The Wheel of Time boss fought to keep the “Weep for Manetheren” scene

There are quite a few highlights from the first three episodes of The Wheel of Time. There’s the attack on Emond’s Field in the premiere, and the visit to the haunted city of Shadar Logoth in the second. But the scene that may have stuck with me the most is much quieter: it comes in Episode 2, “Shadow’s Waiting,” during a rare break from the action. Mat (Barney Harris) starts singing a song a capella, and his fellow Emond’s Fielders — Rand (Joshua Stradowski), Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) and Egwene (Madeleine Madden) join in. Moiraine (Rosamund Pike), the Aes Sedai sorceress who whisked them all away from their village to go on this grand journey, explains what the song means, giving a gripping monologue about the fall of Manetheren, a mighty civilization that once flourished the area now known as the Two Rivers.

This is a four-minute scene that consists of a song and a long monologue. Watching this told me that The Wheel of Time was concerned with more than just serving up action set pieces; showrunner Rafe Judkins clearly cares about the lore and the themes of the story, and Rosamund Pike does a wonderful job of making us care about what could have been pretty dry information.

“It was an uphill battle from day one to put that in the show because it is crazy to have your lead actor sit in a horse for an entire day and for four minutes of screentime doing a monologue about a city that doesn’t exist inside of the show,” Judkins told Decider about the sequence. “So, it was flagged by the other writers in the room, the studio, and the network. Every single person who encountered it throughout the process asked me to pull it. But I never pulled it.”

"I think there’s sometimes intangible things in books that make you fall in love with them and there’s something intangible about this Manetheren speech that makes you fall in love with this world. I just fought for it every step of the way, through script and shooting and the cutting process because I felt that it was something that was part of the heart of Wheel Of Time."

Producer Marigo Kehoe confirmed that the higher-ups at Amazon wanted to cut the scene down. Even Pike herself was a little hesitant about it. “Even when we had all the cast and crew, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, is anyone going [to watch]? Is that where Amazon’s gonna have everyone switching off?’” she remembered. “But they reassured me that it does hold your attention.”

"We know that the ‘Weep for Manetheren speech’ is obviously a very, very beloved moment for fans of the books, and it’s this moment where Moraine really instills in the people of Two Rivers what it means to come from that seemingly secluded village and how deep the — what she calls — ‘the old blood runs’ in those mountains, and how this amazing story of people with tremendous courage and fight fought for their home and their people years, years before the residents of the Two Rivers. It’s a very important moment in Episode 2 when Moiraine tells these kids she’s taken on a journey, that they have more reserves, I think, than they’re aware of. That the old blood runs deep in them and it might prepare them for what’s coming."

Thank goodness Judkins stuck to his guns, cause I think it makes the episode and maybe the whole season. “Everyone does like it now when they see it,” Judkins said, “but the path of getting it seen was a really hard one.” Worth it.

The “Weep for Manetheren” scene was hard to shoot, but worthwhile

As for how they shot that scene, it took a whole day of riding and filming. “[The actors] all had riding lessons, and then actually, spending a very long time getting the song written and the words right, and then finding out that the cast could all sing? I remember that that was an extraordinary moment,” Kehoe said. “[The actors] sang for real on the day and we recorded them.”

That singing thing came as a surprise to some of them. “Yeah, I remember getting an email saying, ‘Can you sing?’ and I was like, ‘What have I signed up for?’” Rutherford remembered. “It was a really lovely scene that day. It was freezing, absolutely freezing but then that was just Rosamund as well, just that absolute professional. She just delivered it in such a beautiful way and you can kind of see us hanging off of every word that she said.”

"She’s describing this really in-depth description of this world and this culture before our time. And I think the characters are slowly starting to realize that this journey is a lot bigger than themselves."

Daniel Henney, who plays Lan, and Pike herself also confirmed that it was absolutely that day. But again I say, worth it.

New episodes of The Wheel of Time air on Fridays.

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