It’s Black Friday in America, and what better way to celebrate than by consuming an ungodly amount of leftovers and watching a new episode of The Wheel of Time?
This is the first episode since the three part premiere last Friday, which finds the show attempting to settle into some sort of weekly groove. The decision to release episodes this way was intentional, I have to assume. Rather than just dumping every episode on to Amazon Prime all at once, we have a schedule much in the same way TV worked before streaming (if you can remember the old times), and I have to say: I prefer it this way.
It’s clear that the show runners want this to be a community experience. They’ve put a lot of work into their social media presence and have been more engaged with the community than any creators I can remember in recent memory. The feeling of getting something every week is nice! It’s like Hanukkah (I assume, I’ve never celebrated it). Plus, it gives fans a chance to gather steam and hype for the next episode. Like the turkey and stuffing we all ate yesterday, it needs a chance to digest.
Belabored Thanksgiving metaphors to the side, let’s get into what happened on this episode:
Our protagonists have all parted ways thanks to the incident at Shadar Logoth but the show doesn’t open with them. Instead, we get a glimpse at a new and important character, a man named Logain. Logain can channel the one power, and he uses it to great effect in an impressive battle sequence that introduces the episode. He has convinced a whole host of followers, and even a king, that he is the dragon reborn, but he falls into captivity at the hands of the Aes Sedai.
The focus on the women of the Aes Sedai and their warders takes up a good chunk of the run time of this episode and it shows how careful the creators, actors, and writers have been in translating Jordan’s story to the screen. Everyone involved really sells the intimacy, professionalism, and even the strained relationships of the people involved in this sort of organization. The scene with all the warders around the fire at night was especially well done and a high mark of the series so far for me. I care about these wife guys! I don’t want them to die! (A lot of them are going to die)
Logain is an interesting foil to Moiraine and the other Aes Sedai, but I felt my eyes glazing over a bit whenever he showed up. Their attempts to suppress his power looked and felt a little too much like a power rangers episode for my taste, and I feel like we still haven’t really seen Alvaro Morte shine in his portrayal of Logain yet. He clearly has the physicality of the character down, but he spends most of his time in this episode sitting quietly and sweating ever so slightly.
Our B and C plots for this episode have to do with Egwene and Perrin with the traveling folk and Mat, Ran, and Thom respectively. There’s a particularly effecting scene with Perrin and one of the traveling folk that is beginning to make me reconsider my initial reaction to his “dead wife” inciting incident.
A woman speaks with Perrin about the “Way of the Leaf”, this world’s version of nonviolent resistance of the same type you would find in early christian communities and various strains of buddhism and hinduism. Her explanation of this way of living is beautifully done and rare for this type of show. There are lots of swords and explosions and blood and guts and war, but rarely do you get a quiet scene where one character asks another “has your life been better or worse since you’ve experienced and participated in all this violence?”.
This question is all the more pointed because the tragedy in Perrin’s life is a result of his own actions. A mistake, nothing he is culpable for, but he cannot place the responsibility on anyone but himself. It’s an agonizing position for him to be in, and the offer this woman makes in the moment is certainly attractive. What better revenge on death than life? What better victory over war than peace?
Maybe it’s my own ideological leanings showing here, but this was perhaps my favorite scene in the show so far, and one of my favorite scenes in anything I have watched this year. It’s promising to see that this show has such emotional range, and it makes me excited for the kinds of stories they’re showing themselves capable of telling. It’s not just war and magic and secret societies (although there’s nothing wrong with that), it could be a lot richer and more interesting if it’s allowed to live and breathe at its own pace.
Mat, Rand, and Thom’s section was the weakest of the three, and I don’t have much to say on it. They stop at a remote farmstead to stay the night and the family that took them in is killed by a Fade. There’s a nice bit of misdirection where for a moment it seems like Mat is the one responsible for the killings, but it doesn’t reach the highs of the other two plots running through this episode. I’m warming up to 90s grunge Thom, and he has a nice scene where he gets to monologue about how awful it is to be cut off from the one power, having a relative in his life who was the victim of the Aes Sedai.
I felt this episode was on the stronger side, especially considering the quality character moments it gave us. After all, that’s what is so special about this series. It spans so much time and so many characters who all change and grow over years and years that I’m glad the show runners seem to be leaning into paying close attention to that rather than just trying to make another Game of Thrones.
7/10—Looking forward to next week!
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