thin place in the universe and thought it was the thing that powers everything, not realizing they were breaking into the Dark One’s prison.
I knew there was technology back there. Spoilers for the books: there’s a moment later where Rand looks through history books and sees horseless carriages and people who used to fly. But when the books describe Lews Therin and the hundred men putting the seal over the Bore, I pictured something fantasy, a big temple maybe. I never pictured the sci-fi version, like the movie Oblivion, that they put on screen. The way they show that moment, I’m floored.
Go back far enough and you see Mierin, Lanfear, before she became a Forsaken. Somebody online said how horrible is it that Lanfear’s only known for being the crazy ex-girlfriend, when she was the scientist who pierced the veil of reality. She’s the one who let the Dark One loose, and she didn’t know what she was doing. That’s one of the most important facts in the story, and it’s never black and white in the novels. They intimate a lot of it.
Then there are the Aes Sedai sending the Aiel off in those modern looking wagons, which took off so fast I was shocked they weren’t motorized. Gonzo loved that the show doesn’t shy away from modern dress either. He swears Rand had Doc Martens on in there.
The little ball matters too. Spoilers again, so get out if you don’t want to know. It’s the key to using a bigger one, and the line about hiding it is there because it’s the only thing that lets a woman and a man use their power together. Later in the books Nynaeve and Rand do that to devastating effect, and I refuse to spoil how.
The big sphere was basically a spaceship. I wish they’d shown how he got from there to the field, but I’d guess portals. When the Forsaken met a couple of episodes back, they were all Thanos, just stepping through. I assume that’s how Lanfear got from the street to the top when she met Moiraine in episode one.
Moiraine in the Rings
Moiraine goes through her own experience, and it’s one of the coolest ways I’ve ever seen something like this done. She and Aviendha are floating in the rings, spinning, and while they spin she’s seeing all the various possible futures. The camera spins over into each new shot.
It works for me on three levels. It’s a unique way to do it. It mirrors the thing she’s physically spinning in. And the story is literally called the Wheel of Time, so it feels like you’re turning through the future. Moiraine with Lan. Moiraine with Rand. Moiraine fighting all of them, killing all of them, dying.
Mrs. Know-It-All gets motion sick, so I warned her. If you do too, fight it for a second, because you want to catch this.
There’s also the shot of all of them in the black evil outfits. Gonzo asked if they were all Darkfriends. I said name that band: Rand al’Thor and the Darkfriends.
The Wise One and the Weaves
Gonzo caught something I’d never looked at this way. The Wise One uses the power, real quick, and you can see the strings. Did you see Moiraine’s face? His read is that the Aiel have their own version of the whole arrangement, with the chieftains as the Wise Ones’ warders. I think he’s right.
What I wish the show did more of is the embrace. The books always describe men and women embracing the One Power, so I expected them to glow. From a production standpoint I don’t know how you do that. It’s one thing to draw it and another to see it on a real person. If they ever did a good live action Dragon Ball, how would you show them powering up without it looking like they’re suddenly bioluminescent? Gonzo’s point is that a glow is also a tell. You can’t surprise anybody if you’re lit up before you strike.
That leads to my other question, which is whether anyone in the scene can see Rand’s weaves. Mrs. Know-It-All thinks the strings are for us in the audience. In the books, if you can’t channel, you can’t see it. You see hands move, the wind rushes, and a tree explodes.
Whose History Is Rand Walking Through
I don’t have the answer to this one, so if you do, comment. Do all the clan chiefs see what Rand saw, or is Rand walking through his own history? I lean toward his own. The first body he steps into is his father’s, on Dragonmount, and she says it goes by their blood. So Rhuarc, the Taardad clan chief, would’ve seen his own bloodline.
Gonzo was a little disappointed they didn’t show the birth here. Rand’s mother was tough in the books. They did show it in season one, sort of, and Gonzo said that proves his point about season one. He’s right. It didn’t have the weight it would have now. If I were restructuring it, I’d have alluded to that scene early and saved the actual birth, in battle, for this moment.
It matters to the Maidens of the Spear specifically. Book spoilers: the Maidens don’t keep children. When one of them has a child, it’s given away, and nobody can trace it back. So Rand is the son who returned. In the books the Maidens say our son has come back, the Car’a’carn is ours, we’ll serve him.
Where It Felt Rushed
Gonzo thought Lan’s duel could’ve been better. Sloppy choreography, and a camera that made it look sluggish. He’s right that the choreography was lacking. My issue is somewhere else: that duel is a bigger deal in the book, and here they shove it in real quick.
That’s been my biggest issue with this season, the rush to give information, and it’s why I was so surprised the back half of this episode worked. Episode one tells you everybody bonded off camera for a month, and now they talk to each other in a way that doesn’t feel natural yet.
The Shaido felt rushed too. Those are the ones of questionable honor, as Gonzo put it. In the book they aren’t five people in a little hut. They’re a big group, Rhuarc should have some of the Taardad with him, insults get thrown, and it borders on an actual fight to keep Rand out of the city. And in the book he’s only on sand for a little while before a long raised walkway carries him in, which is where he really sees the broken spires. They abridged a lot of that. With everything else this episode gave us, I’m not going to nitpick too hard. The city is beautiful, and when they look into the valley and see the mist over it, that’s a real, physical place behind Josha in those later costumes.
The Look and the Music
There are two British guys I watch who have really good conversations about this show, and one of them feels it has no production identity of its own. You watch Game of Thrones and you know you’re in roughly fourteenth or fifteenth century England. Here you’ve got people who look like pilgrims next to people who look like they’re from old India or old Asia. I’ve also heard the complaint that the hat in the desert scenes makes her look like a divorcée by the pool about to open a romance novel. Stop it.
Robert Jordan was exhaustive if nothing else. Those books run six to nine hundred pages and he described every culture. I expected Lan’s people to have a samurai quality, from the helmets and the honor. The books give Lan a face that’s all straight planes and hard lines, and the show gives us something softer. I’m not judging the casting. Gonzo pictured Mads Mikkelsen the whole time he was reading, and he still accepted this Lan right away because of the eyes.
The music is Gonzo’s fight. In episodes two and three he wrote it down: it doesn’t know what it wants to be. A scene changes and the score doesn’t match what you’re looking at, like the neighbor’s playing music too loud, and then you realize it’s coming from the TV. Those same two guys asked what the weird Lion King sound was in the Aiel scenes last week, and I noticed it briefly this time.
You can call that a show still looking for its voice, but I think those are the choices. Genre shows are doing this right now, dropping a Beastie Boys song into the middle of science fiction, going for A Knight’s Tale in fantasy. They want it to bang a little and get your attention. Gonzo’s ruling: even though they did it on purpose, it’s wrong.
Flipping Rhuidean and the Stone of Tear
Spoilers for The Shadow Rising. In the books Tear and Callandor come first. Rand has the sword, the Aiel come to him there, and he goes to them because he knows they hold information he needs. The show flipped it. Now he gets the information first and has to realize the sword matters.
I asked Gonzo whether that changes Rand’s motivation. His answer is that if the motivation is equally strong, there’s no problem. If they just blurt out that he needs the sword now, with no explanation, they’ve messed it up. They have to tell it right.
So far they’re bridging everything in a way that makes sense. He will come with the dawn, they say it before he leaves, and he walks out fulfilling it. He’s been angry at Moiraine all season, and he still picks her up and carries her out.
This Is What I Signed Up For
Gonzo’s word for seasons one and two was forgettable, and he was careful to say that’s a different thing from bad. He can watch The Lord of the Rings at least twice a year. This is the first season of this show he wants to go back through, because he feels like he missed things.
For me, season one was okay. I had to get used to what they had to do. I saw an interview between seasons where the showrunner explained that so many storylines begin early and don’t come to fruition until book six, and they didn’t know if they’d get there, so a lot got cut. Aes Sedai agelessness was too expensive in visual effects, they said, so they don’t mention it. They do show one Aes Sedai whose kid is an old man on his deathbed.
This season Mat, Perrin and Rand are behaving the way I expected them to in season one. That scene in the abandoned tavern is the camaraderie the book had before the Trollocs ever showed up.
Gonzo didn’t even finish the eleven minute preview before telling me this better not be the best part of the whole season. How wrong we were. And we both like that it’s one episode a week, the way HBO did Game of Thrones. It keeps the conversation going. Let this be the tone moving forward.
Mrs. Know-It-All and I are doing our own sit-down on this one. Aside from the audiobooks she’s coming at it brand new, and I really enjoy that.
If you know whether every clan chief sees what Rand saw, or you can tell me I’ve got my ages wrong, the conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
