Month: December 2021

Lee: Greetings, dear readers! Part five marks the start of the second half of our eight-episode season, and we pick up with a funeral—the aftermath of the attack that closed out episode four. White seems to be the funerary color in the world of the Wheel of Time, and the dead are shrouded in it as we close out the pre-credits scene with a cool overhead shot showing a circular arrangement of graves. Straight-down overhead views and circles are a strong recurring visual motif this season—and this isn’t the last time we’ll see a similar shot.

And after that, we get a big, month-long time skip—and then we’re off to Tar Valon!

Lee: Can I do the Comic Book Guy thing and talk about Tar Valon’s appearance just a bit?

I promise not to make this kind of pooh-poohing a habit, but the show’s Tar Valon doesn’t really match my headcanon appearance. I see no flowing Ogier masonry, no fluted bridges and connecting towers. The up-close shots of the city streets with their dirty white stonework look like they were borrowed from Minas Tirith in Return of the King. And the White Tower itself is an artless stump of half-melted wax—like if you put the book’s version of the White Tower in a microwave and let it just kind of... collapse on itself. If there’s an architectural antecedent to the design we see on screen, it’d be something like Angkor Wat—except without the grace or beauty. Sorry, Amazon, but the Shining City is a swing and a miss for me.

Lee: Absolutely—it’s a great update to the books’ more 1990s-esque take on stoic sword-bros in high fantasy (though let’s revisit this when the characters eventually get to the Borderlands, since that will likely introduce us to a set of much less talkative sword-bros).

But I love the bits of Warder culture we get to see—both the campfire camaraderie and also how they behave back at the Tower. They’re a proud group with their own traditions and their own place among the Aes Sedai. The books never give us much of a peek into what Warders are like behind closed doors, surrounded by safe company, and the humanity on display when Lan and Stepin are talking about what comes next for Stepin—and what “adventures” he might have if Alanna of the Green Ajah bonds him—is my favorite part of the episode. All the more so because of what happens next.

Though, speaking of favorite things—we gotta talk about Loial. Are you ready to talk about Loial? Because Loial shows up!

Lee: My Loial headcanon image is kind of fuzzy, honestly! If I had to pin it down, I’d say it’s probably something like the cover art for the ancient Piers Anthony Xanth novel Ogre, Ogre—which I suppose is fitting enough. In fact, Rand even mispronounces Loial’s species when he blurts out “You’re an ogre!”

Having Rand say that is also a great way to surface the idea to show viewers that Wheel of Time is set in a world where each past age eventually comes again—time, we are told, is a seven-spoked wheel, and each spoke represents an age. The implication is that the myths and tales about ogres that we know in our own 21st-century modern age might have sprung from the Ogier of Rand’s time. (And there are reciprocal myths mentioned in the books, like Thom Merrilin’s tale of the giants Mosk and Merk fighting with spears of fire, or Egwene’s talk of the hero Lenn, who flew to the Moon in the belly of an eagle made of fire).

Showrunner Rafe Judkins has said that Animashuan’s appearance as Loial is mostly practical effects and make-up, which is done both to control VFX costs and also to give Animashuan and the other actors the ability to inhabit the roles and act off of each other in a more natural way. (One only has to read Ewan McGregor’s laments about extensive green-screen acting to see the value in sticking with physical, practical effects whenever possible.)

Lee: Indeed, there are implications! I dig it.

Speaking of things to catch—there was another Padan Fain whistle in this episode. Did you catch it?

Lee: And Mat definitely doesn’t want Nynaeve checking his tongue, since that seems to be where the X-Files Black Oil KNIFE MADNESS Spirit hangs out.

Though at this point we might need to shift gears a bit, because we gotta talk about poor Perrin and Egwene and their little session at the hands of Child Valda.

Lee: Sadist is definitely the right word—I think Valda cutting on Perrin’s back might be the goriest thing we’ve seen so far. And it’s pretty horrifying. It definitely works.

I feel like at this point it’s pretty clear we’re not going to see Elyas Machera for a while, if ever. Show-watchers who haven’t read the books probably won’t miss him, but Elyas is a fan favorite. His role in the books is to explain stuff to Perrin (and us!) about why Perrin is suddenly going all Teen Wolf, but so far the show is doing a perfectly fine job without him. If I were a bettin’ man, I’d say we’ll likely hear Elyas’ exposition dumps from Moiraine when the time comes—it feels like having her Know Things about Perrin’s wolfishness would be an appropriate alternative to introducing another dialogue-heavy character in the back half of the season. We’re already getting Loial, after all, and of the two, Loial is more important.

Lee: Stepin has that big Isuldur-cast-it-into-the-fire energy.

The funeral ritual with Lan’s howls of grief was very powerful—and having Moiraine (and Alanna, to a lesser degree) join in is yet another signal to viewers just how strong and deep the Aes Sedai/Warder bond is. It’s a thing beyond marriage, beyond family—it’s a commingling of personhood, almost. Moiraine gets emotional when Lan drinks, because she can feel it through the bond. And when he grieves, that too leaks through back to Moiraine.

I dig it. It works for me.