"For the land is one with the Dragon Reborn, and He is one with the land."
Hello everyone!
I'm sure, if you've been following along my reviews for a while, you could probably see this coming, not to mention I practically said as much in a few of my earlier ones leading up to today.
But how can I NOT review what is quickly becoming one of the greatest fantasy adaptations in this day and age?
Sure it had a rocky start.
Sure it kind of stood on wobbly legs for the first season and a half.
But it's found the footing it was looking for now, and HOT DAMN is it sure footing.
Without further ado, let's dust off our Great Serpent rings and brace ourselves, because we're looking at the third season of The Wheel of Time.
After a spectacular declaration of him being the Dragon Reborn back at the end of season 2 of the show, Rand and his buddies are now back in Tar Valon, recovering, and basically told not to do anything stupid by Moirane, who goes out and runs into none other than Lanfear, because Lanfear wants the same thing Moirane wants for Rand: to go to the Stone of Tear and claim Callandor, the object made specifically for male channelers.
The boys are having none of Moiraine's 'you stay inside' business and head out on the town, while the girls at least obey her orders, and Egwene reveals she dreams of her captor and tormentor every single night, through nightmares.
She also conveniently always wakes up with bruises after her nightmares, and it's later on we learn that this tormentor is actually Lanfear using the dreams as a disguise to go after the girl because Rand cares for her, and Lanfear is a psychopath.
Because their goals are MOSTLY aligned at the moment, and because Moirane will do anything to push towards her own objective, she and Lan allow Lanfear to play with reality a little to frighten our group, but another Forsaken uses this as a chance to attack; Moghedien sends one of her Grey Men in, and he badly wounds Nynaeve. Even Lanfear's shaken upon hearing this, and warns they need to get Rand out of the city.
As is the case in every great fantasy story, our group of characters goes separate ways - in this case, AGAIN - with Rand finally agreeing to leave Tar Valon, but not for Tear like everyone wants. He's going to the Aiel Waste, where he'll be least expected.
Egwene, who practically forced Siuan's hand to go through the Arches and become Accepted, tags along (now that she can) so she can protect him, but the rest of the group doesn't.
Perrin, Loial, and two of the Aiel who owe Loial a life debt after the whole Lanfear nightmare debacle, return to the Two Rivers, while Nynaeve and Elayne Trakand stay at the White Tower, along with Mat, who wants to learn whether the Aes Sedai can heal him, considering he has a head full of memories that aren't his own.
Which means our blog will now split a bit, too, as we're going to be tackling these plotlines separately, beginning with the Two Rivers one.
Perrin returns home to find that a lot of things have changed: namely, the land seems to be overrun by Trollocs, the White Cloaks have basically occupied the area and occasionally fight the creatures, and he's going to have to do something about this before things get worse. To top it off, he suddenly has to contend with a young woman called Faile, who, along with a weirdo Lord Luc who doesn't do much this season other than exist, is up in these backwoods hunting for the Horn of Valere.
Seeing as you and I know Mat blew said horn back in season 2, she's in for a disappointment there, but that's okay, she gets Perrin as a consolation prize!
Who, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what to do, but luckily runs into Alanna of the Green Ajah and her remaining Warder, Maksim.
See, the cold open of the show has Liandrin brought before the Amyrlin Seat, and she's accused of being Black Ajah, a supporter of the Dark One, and a fight ensues during which the other of Alanna's Warders dies (Siuan would have, too, if Moiraine weren't conveniently there to save the day) and the Black Ajah flee.
But Alanna's here where the old blood of Manetheren runs strong to create and raise an army with which they can fight the Dark One, and she finds a bunch of other female channelers because, well, of course she does. So she, Maksim and Perrin take up the task of forging the Two Rivers people into fighters that might be able to stop the invading Trollocs, but the White Cloaks are a pain in the ass.
Perrin unfortunately killed the leader's father, so now the leader doesn't want to do the right thing even when it's hitting him in the face, so Perrin says, fuck this, we'll just have to deal with it. He draws lines and battlements, and entrusts the children to the Tinkers, who are passing through at the time, and then the fight ensues. The Two Rivers people manage to seemingly hold back the first wave, but Alanna is badly wounded during a surprise attack, and everyone converges on the square in town.
Because, you see, even though the White Cloaks came to fight, they brought the enemy with them as Padan Fain was pretending to be one so he could get the Trollocs into the town. Thankfully, he gets incinerated later on, Perrin lets out his inner berserker, and afterwards when the battle's won, surrenders to the White Cloaks despite protestations, choosing to stop fighting.
Unfortunately, we lose our lovable and loyal Ogier when he sacrifices himself to remove the Waygate the Trollocs are using as a pretty portal, and we know there's more White Cloaks on the horizon from one of the final shots of the season, so Perrin's journey is FAR from over, especially as Faile is probably going to try and rescue his butt first chance she gets.
But switching to a different plot, we'll look at the politics of the White Tower alongside the plot of Tanchico, and yes, the song IS an earworm, I'll give them that much.
Siuan, both exasperated by the girls' actions in Falme as well as impressed, picks Nynaeve and Elayne to hunt down the Black Ajah, as she can't trust anyone else. Elayne skillfully persuades her mother, Queen Morgase, not to drag her back home just yet, but the queen does leave her two sons as well as advisor Elaida at the Tower, just because she can.
Learning that Tanchico might hold a clue as to what Liandrin's doing (and indeed, it's where she's originally from, where she discovered the One Power, killed her abusive husband, and had her son), the girls and Mat take off to figure it out (this after Mat kicks some serious butt after Elayne's brothers keep shoving their nose into his business instead of fucking their way through the Tower like the good boys they are). They take up with Min, originally Siuan's spy at the Tower, who knows Tanchico well, and start looking around as soon as they make landfall.
They find none other than Thom Merrilin, the gleeman who back in the day saved Mat's sorry ass, and who helps them out of a tight spot before joining in with the kids, as he has a thing about letting young ones die and all that.
Turns out, Mat's luck pays off when they find one part of what Liandrin's looking for, which is two bracelets and a collar that can be put on a male channeler to control him.
No guesses who they plan to use THAT on, especially as Liandrin's real keen on not dying by either Lanfear or Moghedien's hand.
Our motley crew lose their bracelet when Moghedien saunters in, compels Elaine and Nynaeve, and establishes herself as the creepiest of the Forsaken and the one to watch out for, but that doesn't stop them from following Liandrin and trying to get the collar first. Nynaeve actually finds it, but Liandrin takes it from her later, dumping her into the water in shackles.
This serves to help her break her block on using the One Power, however, and elsewhere, Elayne uses an artifact to kill another Aes Sedai to defend Thom (I swear, they want us to think he's her dad, or maybe they're actually going this route), while Mat walks through a weird doorway into an even weirder realm that houses an alien looking like a fox in human form wearing VERY high platform shoes.
Said creature promises Mat three wishes, and Mat wishes to somehow become immune to all magical powers in the world, to have the memories invading his thoughts removed, and to get the hell back home.
He simply forgets to negotiate the 'safely' part, so gets hung from the doorway for his efforts, but luckily Min's there to cut him down, and unfortunately messing with the mind isn't all that: he realizes he lost some of his own memories in the bargain, with no idea what they even were and just how said bargain even works.
So, basically with nothing to show for their efforts other than a few dead Black Ajah, the crew heads back to Tar Valon, where they'll be in for a nasty surprise.
Siuan, visited by Moiraine in a dream, should have been preparing the Tower to follow Rand all through the ten years she sat the seat, but unfortunately when push comes to shove, even her closest advisors are like, girl what shrooms you on because we want some, too.
To top it off, Elaida is jockeying for power and position, as she lost the seat to Siuan back in the day and desperately wants it, so it's an all-out faction war now, as Siuan's actually taken, accused of being a Darkfriend, and executed despite delivering the best monologue in show history to date, noting that Elaida stands for nothing, that the Light can only shine with what its users choose to do, and that she's been trying to make the world a better place all along.
It's sad to see the actress go, as the character was well-loved, complex and complicated, but Elaida has now been warned, she's appropriately terrified even though she has no clue why, and she unfortunately doesn't even know she's being played by her own supporters, who are secretly members of the Black Ajah, which she is categorically NOT.
It'll be super fun watching her fall flat on her face, I'm telling you.
And with that, we veer straight into the plot of our Dragon Reborn, the hero who doesn't want to be a hero, and who doesn't even have much of a plan heading into the Aiel Waste to begin with, so luckily the group gets picked up by the Taardad Aiel, who found them because Egwene accidentally dreamed her way into the dream of one of their Wise Ones.
Thus alerted, it's time to get these wetlanders to Rhuidean, the only city the Aiel ever built, although even they don't remember or know why anymore, and where they send their women to become Wise Ones, and men to become chiefs.
Rand and Moiraine both enter the city, despite the Shaido Aiel protesting, and Moiraine finds the female counterpart to Callandor, the Sakarnen, probably the most powerful Aes Sedai artefact she could have randomly picked up, hidden with the Avendesora, the Tree of Life that she knew the Aiel had, but didn't know where.
The why and how is explained through Rand's visions as he walks the Glass Columns of Rhuidean, reliving the lives of his ancestors:
not only does he finally learn who his real parents are, the Aiel chief and the Damodred princess who became an Aiel Warrior following prophecy, but he learns the Aiel were initially servants to the Aes Sedai back in the Age of Legends, and big about pacifism. Latra Sedai entrusted them with the Sakarnen when the Breaking happened, and the Aiel split into groups, each carrying a tree sapling with them, to find a place where they would be safe, where the tree could grow again, and where the Sakarnen wouldn't be found.
Turns out, being pacifist is hard work, and so is finding a place you aren't even sure exists, because the Aiel split even before reaching the Waste, one group becoming the Tinkers, who uphold the Way of the Leaf but don't remember why, then split again when some young men killed the dudes who thought stealing their girls would be the smart thing to do. These, the ones who picked up weapons and thus broke their oaths most profoundly, became the Aiel we as viewers know and see today.
They protected the remnant of the Aiel who finally reached the place where they decided to build Rhuidean, but by the time the city was complete they were all dead, and Latra Sedai, having found them in her old age, created the Glass Columns for the Aiel Chiefs to walk, and remember, and wait, marking them with dragon tattoos so they would be known as the People of the Dragon.
It's during this segment we also get to see Lanfear as an Aes Sedai as she drills into the Dark One's prison, and sends the whole world to shit, which is the most polite way of putting it, but also the very best, and this episode is *chef's kiss* just amazing.
At the end of it all, Rand, double-marked as the Aiel chosen Chief of Chiefs, walks out with Moiraine in his arms, and now things get even uglier.
Egwene, who's been learning this whole dream-walking thing, finds out that Lanfear's been the one hurting her ... and Lanfear's also hooked up with Rand, as we all know from season two, but he only learns of what she's been up to when Egwene confronts him, and they FINALLY break up, because man do they not work. Egwene wants power and authority and more than what Rand is hoping for, which is a quiet existence he can never go back to.
Their fight is interrupted when Sammael suddenly pops up for a surprise attack, led there by Lanfear so that he can get beaten when Rand absent-mindedly zaps him with lightning after seeing his loved ones in danger, so that he can teach Rand all about male channeling, something Moiraine can't.
Unfortunately, a little girl dies in this debacle, and Rand attempts to resurrect her, which, also unfortunately, doesn't work. This means he's pretty down in the dumps when they go to meet the other Aiel so he can be proclaimed in front of everyone, and it's even worse because he's dumped Lanfear for good so she's on a scorched Earth kind of path now.
Hell hath no fury, and all that.
The Forsaken have kind of been playing one against the other all season long, but now Lanfear's on the war path she warns Rahvin, posing as Morgase's consort, that Moghedien isn't a safe bet for him, when they see how spectacularly she killed Sammael (so much for that teaching job, it'll have to be someone else; then again, how our group just up and LEFT the dude is hysterical to think about). It's time to take down the Dragon and kill him, once and for all.
The Dragon who doesn't even want to be one thus faces off with Couladin, one of the Shaido Aiel who Lanfear puts tattoos on and has him parade around as the Chief of Chiefs, and I find it absolutely ridiculous how the Aiel are like:
all our prophecies say that the leader will be raised outside the Waste and come from another land, but this guy's been here all his life, so let's agree he's the Chief of Chiefs because he says so!
Rand basically rolls his eyes, and his sleeves, tells the Aiel the truth about their history - aka, you broke oaths, and you're also incredibly stupid, stupids - and summons the One Power to bring rain back to the Waste, where it hasn't rained in ... who knows how long.
This miraculous feat earns him the proclamation of Car'a'carn, finally, and in the background, Moiraine and Lan manage to badly wound Lanfear after drawing her out to fight, but now basically everything is in motion.
Our group is decidedly splintered, some of its strongest players either wounded (looking at that sword through your gut, Moiraine), locked up (Perrin, you an idjit) or dancing a fine line between madness and reality (you good there, Rand bro?), and they don't even have the backing of the Tower anymore, considering Elaida's getting all cushy in her new rooms. The world itself now knows the Dragon has GOT to be around, because Rand changed the weather so spectacularly Mother Nature itself bowed before him, and the Forsaken may be one short yet again, but some are royally pissed off.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is: hold on to your butts, it only gets bigger and more complex from here on out!
Which is one of the many, many reasons to love the Wheel of Time series. It's not just about this Chosen One, it's about what happens when he's actually chosen, what challenges he faces, and how he deals with it (at the moment ... not at all well, let's put it that way).
This season was the strongest season of the show yet, hopefully convincing enough to earn a season four renewal. The different departments, from costumes, to music, to CGI, to writing and cast - especially these last two! - have finally found a way to harmoniously co-exist and bring us a BANGER of a show.
We've got a ways to go yet, but I can honestly say I haven't enjoyed the previous two seasons as much as I've enjoyed this one. Whether it's the beautiful rendering of One Power weaves, or Lan basically proposing to Nynaeve with the ring of Malkieri queens, there's a little something for everyone to enjoy and love.
And I, for one, can't wait for that renewal. Come on, Amazon!
xx
*images and video not mine
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