Viewer Log: Wheel of Time ep 8

His allies fight for Fal Dara while the Dragon Reborn fights for the world.

Last time on the Wheel of Time, our heroes’ sans Mat traveled the Ways to Fal Dara. They’re almost killed by Trollocs and Machin Shin, the Black Wind, but escape just in time. While in Fal Dara, Moiraine take the group to see a bartender named Min. Min can see auras around people that let her predict the future, Moiraine hopes her vision will tell them who the Dragon Reborn is. She doesn’t confirm who the Dragon Reborn is, but sees Rand with a kid, Perrin having Gold eyes and blood on his face, and Egwene and Nynaeve have a flame and gold ring in their futures. She confirms they’re all Ta’Veren, though, and that they’re connected in a grand design. The Two Rivers folk want to discuss if they want to go to the Eye and risk death for the non-Dragon, which Moiraine allows. A fight breaks out between the folk, though, and Rand storms off. Nynaeve spends the evening with Lan, and then spends the night with him. Rand and Egwene make up, but later that night, Rand goes out to the Archery range. As he shoots arrows, we learn that while dragging his father to the village from their house, Tam has a fever dream and tells Rand he was found on a mountain. Rand remembers other events from the season, but now with the context that he channeled his way out of several tough spots. He confirms with Min that he is the Dragon Reborn, and then goes to see Moiraine. The rest of the group learn that Rand and Moiraine went alone to the Eye. Enough recapping let’s get to it.

 

Chapter 8: The Eye of the World

 

We open on a scene from 3000 years ago. The Dragon Reborn, Lews Therin Telamon is in a meeting with the Latra Posae Decume, the Tamyrlin Seat. He wants her help in his plan to imprison the Dark One so he can never touch the world again. Latra refuses to help, fearig what would happen if the Dark One touches and corrupts the True Source. He wants to move forward regardless, and they part ways. Lews goes to comfort his child, telling the cooing infant that he is going to make the world safe for them.

 

… Do I even need to say that this doesn’t go to plan?

 

Camping SUCKS.

In the present, Rand and Moiraine are traveling through the Blight. They come across a corpse, a boy from the borderlands that wanted to test himself against the Blight but came up wanting. She warns that the Blight is a rotting, festering wound, created by leaks from the Dark One’s prison and advises him not to touch anything.

 

In Fal Dara, Egwene tries to get things ready to chase after Rand, but Perrin comes in to remind her that that is insane as they’ve no idea where to go. Egwene starts crying and says she loves Rand, Perrin loves him too, but is, ya know, being realistic. They confirm that they’re both “alright” and hug for support.

 

Back in the Blight, Rand and Moiraine reach a spot to rest, within sight of the Seven Towers of Malkier. Yes, they’re in Lan’s homeland. Rand says it looks like it’s been abandoned for a thousand years, but Moiraine confirms it’s been 40 years at most. The Blight has spread quickly in the last three years, confirming to Moiraine that the Dark One is growing stronger. They sit down to rest. Rand asks if it was hard leaving Lan behind, but Moiraine doesn’t answer, basically confirming it was Incredibly hard.

 

Either break up with her or don't Lan, don't do this
middle of the ground stuff.

At the Keep, Nynaeve goes to speak with Lan and comfort him. Lan confirms that he can’t feel Moiraine through the bond and that worries him. Nynaeve reveals that she didn’t track Lan, but Moiraine, saying that she has a “tell” that she could follow. Nynaeve is willing to let him go alone, so long as he promises to bring her friend back. She points out that Wisdoms don’t get married, but that as an Aes Sedai, she won’t be a Wisdom anymore… But Lan breaks that hope by telling her that he loves her but can’t be with her for fear of breaking her when he inevitably dies. This is what I call “mixed signals” Lan, as he’s breaking up with her, but in such a flowery, romantic way that it pretty much guarantees she’s not getting over this any time soon. Anyway, he asks how to track Moiraine.

 

Rand awakes, pulling his hand from a bit of Blight corruption growing on his hand. Moiraine asks what he dreamed, as they have significance especially this close to the Blight. Rand says that it was the Dark One and that he knows they’re coming. Before Moiraine can respond, she’s stabbed through the mouth. The burning eyed man is behind her, saying that he wasn’t expecting Rand to be the one. Rand shoots and arrow into his eye. The Man pushes it into his face, transforming it into a more human form. He comments that Rand looks nothing like Lews, but there’s something behind his eyes that the Man sees. When Rand says this is a dream, he points out that that really doesn’t matter, asleep or awake they’re finally chatting. He claims Rand coming at him with just one weak Aes Sedai is pathetic compared to the 99 companions he brought last time. Rand pulls his sword on him, the heron mark impressing the Man, but he mocks Rand when he claims he got it from his father. He says Rand’s father died a long time ago and refers to Tam as the “shepherd from the Two Rivers.” He confirms that Rand is “stubborn as ever.” Rand shouts that this is a dream and runs himself through with the sword. He wakes up and Moiraine repeats herself from the dream, Rand telling her to not believe a word he says.

 

The heart of the Dark, Ba'alzamon, Sightblinder
Father of Lies, The Dark One.

Rand asks what the plan is, and when she tries to play dumb, he points out that she always has a plan within a plan within a plan so just spill it. She reveals she has a Sa’angreal, a carved figure that can increase Rand’s already significant power 100-fold. So her plan is basically to buff Rand’s stats to maximum and hope he can wing it into binding the Dark One for another 3000 years. It’s a bold strategy Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for them. As Moiraine is about to walk off, Rand asks her if she thought the Dragon Reborn was Egwene. Pointing out that she taught Egwene to channel and brought her to the Amyrlin Seat. She doesn’t confirm but Rand shrugs and says he thought so too.

 

At the keep, Nynaeve is trying to listen to the wind when Egwene joins her. Nynaeve says she hasn’t heard anything since she firsts channeled. Egwene tries it and hears something like what they heard at Bel Tine; the scream compared to a whisper.

Rand and Moiraine go deeper into the Blight. Rand asks if Moiraine can teach him to channel, she can’t but is banking on Rand just kind of winging it, that the adrenaline will just let him channel right. When he asks how that could possibly be true, Moiraine tells him a story about when she was a Novice (rank 1 of 3 for Aes Sedai) and an Accepted (rank 2 of 3 for Aes Sedai) she admired beat the piss out of her one night with the Power to help her “reach her potential,” and didn’t stop until Moiraine grabbed the power and stopped her herself.  She never had trouble channeling again, and assumes it’ll be the same for the Ginger.

 

Our heroes go to Min, asking for answers. Min won’t reveal what she told Moiraine, but just confirms that everything she sees always comes true eventually. She looks at Nynaeve as sees her burning to death from the inside, then looks around to see the soldiers drinking happily at the nearby table all dying. A moment later, a horn blares and people rush out.

 

Rand and Moiraine see a huge mass of Trollocs gathering at the edges of the Blight, preparing to attack Tarwin’s Gap.

 

Jagad siblings prepare for war.

Lord Agelmar is preparing his people to defend the Gap. They’ve seen 60 Fades and estimate five to ten thousand Trollocs and more are coming. Uno wants to kill them himself. One of their bridges out of Fal Dara were destroyed, so they also have darkfriends in their midst. Fun. Agelmar orders all available troops to the Gap to defend it. He’s going to defend the Gap personally and sends Uno and Yakota to do “what they must do.” Cryptic. Amalisa tells her brother that the Gap will not hold.

 

In the Blight, Rand and Moiraine reach the Eye, an underground ruin in the Blight. Rand points out that if Moiraine goes with him, she might die and tries to tell her to stay but she refuses. Meanwhile, Lan is quickly running after them, reaching the Seven Towers but is still hours behind.

 

Amalisa helps Agelmar prepare his armor. She wants him to wear their father’s armor, as the heirloom set protect him, their grandfather, and all Jagad’s back to when they first came to Fal Dara. Agelmar insists on wearing his own armor. Amalisa wants him to stay in the city, but he refuses. The Men will hold the Gap, and if they can’t the Women will hold the city. It’s a huge offensive though, and Amalisa is worried. Agelmar tells her that she was right, and they should have gotten Aes Sedai help sooner. He believes that Tarmon Gai’don, the Last Battle is here. They aren’t going to win but will last long enough to warn the world that death is coming.

 

Rand and Moiraine reach the lowest level of the Eye of the World. He asks what this place is, but Moiraine doesn’t know, claiming darkfriends burned all records of it from the Tower. Rand remembers… pieces of this place but can’t fit them together. He suddenly sees his past incarnation Lews stepping onto the giant Aes Sedai (Yin Yang without the little circles) symbol and facing off against the Dark One, the man from his nightmares. He steps directly on the symbol, touches it with his bare hands… and then is in his house back in the Two Rivers. He goes outside, and Egwene is there, playing with a baby, they’re daughter Joiya. She asks if he finished the Bel Tine lantern for Joiya already, as Mat will never finish it in time despite his promises. Egwene gives Joiya to him and goes inside. Rand seems happy with the baby, which breaks my heart.

 

The fate of the world will be decided here, as the
Dragon Reborn... naps.

Back in the real world, Rand is passed out at Moiraine’s feet. She tries to wake him but fails. The Man asks her what she thought would happen. She tries to attack him with flows of air, but he stops her and with a flick of his hands shuts her down. He mocks her, saying it must be awful, having the One Power so close but not quite being able to touch it.

 

At Tarwin’s Gap, Agelmar and his guard reinforce the gap fortress. Amalisa and her force prepare ballista and other long-range weapons, Amalisa ordering the gates remain open another hour to allow foreigners to escape. We see Min slip away with the retreating civilians. Amalisa asks any women channelers to be brought to her to help bolster the defense. Uno and Yakota go into the Fal Daran throne room, move Agelmar’s throne and start digging. Egwene, Nynaeve and Perrin are wondering what they can do. Loial joins them and tells them that they’re calling on all Channelers to help the defense. Nynaeve isn’t sure about risking losing anyone else.

 

The Trollocs charge the Gap’s wall, Agelmar and his men killing dozens with crossbows in minutes but more keep coming. Amalisa stands with two other women as Nynaeve and Egwene join her. Perrin is feeling antsy, as he can’t help with the defense as he’s trying to follow the Way of the Leaf and isn’t sure what he could do. Loial says that in his experience, when you want to help but don’t know how, all you need to do is ask.

 

Rand is standing with Joiya as Egwene joins them again. She takes their daughter back and puts her in the cradle. Rand asks how long they’ve been living here, Egwene saying since the Eye. Rand is obviously confused as she wants to go to the Tower, but Egwene insists that this is where she wants to be. He asks if she remembers when they were kids, backed a bag and “ran away.” They spent the night under a tree and went home the next day but asks what they carved under the tree. She answers “Our place. For this life and the next. Forever.” Which seems to confirm to him that this is real. They kiss, but then everything stops. Egwene and Joiya freeze in place and the Man walks in. He offers Rand a “version” of her if he uses his power to remake the world in his image.

 

In the real world, The Man muses on which Rand will choose. Moiraine pulls out a knife and holds it to Rand’s throat, saying she’ll kill him and start over with the next Dragon than let him escape.

 

Perrin and Loial join up with Uno and Yakota. Perrin asks how they can help and Uno hands them a pickaxe. Trollocs are starting to overwhelm the Gap. They climb the bodies of the dead to reach the upper levels. A Trolloc gets up and hurls a spear into Agelmar, slamming him into a wall.

 

The Man slices “Egwene’s” neck to prove to Rand that stability is a lie, but he heals her a moment later. Rand asks how he can make it real. The Man tells him it’s simple. In the real world, Moiraine is pressing the dagger so hard to Rand’s neck she’s drawing blood as the Man watches.

 

Ka-me-ha-me-HAAAAAA!

At Fal Dara keep, Padan Fain enters in the back with a pair of Fades and strolls in. The group digging get to their prize, the Horn of Valere. It’s a magic horn that will bring the greatest heroes of the Pattern back to fight the Shadow at the Lasts Battle. Trollocs start pouring through the keep. Amalisa uses the one power to link with the other women. For a power comparison, Amalisa and the two others are like D Batteries linking to not one, but two nuclear reactors that are Nynaeve and Egwene. She draws their power in. In the keep, they uncover the horn, but then Perrin sees Padan Fain. He goes after him, looking at an axe but leaving it behind.

 

The Man tells Rand to empty himself of all his emotions and turn it into “want.” If he “wants” Joiya to be, he only needs to will her into existence. Rand starts channeling. The Man keeps coaching Rand. The Man in the waking world mocks Moiraine, telling her Rand is channeling, but she doesn’t know if it’s to strengthen or break his chains.

 

Amalisa gathers her power, drawing more from the others. The fellas get the Horn box out but hear a Myrddraal’s scream.

 

The Man tells Rand to make Egwene his, like she is, was and should be.

 

Amalisa summons lightning bolts from the sky, killing Trollocs left and right, but burning out and killing one of the weaker women.

 

Rand keeps channeling, but he splits his weaves and starts sending them toward the Sa’Angreal in his pocket. The Man tells Rand to make the world what he wants. Rand asks what Egwene wants. He realizes that no matter how much he wants this life, that Egwene, the one that doesn’t care about being a Wisdom or Aes Sedai isn’t the one that he loves. Rand wakes up and uses the Sa’Angreal on the Man. He gets hit with a massive wave of energy. The Man vanishes… with a grin on his face. The seal beneath their feet is cracked, but Rand says that he did it.

 

Oy, this guy.

Perrin follows where he thought Fain was going, but then hears fighting and goes to check on Loial. He finds Fain with a pair of Fades. Uno is injured, Yakota is dead, and Loial takes a stab from the… Shadar Logoth Dagger by Fain. Shit. Outside the Trollocs are dead, but Amalisa can’t break t he connection. Amalisa claims she can feel everything as the three women burn. Nynaeve climbs onto Egwene and seems to draw her flows into herself, shielding Egwene from the damage. She repeats the message from the braiding ceremony as Amalisa final breaks the connection. She slumps over, burned out and dead. Egwene sobs as she tries to get Nynaeve to wake up. Fain, grabs the horn and sits in the Fal Dara throne as he gloats. He reveals that he came into the Two Rivers every year to find them, five Ta’Veren in the same village. He sent the Trollocs, not to kill the Ta’veren but to bring them to the Dark One. He claims the Dark One is necessary for balance, and balance means that some or all of them will turn to the Shadow, too. And we see a scene of a bedraggled, kind of evil looking Mat walking into Tar Valon in the dead of night… ya know, for emphasis.

 

At the Eye, Moiraine tells Rand they can’t go back to Fal Dara yet. Rand says he’s not going back, as he felt the madness and knows it’ll consume him. He asks Moiraine to tell them that he died at the Eye, that he didn’t make it back. Moiraine says she can’t lie, but he knows she’ll make it work. He says goodbye and walks away.

 

Fain tells Perrin this is only the beginning. Perrin grabs the axe, and Fain mocks him for abandoning his new ideal so quickly. “Tiniest push and you choose the Dark.” He tells Perrin that they all have a part to play and then walks off with the Fades.

 

Lan finds Moiraine at the Eye. She’s examining the fragments of the seal. She tells him that Rand is “gone,” and that she can’t unmask the bond as the “Dark One” cut her off from the source.

 

Perrin walks out onto the balcony and sees the carnage in the valley below. Egwene is sitting with Nynaeve’s body, channeling at her and trying to heal her when it suddenly works and Nynaeve sits up, coughing. Rand heads out from the Eye, heading East towards the sunrise and the Spine of the World.

 

Moiraine hands Lan the stone she was looking at. It’s made of Cuendillar, Heartstone. It’s supposed to be unbreakable, but it’s been shattered. Moiraine believes that it means that this wasn’t the Last Battle, this was the first.

 

Well... crap.

We cut to a beach front in the Far Western Shore. A child is playing on the beach as birds start squawking overhead. She sees many ribbed sailed ships coming towards the beach. Strangely armored people come out, including four women on each boat. Two in armor with face paint, and two with gold chests shields and a muzzle. The face painted ones call out an order in the Old Tongue, and they start channeling creating a huge tidal wave. Well… the Seanchan are here. Crap.

 

I liked this finale. It is a drastic departure from the books, in which everyone made it to the Eye of the World, but really didn’t do anything to help the finale. I’ll take this more even division of labor version, honestly. Rand’s battle with the Man was very intense, even though I obviously knew the outcome. In the book, and for most of Rand’s early climactic fights, he ends up dueling Ba’alzamon, The Man’s book counterpart, with weapons and the Power. This more metaphysical battle, with the Man tempting Rand with everything that he wants to see if he’ll break is more indicative of the fights Rand has in later stories. I thought it was quite well done. Props to Fares Fares, the actor playing the Man, as he’s just as talkative as Ba’alzamon is in the books when he appears, and is as creepy, cryptic, and cruel with his actions. Obviously, this isn’t the last we’ll see of him, and next time I think he’ll be hounded Rand’s dreams more fiercely. Rand running off to be on his own is something that he threatened to do several times in the books, succeeding only once, and I like that he did it here. It highlights show scared he is of what he might become when the madness takes him that he’d rather his friends think him dead than risk their lives. He looks like he might be heading toward the Aiel Waste, which might mean we’ll be getting some of the Aiel a bit earlier than in the books. The majority were introduced in the third book, but only because fleshed out characters in the fourth. Them showing up in season 2 would be pushing them very far forward, but some of my favorite characters are Aiel, so seeing them sooner has me excited. I liked seeing Nynaeve and Egwene help defend Fal Dara. Them being probably the single reason the keep stood but also almost dying due to their raw power being handled by someone who is overwhelmed by it is a suitably dramatic climax for them. I think they might have gone a little too far in how very dead Nynaeve was before being healed, but that’s a minor complaint to me. Perrin’s story was a weaker element here, if only because I don’t think it was established that he was trying to hold to the Way of the Leaf before this point. Like, he obviously talked to Rand about it last time, but I never heard him say that he was trying to stick to it. Makes Fain gloating about Perrin breaking from it seem odd, as I didn’t realize he was holding to it. Oh, and Fain, Light, he was great in this. All smarmy swagger, shit eating grin and gloatingly evil, all things Fain is at one time or another. Having him as this sort of background threat in the first season to set him up as, presumably, one of the main antagonists for next was well done. Johann Myers has already replaced my mental image of Fain, he’s that good. I should note, Loial isn’t dead, so don’t worry about that. I think Moiraine possibly losing her powers is the one change I’m not 100% on. I say “possibly” as what the Man did was visually distinct to me from how they Gentled Logain, so I don’t think he Stilled her. Rather, it looked like he put a Shield around her and possibly tied it off. Tying off a Weave is a skill that is known in the books but doesn’t look like it’s been used in the show. If it’s a technique they forgot since the Breaking, then I think The Man shielding her and tying it off seem likely. Remember, Saidin users can’t see Saidar weaves and vice versa, so an invisible wall to the power feels likely. If she is truly cut off, then a powerless Moiraine will at least be an interesting thread to watch. Also loved the Seanchan tease at the end. All I’ll say about them, aside from the name, is they are a powerful empire from across the sea and they’re not messing around. So yeah, I liked the finale, I liked the show overall, and I’m excited for season 2. I hope it drops sometime next year, but we must wait and see. Next time… I’m till thinking about it, but I’ll let you know tomorrow. Have a good night. 

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