Them Old Dreams are Only in Your Head
THE WHEEL OF TIME – Season 2 – Episodes 4 & 5 – limited spoilers
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Aviendha (Ayoola Smart)
Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) tells Rand (Josha Stradowski) that Lanfear (Natascha O’Keeffe) (who has been masquerading as Selene) joined the Dark because many years ago she and Lews Therin Telamon were in love, but he broke her heart when he married another woman (Ilyena Moerelle Dalisar), and she thought the Dark could help her get him back. Moiraine further explains that Lanfear is skilled in manipulating the World of Dreams (Tel’aran’rhiod) aka The Wolf Dream.
Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) learns from fellow wolfbrother Elyas Machera (Gary Beadle) that they and the wolves communicate telepathically. (In the books, Machera was a warder before discovering he was a wolfbrother, and helped train Lan (Daniel Henney).
Elyas Machera
Moiraine visits her sister Anvaere Damodred (Lindsay Duncan) who lives in the city of Cairhein where Rand has been hiding and where, slightly to the north, Lanfear had been entombed. When the Damodred’s butler (Robert Russell) announces Moiraine’s arrival, he tells Anvaere that her “older sister” has arrived. Butlers are notoriously well-spoken, so this implies that Anvaere has a younger sister whom we have not yet met. In the books, Moiraine does have another sister, named Innloine.
Alanna Mosvani (Priyanka Bose) of the Green Ajah says something interesting about Moiraine to Lan, who is staying with her at Arafel in the borderlands: “I wish you could’ve known Moiraine before,” she tells him. “Something happened to her about twenty years ago now, a year or two before she bonded you. One day she was simply changed, the way water becomes ice and you look at it and wonder how it was ever water before.” Alanna does not elaborate further.
Painting of the young Damodred sisters
Meanwhile, in Falme
After capturing Nynaeve (Zoë Robins), Egwene (Madeleine Madden) , and the Daughter/Heir of Andor (Ceara Coveney), Leandrin takes them through The Ways to Falme, a city at the tip of the Toman Head peninsula. When Egwene wonders how her captor Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood) could bring herself to break the Three Oaths, Leandrin explains why she doesn’t take the oaths so seriously. “A thousand years ago,” she tells Egwene, “a great king [Artur Hawkwing] threatened to burn the Tower unless we bound ourselves with the Oaths. Our power didn’t frighten him as much as our humanity…If we look inhuman and predictable, like the tides, men won’t measure themselves against us.”
Leandrin presents her three captives as gifts to the Seanchan who are currently occupying the city. Nynaeve and Elayne promptly escape, but Egwene doesn’t make it out and remains in captivity. The two fugitives are captured by Ryma (Nyokabi Gethaiga) of the Yellow Ajah before Seanchan soldiers can locate them.
Verrin (Meera Syal) and Yassica (Katie Leung) of the Brown Ajah begin a Holmesian investigation into the disappearance of Egwene and the others.
In a particularly intense scene, Perrin helps Aviendha (Ayoola Smart) escape from Eamon Valda’s whitecloaks. (She asks him why, and Perrin tells her simply “People shouldn’t be in cages.”) Aviendha is from The Aiel Waste, which lies to the east beyond the Spine of the World. Those who live in The Waste regard the place as a punishment for some unremembered sin from long ago. Aviendha says that she has traveled west “searching for the Car’a’carn – our chief of chiefs”. She tells Perrin that she will go where he goes, because he saved her life.
Lanfear, whose name means “Daughter of the Night” in the Old Tongue, comes to Ishamael (Fares Fares) in a dream, disguised as Rand. Ishamael is pleased to find Rand in bed with him, but seems frustrated when he discovers who it really is. Still dreaming, he pours himself some wine. “People blame us for breaking the world,” he tells Lanfear, “but they didn’t bother to pick up the pieces. Three thousand years later, and they’re still bashing about with swords and queens.” Then he asks: “Do you know why the Great Lord woke me first? Why he speaks only to me?”
Ishamael dreams of Rand
His visitor suggests that it might be “because Moghedien‘s insane, Graendal‘s a vain idiot, and the boys couldn’t execute a plan even if they were under compulsion.” Ishamael corrects her. “Because,” he orates, “alone of all the Chosen, I actually believe in the dark. I believe the only way to stop all this suffering is to stop the Wheel itself. Stop everything.”
Ishamael also delivers the Horn of Valere to the Seanchan High Lord Turak (Daniel Francis), and instructs Min Farshaw (Kae Alexander) to bring her traveling companion Matt Cauthon (Dónal Finn) to Cairhien, offering to take away the visions of the future that plague her if she complies. He tells another darkfriend, High Lady Suroth (Karima McAdams), that he expects The Dragon (Rand) to join them and that “The Last Battle will be won right here, in Falme.”