Spoilers follow for The Wheel of Time’s fourth episode, “The Dragon Reborn,” which premiered Friday, Nov. 26 on Amazon.
The Wheel of Time focused on worldbuilding in “The Dragon Reborn,” explaining significantly more about how channeling works with some ominous implications for the protagonists. It’s an uneven episode, with the plot surrounding the Aes Sedai largely eclipsing the segments where Mat and Rand continue to be dogged by agents of the Dark One while Egwene and Perrin hang out with the pacifist Tinkers.
Robert Jordan filled his books with powerful women, but he wasn’t particularly good at writing them with complexity — most tended to be domineering and shrewish, which made it hard to like even the women you were supposed to be rooting for. The writers of the Amazon adaptation are doing much better in this respect, particularly with Nynaeve. They’ve captured her ferocious stubbornness and mistrust of the Aes Sedai without making her utterly infuriating. The chemistry growing between her and Lan is charming and she provides a good audience stand-in for an explainer on the deep bond between Aes Sedai and their warrior guardian Warders.
In Jordan’s books, a Green Ajah who has one Warder is typically married to him. But they’re also the only faction of Aes Sedai that can have multiple Warders. “The Dragon Reborn” makes the polyamorous implications of that explicit with the relationship between Alanna and her two warders, Maksim and Ihvon. But it’s the bond between Kerene Nagashi and her Warder Stepin that provides the true emotional core of the episode. Peter Franzen sells his love for Kerene and the agony of feeling his bond severed, making his fooling attempt to kill Logain Ablar feel honest. Kerene is a minor character in The Wheel of Time prequel novel New Spring placed into entirely different circumstances, showing that the showrunners are sometimes content to just borrow bits of Jordan’s work and rework them to suit their condensed timeline. Some hardcore fans might find that jarring, but it’s a necessary concession if this series isn’t going to run for decades.
The way Moiraine and Lan divide up into their separate spheres once they join the Aes Sedai camp provides for some strong parallel storytelling as they get reports on the current state of affairs in the White Tower. Along with Liandrin Guirale’s acidic contempt, these interactions sell what a minefield the organization is even if everyone’s supposed to be working together to keep the world from falling apart. The fact that Nynaeve’s ability to “listen to the wind” is a use of the One Power was hinted at when Egwene first channeled with Moiraine, but her manifestation at the end of the episode shows she’s capable of much more. She’s also clearly not excited about how much time this assuredly means she’ll be spending with the Aes Sedai.
The episode does a great job of building up Logain even if he starts the episode captive and ends it without power. He truly believes he is destined to save the world, even as shadowy figures urge him to paranoia, a conflict that Alvaro Morte sells in his mad-eyed zeal. The battle that ensues when his army tries to free him has the feel of a war film thanks to the living artillery of the Aes Sedai. Seeing how fiercely the Warders fight compared to how many Red Ajah fall alone really makes that group’s misandrist practices of not bonding with men seem foolish.
The side plots lay the emotion on thick but don’t do much else to move the story along. Barney Harris is doing such a good job portraying Mat’s declining mental health that it’s a shame that he’s already been replaced for Season 2. Tom’s story about what happens to men who touch the One Power is chilling, and works to drive home the seriousness of what the Aes Sedai have done to Logain. The fate of the family that helps Rand and Mat drives home that this show isn’t going to pull punches when it comes to depicting the brutality that the agents of the Dark One are capable of.
Egwene and Perrin’s adventures with the Tinkers is the weakest section. While the scenes of the radical pacifist group’s caravans are lovely, the segment just becomes a therapy session for Perrin to work through his feelings about accidentally murdering his wife, which is definitely the worst section of the show’s plot so far.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3lcdlWh
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