THE WHEEL OF TIME – Season 1 Episode 6 – SPOILERS

Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) has been on a secret mission for the Amyrlin Seat (Siuan Sanche, played by Sophie Okonedo) to locate the Dragon Reborn. (Siuan and Moiraine were the only ones present years ago when another Aes Sedai, Gitara, saw the rebirth in a vision, and that prompted Moiraine’s mission.) Siuan, who was a Blue like Moiraine before ascending to the Seat, says that if the other sisters were to find out about their pursuit of the new Dragon, they would both be “stilled” (the female equivalent of being “gentled”).

Moiraine and Siuan are the first lovers in the series. They have been together for quite some time, and their relationship must be kept secret, mainly to preserve the illusion of the Seat’s impartiality. After masking her connection to her warder, Moiraine uses the One Power to somehow teleport (?) into her lover’s chambers. She tells Siuan that she has found the Dragon but isn’t sure which of five people it is, and is considering the possibility that the Dragon’s talents have been split between several of them, having heard from a gleeman the tale of a “many-headed dragon”. (Siuan‘s name is structured similarly to the name of the son of Arent, Loial. It has three vowels with a consonant on each end. It is an oddity. I like oddities.)

Leandrin (Kate Fleetwood) also has some sort of unsanctioned relationship going on. To stop her from interfering in things, Moiraine tells her: “I know about the man you meet in Northharbour”. (This is surprising, given Leandrin’s apparent contempt for men.) Moiraine assures her that she will, if necessary, reveal his location to the other sisters, which would result in (unspecified) dire consequences for the man.

Moiraine is forced into refusing to answer a direct question from the Amyrlin Seat (Aes Sedai cannot lie), and must be punished for that. Since the leader of the Blue Ajah has ordered her to remain in the Tower, Siuan must exile Moiraine so that she and the Five from Two Rivers can continue the secret mission, the second part of which is to travel to the Eye of the World and finally defeat The Dark One. (Siuan has had dreams that suggested that The Dark One is presently in a weakened state, and susceptible to attack.)

In accepting her exile, Moiraine must swear on the Oath Rod that she will not return to the White Tower until summoned by Siuan. In the episode’s best scene, Moiraine does not exactly repeat the oath as Siuan says it, but changes the language to include “honour and obey” turning it into something very much like a wedding vow. Then she is dismissed from the chamber and all the others ceremonially turn their backs on her bringing to mind the way the Klingons turned their backs on Worf in “Sins of the Father” (STTNG Episode 3.17).

Moiraine and Lan (Daniel Henney) ride to a stone structure outside the city where they are joined by Loial (Hammad Animashaun) and the Five from Two Rivers. Of the five, only the two women, Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) and Egwene (Madeleine Madden), were allowed to meet Siuan and those two must have explained to the others what the Amyrlin Seat told them, because this conversation happens:

RAND: “We’ve all heard of The Ways in stories. but none of us know what they are.”
LOIAL: “Ancient pathways out of time and space. One step in the Ways could be a hundred miles in our world. One breath the equivalent…”
MOIRAINE: “The fastest road to the Eye of the World.”
EGWENE: “And what’s there, at the Eye?”
MOIRAINE: “The Dark One’s prison, where he was trapped by the Last Dragon at the cost of almost everything. And now one of you will finish the job you started in your previous life.”

Note that Moiraine interrupts Loial before he can describe the distortion of time by The Ways. Moiraine explains a bit more of their mission, stressing the dire consequences of failure. (Trollocs will eat everyone and the world will burn, which sounds quite a lot like the real-world threats of plague and global warming.) Then she uses the stone structure and the One Power to create a portal.

From what we can see of the other side of the portal, it is dark and cave-like. Four of the Five follow Moiraine, Lan, and Loial through the portal, but Mat (Barney Harris) cannot overcome his doubts and remains behind when the portal closes. Earlier, Moiraine cured Mat of his connection to that dagger from Shadar Logoth, but also said that he still had darkness within him. Did indecision alone make him remain, or has someone (possibly Leandrin?) paid him to spy on the others’ activities? Another (unlikely) possibility is that he has become a servant of the Dark. With Mat gone, two female and two male Dragon candidates remain. It might be that the Dragon Reborn is only one person, but others are there to prevent the madness by bringing forward hidden aspects of the Dragon’s personality.

The Wheel of Time Episode Seven

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The First episode of Season 3 will feature Shohreh Aghdashloo as Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan, and will premiere on 13 March.
THE WHEEL OF TIME can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.