Zoë Robins breaks down Nynaeve’s big moment on The Wheel of Time

The Wheel of Time rolls on over at Amazon Prime Video, where Moiraine Sedai (Rosamund Pike) continues hunting for the Dragon Reborn, a messianic figure destined to save the world…or destroy it. The details are frustratingly unclear.

The problem is that we’re not sure exactly who the Dragon Reborn is, although we know if one of four youngsters from the town of Emond’s Field. At the end of the latest episode, “The Dragon Reborn,” another candidate presented themselves: Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins), who surprised herself by using the One Power to heal several warders and Aes Sedai who had been harmed by the False Dragon Logain.

“I feel like all the circumstances that you see on the screen and the beats the characters are going through really helped me to get into that head space,” Robins told Nerdist about her big moment. “And it helped with just how heightened everything was. You see at the end—obviously, Nynaeve has a moment where she channels and it takes everyone, including herself, by surprise. And I remember that day of just seeing everyone that I love and adore working with kind of writhing around on the floor, and Daniel [Henney] gasping for air and a blood pool around him. It wasn’t actually hard to get to those emotions, because looking around, it’s really quite awful.

"And also seeing Moiraine down, you know, someone that Nynaeve doesn’t necessarily think much of, but also I think—she wouldn’t like to admit [it]—but I do believe that she respects her. And seeing her in a state of not having any power, yeah, it’s a terrifying and really uncomfortable moment for Nynaeve. I loved shooting those scenes. I was absolutely spent after it, but I had a lot of fun."

Indeed, Nynaeve does have some problems with Moiraine, and indeed with all of the Aes Sedai sorceresses from the White Tower; that’s very true to the Nynaeve we meet in The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan.

But there’s a lot Nynaeve doesn’t know, and some things she thinks she knows that may not be true. “I think specifically for Nynaeve, she’s had an idea of who these people [Aes Sedai] are her whole life,” Robins said. “We see in episode one, her first encounter one on one with Moiraine, and she’s retelling the story of the Wisdom that raised her going to the White Tower and being turned away. So she’s felt some type of way about these people for a long time. What I think is really wonderful, and what I think maybe some fans missed from that retelling of events from Nynaeve, is that that might not necessarily be the truth. I think what Robert Jordan did so well is the idea of using the unreliable narrator. The jury’s out on whether Aes Sedai did actually do what Nynaeve said. But in any case, that’s meant that Nynaeve has very strong feelings towards these people.”

"Being around the Aes Sedai and spending a lot more time with Warders than Aes Sedai has humanized them in a way. Her way in to understanding the Aes Sedai is actually through the Warders and her relationship with Lan, which we see a little bit more of. I think there’s a genuine respect there. She sees him for who he is and sees the parallels between his devotion to Moiraine and her devotion to the Two Rivers kids. That’s ultimately where their initial connection sparks."

We’ll see where the connection goes…

Nynaeve is “a healer first” on The Wheel of Time

“The Dragon Reborn” gave us another battle scene when Logain’s army came to try and rescue their leader from his Aes Sedai captors. As it ends up, Nynaeve was originally going to have a bigger part to play in that fight:

"I think back to how we initially rehearsed and shot those scenes. Originally Nynaeve was killing like five, six, seven men. And that ultimately doesn’t make much sense for who Nynaeve is. She’s a healer first, you know what I mean? Self defense is one thing. She had no problem taking out those Trolloc fools. But Nynaeve is not someone that goes out of her way to inflict pain and hurt people. It’s, again, another circumstance that Nynaeve is put in where she’s forced to act, and it’s not necessarily what she perhaps wants to do, but if a man is coming at you with a spear, and you happen to have a little dagger on you, then, you know…You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I think the end of episode four leaves Nynaeve having to reckon with a lot of actions that she’s just done. She’s got to do a little bit of self-evaluation."

New episodes of The Wheel of Time drop on Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.

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