At the end of season two of The Wheel of Time, all roads led to the same place. In a far-off city, all our heroes teamed up to defeat an invading empire and kill the evil immortal sorcerer guiding their invasion, all while exorcising their own various demons or taking on some new ones. Rand al’Thor was pronounced the Dragon Reborn, all was well, and all manner of things were well.
Season three doesn’t have nearly as neat a climax. How could it? The action was far too diffuse, the plotlines too many, and the characters scattered farther and wider than even magic could transport them. (Especially after poor Loial destroyed the waygate that linked to the gang’s hometown. Sleep easy, big guy.) The best this finale can do is tie together the various groups of characters in a closing montage, if at all.
It’s perfectly satisfying fantasy storytelling, even so. The Wheel of Time’s biggest challenge from the start has been, in professional wrestling parlance, getting its characters and their whacky world over with the audience — making you see that these are exciting and dynamic personalities worth rooting for, involved in stories worth following, for stakes that matter. By the end of this season, I’d say they’ve succeeded in selling me on the whole roster.
It helps that by now I can tell the difference between a Lanfear and a Liandrin without needing to refer to a wiki, but it’s more than that. Whether through character design, cool powers, a kickass moment or two, a fun voice, or a fully committed performance, no matter what kind of magical mumbo jumbo the actor in question has been asked to spout, Wheel has made me want to learn what happens to all five hundred of its characters. (Rough estimate.)
There’s so much going on here, involving so many people in so many places wielding so many orbs and what have yous, that we may as well start at the center of it all. Rand al’Thor successfully makes his pitch to the Aiel that he is the Car’a’carn of their prophecies, who will destroy them in order to save them. True, the evil Shaido clan put forth an imposter candidate, their fabulously dressed leader Sevanna’s (Natasha Culzac) annoying son Couladin (Set Sjöstrand), who sports some fake tattoos courtesy of their newfound ally Lanfear. By now Rand has dumped the Forsaken he loved for tormenting Egwene and plotting to set herself up in the Dark One’s place, and she’s not taking it well: She tries to kill Moiraine even while Rand’s busy speaking.
But the heroes come out on top. Fake tattoos are no match for a guy who can literally cause it to rain in the desert. (Much to the horror of Egwene, who’s scared to see Rand confidently wield so much of the forbidden One Power.) The Aiel, whom Rand dares to reveal once followed the reviled, pacifist Way of the Leaf, will now follow him.
Meanwhile, with the help of her own mystical McGuffin, the crystal ball Sakarnen, Moiraine duels with Lanfear. She’s aided enormously by Lan, who first receives a warning that Lanfear is in the area from Melindhra, his countrywoman from back home who turns out to be a repentant Darkfriend. (Revealing the information costs her her immortal soul.) Armed with his magic sword, he strides into battle against Lanfear with Moiraine, who forces the badly wounded Forsaken to flee.
The episode’s other most momentous event is the overthrow of the Amyrlin Seat. After luring Verrin Sedai and other loyalists on a wild goose chase after her Red Ajah, Siuan Sanche’s nemesis, Elaida, calls a surprise vote and deposes Siuan, setting herself up as Amyrlin in her place. Her first order of business: stilling and killing Siuan for conspiring with Moiraine to find the Dragon Reborn on their own (they were following another sister’s secret prophecy, but still guilty) and for being a Darkfriend (not guilty at all). “The world is changing,” Siuan says in her final speech. “We cannot stand behind these walls and pretend we still have control. The only thing we have control over is what we do.” Boy, you said it, Siuan. But the ascent of Elaida means a reactionary who loves the color red and wants to Make the Aes Sedai Great Again is in charge.
Elsewhere, in the port city of Tanchico, shit gets real — real weird. While searching the palace for magical artifacts, Mat stumbles across a red doorway that leads to … Mike Myers as the Cat in the Hat or something? No, seriously, it’s a strange fox demon man called an Eelfinn (Robert Strange), who makes cryptic statements and grants Mat three wishes, though the poor man barely realizes he’s making them. The entity’s magic takes away Mat’s false memories, grants him immunity from the Aes Sedai and the One Power (how would that work, exactly?), and returns him to his home dimension. At least, so the creature claims.
What actually happens is that Mat emerges while hanging from the doorway, just like Min’s visions predicted, because Mat neglected to name a price for the transaction, and the creature decided to take his life. Min rescues him from both the noose and a sister of the Black Ajah. Mat also wakes up with an unfamiliar fox pendant around his neck … and a memory full of holes.
Elsewhere in the palace, Alayne and Thom run into another Black sister, wielding a magical item that shoots out something called “balefire.” Despite being urged to safety by Thom, who has some connection with her family, Alayne grabs the weapon and turns it on the Darkfriend, seemingly vaporizing her and the entire last minute or so of her existence. (There’s a sort of runback effect, like using Recall in Tears of the Kingdom, when she goes poof.)
Elayne follows Thom’s advice and heads for home with a warning: He’s followed her family for years and has never heard of “Lord Gaebril” until Elayne mentioned him just now. Anyone who has the power to implant that many false memories, Thom says, has to be a Forsaken, so now it’s up to Elayne to warn her queenly mother that her consort is a monster. As for Gaebril himself, a.k.a. the Forsaken known as Rahvin, he’s now teaming up with Lanfear against Moghedien instead of the other way around. He abandons his prior allegiance after he and Lanfear discover the disgusting Hellraiser-meets–The Thing body-horror mess to which Moghedien reduced their fellow Forsaken, Sammael. (Seriously, it’s very nasty and very cool.)
Moghadien’s got a new teammate now, anyway. Though there’s a very Raiders of the Lost Ark/Last Crusade–style mixup where Liandrin and her minions are looking for the exact wrong thing in their search for the collar that can help them chain the Dragon Reborn, Liandrin winds up stealing the real thing directly from Nynaeve. She then leaves the woman to drown while wrapped up in magical chains, since killing “the most powerful channeler in a thousand years” will make her an even stronger candidate to become a new Forsaken.
Nynaeve winds up using her love for the child she had in an alternate reality to reawaken her connection to the One Power. She literally parts the sea and emerges from it, wet and happy, though no closer to Liandrin at the moment. As for Liandrin, she teams up with Moghedien, pitching herself as being potentially useful as the new weakest Forsaken, replacing Moghedien as Item One the others’ hit lists. And in the end, they realize they’re both assholes who are impossible to work with — the start of a beautiful, sociopathic friendship.
Compared to the resolution of the first two seasons, this finale seems to make it pretty clear where the story will head. Rand has to lead the Aiel to the ancient fortress where the magic sword Callandor is stored, so he can wield it against the Forsaken and their lord, the Dark One. He’ll be pursued by the Aes Sedai, now under the control of the power-mad Elaida and her fanatical Red Ajah, who want nothing more than to cage him. Moiraine will have to overcome her grief over Siuan and fight this, since she knows the only way the Aes Sedai and the world will survive is if the White Tower follows Rand. Rand will also be pursued by Liandrin and Moghedien and the Black Ajah, too, and they’ve got the magic collar that can control him. Sevanna’s evil Aiel may give him trouble. Perrin’s in the clutches of the Children of Light. Mat … I’m sure he’ll find some trouble to get himself into.
I’m fine with how open-ended all of this is. A lot is contingent on whether or not we get a season four — and a season five and six, and however many seasons it will take to adapt Robert Jordan’s sprawling saga. But The Wheel of Time is the strangest, most colorful large-scale fantasy on TV. It’s like doing Game of Thrones using the storytelling language of the Star Wars prequels, and I mean that as a compliment. This world feels gigantic and weird in a way few others do. I’m happy to follow its countless characters as they wander through it.
