Love’s usually a bad idea. Still, we allow it to happen, or this life would be intolerable.

— Stephin

An uneven episode with moments of real tension – and moments that can feel contrived and overly indulgent. We begin in the city of Tar Valon a month after where we left off. Once again, the sets are stunning. The cityscape is an intricate display of white stone, rainbow decor and wildlife from around the world. The inhabitants are bedecked in glistening tunics, and wealth and prosperity seem to drip from every corner.

We spend a significant amount of time on the posthumous bond between an Aes Sedai and her warder. Which would be fine if it served the wider story but Stephin’s (Peter Franzén) crippling depression without Kerene (Clare Perkins) leaves the audience mostly cold. Afterall, we barely know them. The gravitas of these events isn’t fully felt until we see Lan’s self-composure shatter. Perhaps out of guilt (from what was essentially a failed suicide watch) or grief Lan’s deconstruction is gutwrenching. And all the more so for the unspoken mutual pain between him and Moiraine. There must be a reason we are seeing all this – will the bond between Moiraine and Lan be threatened? Will they lose each other? The nature of their relatonship does not appear romantic or sexual (although that is definitely an option going by the friskiness of the sexy Aes Sedai-warder triad). Stephin describes love as what makes life tolerable, a definition Lan quickly dismisses. This suggests Lan values other things more, like duty and purpose. Yet their exchange could be more prescient, foreshadowing the challenges to come. Perhaps it will be love that comes between Lan and Moiraine.

There are things worse than death and apparently one of them is madness, as Mat asks Rand to kill him before he becomes like the false Dragon. While madness is a useful plot device and Mat’s fear feels very real, it is a rather hackneyed portrayal of mental health where hearing voices is the biggest bad imaginable. The reality is up to one in ten people will hear voices in their liftetime and of those who do, some would not be considered clinically ‘mad’ as the voices do not cause them distress. There is also the possibility of recovery – either through silencing the voices or finding a way to co-exist with them. But, granted, it is medieval fantasy and the madness is interwoven with the magical contamination of the One Power.

It’s become more clear that flat characterisation is the result of bad writing, rather than bad acting. When Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) tells Rand (Josha Stradowski) about how Egwene’s tenacity ensured her survival from a gruesome childhood illness, it’s emotionally pitched to have an impact but Rand’s cheesy one-liner ‘sounds about right’ tunes the audience out. This episode tries to breathe life into Egwene’s character but honestly it feels like hot air. We get a tired fiesty-girl-from-the-village stereotype with very little to substantiate it. Her tough talk against Valda, the Children of Light captain, comes out of nowhere and it is Perrin that eventually saves their sorry asses.

But while the Wheel of Time may lack character development, it does give us nail-biting tension. Egwene and Perrin’s predicament looks dire – we know Valda is brutal and out for blood and Egwene’s powers are in their infancy. She tries to appeal to his own principles, ‘a man of the Light cannot kill a girl who’s done nothing wrong!’ but the righteous have a unique ability to the twist truth to suit their own agenda. Like any religious fundamentalist, Valda is utterly convinced that his understanding of the divine is the understanding of the divine. He believes that humans were never meant to access the One Power and that any ‘witches’ who touch it ‘walk like gods amongst men’. The irony being that in his enforcement of these beliefs, he wields more power than the people he condemns (even the Aes Sedai). Of course, it is also the gall of these women, these ‘witches’ to believe they are somehow above men. It does not seem like too far a stretch to think that whoever Valda encountered, able to touch the source or not, would have been subject to his torture and denunciation. Those who are dogmatically ‘guided’ by the divine, like Valda and Dana, appear to be the most dangerous – whichever side they are supposed to serve. So much so that the differences between spiritual opposites – Light and Dark – seem not so great at all.

The Wheel doesn’t want us to do better, it wants nothing. It is like saying the rain wants something.

— Moiraine

Nynaeve is the Dragon Reborn! The idea that Nynaeve numbered amongst the potentials had already been hinted at: she was young and already in a position of power as village Wisdom, survived two battles and could track Lan. Her power is ferocious – a ‘raging sun’ as promised – yet it is a healing rather than a destructive force. Almost getting eating by a trolloc and stabbed by Logain’s army couldn’t provoke her powers. Nynaeve knew Moiraine was dying but again…nothing. But seeing Lan’s throat slashed unlocks her identity. She cares for Lan, perhaps even romantically if those hooded looks are anything to go by, and this seems to make the difference. She respects him too, readily admitting that he is much more than the ’two-legged lapdog’ she originally took him for. When his death seems near certain, her agony allows her to tap into her power and restore his life. It seems it is the people we care for that inspire the greatest acts. Attested to first by The Traveling Woman’s vow of non-violence to honour her daughter’s death and then by Nynaeve’s transformation.

Of course the Dragon reborn had be a woman. If this world works in dualities, as the Dark and the Light would suggest, than a female dragon must follow a male. The gender flip also aligns with the legend surrounding the Dragon Reborn as healing the world rather than breaking it, like the first Dragon. Since The Dark One contaminated the One Power so that male channellers cannot wield it without going mad, a female Dragon seems the only answer.

Moiraine knows almost immediately that Logain is only a pretender and a shadow of the Dragon reborn. Unlike the King who Logain turned to his cause with mercy and vague promises for a better future, Moiraine cannot be so easily beguiled. She sees through the shallow optimism that The Wheel itself wants to do better this time. The Wheel is an impersonal force that shapes the world, much like the elements or nature itself, and to ascribe it an anthropomorphic will is nonsense. This feels like a direct dig against the monotheistic religions and the faith they place in a God who acts in the world. The Wheel of Time is more akin to ancient, and modern, spiritual thinking that understands our lives as structured by a kind of universal energy. As more is revealed about The Wheel, the less we know for certain. It is mysterious and potent; an endless flow of energy and life. But rather than an immediate cycle of reincarnation The Wheel is described as being the source and returning point for all conscious beings who will only eventually be reborn into the world (it took thousands of years in the case of the Dragon). Logain’s lack of wisdom exposes him for what he is – another male channeller on the edge of madness. Fitting then that the Dragon Reborn herself is known as a Wisdom, wise beyond her years.