The Wheel of Time’s first season wraps up in an explosive, twisty finale

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vendredi 24 décembre 2021

Ars Technica

Enlarge / Moiraine contemplates The Blight. (credit: Amazon Studios)

Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they're bringing that knowledge to bear as they recap each episode of Amazon's new WoT TV series. These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. If you want to stay unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.

The Wheel of Time's first season is over, but Amazon has renewed it for a second season that's currently filming.

Lee: So! That was... definitely one way to cap off the season, and we’ve ended with a whole boatload of new questions that are going to hang fire until season two. The thing we probably need to start with, at least just for a moment, is the thing that the episode starts with—the Jetsons Age of Legends flashback, with the OG Dragon, Lews Therin Telamon. (Though the show calls him the “Dragon Reborn” as well—likely hinting that time is, you know, a Wheel and stuff.) It’s not quite the Kinslayer prologue that kicks off the books, but it was still gratifying to see—at least, I thought it felt good. And we got the obligatory “pan out the windows so we can see flying cars to show us it’s the future” shot. Did it hit the right notes for you?

Andrew: I did appreciate our glimpse into the Age of Legends! It was low-key, but now that Rand has been definitively established as a reincarnation of this specific guy, it's helpful to see the guy's face and to hear him and to get a sense of him. I expect we'll see him again more than once (though it remains to be seen whether a version of Lews Therin will literally take up residence in show-Rand's head as he does in the books).

It is definitely a busy finale. I think, mostly, I enjoyed it? But as with last week's episode my main complaint is about time. I can list a bunch of things in this episode that would have hit better if the show had had more time to develop, more time to let us spend with Rand, more time to spend with this mysterious man in the untucked tuxedo whom Rand spends all of his time talking to.

This mysterious man (Fares Fares) remembers Rand as Lews Therin Telamon, but we don't know much about him. (credit: Amazon Studios)

Lee: Ah, yes, “The Dark One,” played by Fares Fares (whom Ars readers probably last saw in Westworld and Chernobyl). Man, you’re right—this episode was dense as hell. I was hoping that Amazon would give us a super-sized episode to round things out, but as it is, “The Dark One” is given disappointingly short shrift. (Though check the closing credits for his billing, which should clear things up for book readers and probably really muddle things for non-readers.)

Coming at the finale here from the perspective of a book reader is a pretty fraught experience, since there’s such massive divergence. I know I’ve been the one flogging the “but the book!” point of view for most of this season, but it’s probably time to set that aside. We have diverged hard in so many ways—though we still end up in more or less the same state. I didn’t think we had the time to get us there, but apparently we did.

Andrew: Of all the departures from the book, I think the one that bothers me the most is that we have lost all sense of progression, power, and growth among our channelers. With the One Power still relegated to a sort of vague wispy white do-anything magic, it seems like any channeler under sufficient external stress can do pretty much whatever they want, including but not limited to sealing an ancient evil in its prison, nuking an army of Trollocs from the sky, and healing apparently mortal wounds.

The books make it clear that the One Power is dangerous and that wielding it without knowing what you're doing is an easy way to kill yourself or those around you. It's a muscle that must be exercised and a skill that must be learned. Sure, the books also get away with some hand-wavy channeling stuff when our heroes are in high-pressure situations, and Rand especially is left to do a lot of guessing early on because the only male channelers in his time are either evil, mad, gentled, or dead. But so far in the show you lose a lot of that nuance, and with it a sense of how our channelers are growing as characters.

That said, we do see some "burnt out" channelers in this episode, and I dig the show's decision to depict that condition extremely literally.

Egwene and Nynaeve will have their own destinies to confront in season two. (credit: Amazon Studios)

Lee: Oh yeah—I absolutely agree. And I really like the effect they’ve gone with, where your face chars and your eyes collapse into dark pits. It somewhat echoes the eyeball-and-mouth fire effect “The Dark One” uses in Rand’s dreams.

I hear you also with the notion of character progress, especially considering what Perrin and Loial do in this episode—namely, very little. (Though they did help dig up the flaming Horn of Valere, which I suppose is a pretty important moment. I wonder how many Shienarans knew it was sitting underneath Lord Agelmar’s throne? Honestly, it feels like just pure insanity to have the Horn just sitting there—it’s a weapon with far too many temptations and far too few downsides to its use, and I’d imagine any self-respecting Borderlander ruler would blow it instantly, given the opportunity.)

The Horn is a huge focus of the second book (which is titled The Great Hunt, with the “hunt” part being the actual-for-real hunt for the Horn of Valere), and we wrap season two with most of The Gang being in more or less the same plot positions that they were at at the book's ending. With a few exceptions, I guess, considering Loial has been stabbed and Moiraine has been... well, let me ask what you think about that one. My wife thinks Moiraine was possibly stilled by “The Dark One,” which means season two will have to maybe bring forward a Power-related plot event or two. I thought Moiraine was just shielded—the net-like visual effect “The Dark One” placed on her looked a lot like what the Aes Sedai were doing with Logain a few episodes back—and then the shield was tied off and left in place. Either way, Moiraine is in kind of a tough spot.

Andrew: As a quick sidebar on Perrin and Loial, the show got a huge, genuine laugh out of me when Perrin asked Loial "How can we just sit here while everyone else is willing to fight?" and Loial responds "I'm standing."

Lee: You know what never changes? It’s not war. It’s Ogier. Ogier never change.

Andrew: I do expect Moiraine's "condition" to be cleared up one way or the other by the midpoint of season two, though the show has successfully misled me plenty of times at this point. I think Moiraine has "end-of-season cliffhanger syndrome."

It's just as well that the show ends differently from Eye of the World, because one of the many, many Tolkien-y things about EotW is its feint at a "there and back again" happy ending where Rand has found out something horrifying about himself but the rest of the world returns to an uneasy status quo. You have to get to the fourth book in the series before Jordan is comfortable with an ending that doesn't re-gather all of our main characters back into a single group, and the show seems more comfortable with sending people down wildly different paths a bit earlier in the interest of getting them to their destinations faster.

The only character whose path is a complete mystery to me at this point is Mat, whom we see briefly glowering in Tar Valon, but who is otherwise absent once again. (I am dying to know the story behind Barney Harris' recasting at this point, because I honestly can't tell if he was given so little to do because he wasn't working out or if he left the show because he was being given so little to do.) Padan Fain—who finally swaggers back onscreen in this episode to establish himself as, at the minimum, a miniboss-level villain—implies that at least some of our five ta'veren are going to turn to the Dark One to satisfy a vaguely Star Wars-esque need for cosmic balance. Suffice it to say, that would be a major departure from the books (and possibly show-ruining for some people, because Mat is a firm fan favorite).

Rand has some hard choices to make about the life he's always wanted with Egwene. (credit: Amazon Studios)

Lee: Ooh. Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that—it’s still hard to try to project ahead where the writing team is trying to go, given what they’ve shown us. Having the Eye of the World be the Dark One’s prison is probably a necessary change given the timing constraints, though one thing I’m not clear on is whether the big crack that gets blasted into the great seal there is directly the result of Rand’s choice during his little Last Temptation of Rand moment. Did “The Dark One” goad Rand into channeling and blasting the heartstone apart? I mean, I know how we get to the seals on the Dark One’s prison cracking in the books, but was Rand tricked into starting that process here?

Andrew: Maybe! In the books those seals are big stone discs that you can literally lift up and carry around with you, so I'm honestly not sure where we're going to end up with that.

See, there's another thing that I think has been lost because of time constraints. In EotW, it's clear from the overlong winter that something is going wrong in the world, and one way we know that Rand and The Gang have actually made a difference is that the weather corrects itself after the Big Confrontation at the end (this is a recurring motif in Randland; if the weather seems strange it's probably because of evil). At the end of this season, I guess something has been accomplished? Untucked tuxedo guy is gone, and a whole bunch of Trollocs are dead. But I guess I'm left with less of a sense of what our heroes need to accomplish next.

Lord Agelmar and Amalisa prepare for battle. (credit: Amazon Studios)

Lee: Yeah, and let’s talk about exactly that—how happy are we with each main character’s journey and what they probably have in store for season two? Moiraine first, since we’ve kind of already started talking about her apparent stilling or shielding—clearly she’ll have her little channeling issue fixed, since she’s so far the star of the show (and getting top billing, too!) I have been incredibly pleased with Pike’s performance, and Moiraine next season likely has a lot more ta’veren-wrangling to do.

Andrew: Lan has also been a consistent highlight. He's a lot different from his book version, but he's still stoic and good at killing guys and being in love with Nynaeve, and surely he'll continue to get closer to her while also protecting Moiraine. No complaints.

Lee: Lan does pull a bit of the “I could never marry you because I’m CLOAKED IN DRAMA AND DEATH” stuff with Nynaeve in the last episode, but the Lan & Moiraine Show has been my favorite set of scenes in the season, yet. Then there’s our Two Rivers Gang—and I have to start with Nynaeve, because she’s not terrible like she is in the books! She’s rigidly empathetic instead of rigidly psychopathic, and she doesn’t hit anyone with a stick once. Not even once! And she ends the season potentially aimed right at the White Tower, given her response to Lan’s speech.

Andrew: Yeah show-Nynaeve won me over pretty quickly, and I’m already a book-Nynaeve apologist (yes, she’s kind of annoying and repetitive, but she has a good arc).

Egwene eventually won me over, too. The out-of-left-field love triangle with her and Perrin was a little strange, and I would like the show to stay far away from it, but I thought the actual performance and characterization was spot-on ambitious, but also younger and less experienced than Nynaeve. Loves Rand, but isn’t willing to let a relationship get in the way of what she wants to do. Stood up to slimy Whitecloaks. Took some time to grow on me, but definitely got there.

Lee: Agreed. Perrin, on the other hand, is a lot more ambiguous to me. He had a strong but odd start, and we got teased with some Wolfbrother action, but his character has spent the last two episodes doing little apart from grunting and brooding. He’s not really recalling the careful, friendly lunk he starts out as in the book—and I have big reservations on what’s going to happen when his character eventually bumps into a certain other character. (Though, who knows—maybe the show will rehabilitate that certain other character, just as it has with Nynaeve!)

Andrew: Show-Perrin is sadly underdeveloped, and again I blame time. Show-Perrin even takes up the Way of the Leaf! The central conflict of his character is here. But we don’t get enough time with him, and we don’t get enough wolf stuff, and the love-triangle thing seems thrown together at the last minute to give him something to do in these last couple episodes. I have hopes for season two.

And then… there’s Mat. I’ve been down on Mat in these recaps for weeks now, and I’ve seen nothing that makes me want to change my mind. Like show-Perrin, he is underdeveloped. Unlike show-Perrin, I have not enjoyed what little time we have gotten to spend with him. I’m not sure how (or why!!) you’d take your lovable Han Solo-ish rogue and make him into a miserable butthead. But at this point I like the show better without him, so we’re going to need a pretty major course correction next season.

Lee: Let’s see—who’s left? Loial? I know some of the book purists dislike the prosthetics and the lack of height, but I love Loial. I want more Loial. I would watch The Wheel of Loial. And it looks like we’re in luck, since the character plays a hugely important role in the books—even if we continue veering far off of the course the story took in print, it’s hard to see ditching Loial (stab wounds aside—and what’s a little bit of stabbing in the world of the Wheel of Time? He'll be fine!).

Andrew: Let’s not forget Rand. Who is also fine! The show sort of ignores him for a few episodes there in the middle and then makes him do tons of heavy lifting right there at the end, and I think he’s mostly up to it? I thought he was actually very good in The Last Temptation of Rand (which book readers with long memories might recall is actually adapted from one of Egwene’s tests in the White Tower, rather than anything that actually happens to Rand, but it’s deployed well here). And where he ends up in the show—running away, either from his responsibilities as the Dragon Reborn or from the friends he doesn’t want to endanger or both—is consistent with where he is at this point in the books.

Rand's big moments in this episode mostly land, to Josha Stradowski's credit. (credit: Amazon Studios)

Lee: Yeah, I gotta hand it to Josha Stradowski—it would be easy to just channel some Episode III-era Hayden Christiansen vibes and angst his way through the season, but he doesn’t. (And no shade thrown at Hayden Christiansen here, either—dude did the best he could with what he had to work with.) Stradowski’s Rand still manages to find some empathy and kindness, even when dealing with KNIFE MADNESS Mat, and the character comes across as shockingly mature and imminently likable. And maybe that empathy and likability is also being drawn up on purpose—the show playing the long game with the emotional places where the Dragon Reborn is going to have to go.

So after all these weeks, it’s time for a verdict before we peace out for the year. You said back in our first write-up that the odds against this show ever being made were so high that you’re thrilled we’ve gotten what we got—how do you feel at the end of season one?

Andrew: Yeah I think I’m still mostly in a “just happy to be here!” place with the show. The non-book-readers I know who are watching it are enjoying it, so I assume that means it’s got something to offer to anyone who’s up for a bit of high-fantasy fun. If my biggest complaint about your show is that there wasn’t enough of it, I don’t think that’s a bad place to be coming out of your first season.

Lee: Excellent point! And yeah, I’m at the same place—the non-book folks I know who are following the show are all-in on it, and the show has been putting up excellent numbers. Amazon has said that it's exceeding expectations, so the company is no doubt feeling pleased with the decision to greenlight a second season.

I like it. I find that I tend to have a lot of reservations the first time I watch each new episode, and those reservations tend to mostly dissolve on a second viewing. The first time through I think my brain is tripping over itself trying to latch onto familiar story points and catalog everything, but on second watch I can relax and enjoy. And I am enjoying it—it may not be the huge sprawling epic in season one that the nerdiest of book fans was hoping for, but big things often have small beginnings. Look at Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season compared to how it eventually grew.

Andrew: I'm experiencing something similar in the act of discussing it for these recaps! Enjoying it well enough when I'm watching it and discovering that I'm liking a lot more than I'm disliking when I’m picking it apart beat by beat. And Rafe Lee Judkins and team have generally done an admirable job condensing and adapting and shifting story beats around, enough so that I'm not too worried (at least not yet) that a seven or eight-season Wheel of Time show will end up sagging in the middle, the way the books do and the way that Game of Thrones did.

Lee: One last thought, as we close, on that final scene. Do you know what I’m looking forward to most about the arrival of the Seanchan? (That’s the scary boat people, for non-book readers.)

I’m looking forward to finally hearing a canonical pronunciation for their stupid name. Seriously, it’s been driving me nuts for almost 20 years. Shawn-chawn? Seen-shun? Se-an-shawn? I must know.

Andrew: I almost hate to tell you about the glossary in the back of the books, Lee (It’s shawn-chan).

I know that you mean you want to hear people SAY it out loud on screen, but I had to pre-empt the 30 commenters who were firing up their typing fingers to tell you about the glossary. Think of all the network activity and storage space I just saved!

Lee: I know, I know, but I think the same glossary also says it’s “Tar VAL’on” instead of “Tar ValON’“, so you just never know! (Let’s also set aside my uneasiness at Robert Jordan’s repeated insistence that the Seanchan speak with a Texas-like US Southern drawl. Not even kidding on that one, y’all.)

Andrew: I… did not know that. It’s described as “slurred” in the books and “US Southern” is not where I go when I hear “slurred.” But now I can imagine the Seanchan saying things like “little missy” and “pard’ner” so that’s good at least?

Lee: So that’s it—and by the Light and our hope of salvation and rebirth, we promise to be back here for season two, doing this all over again.

Andrew: Thanks for sticking with us through these recaps, everyone! Remember, there are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But this is an ending. We’ll see you all next season!

(credit: WoT Wiki)

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