The most recent episode of The Wheel of Time, “The Flame of Tar Valon,” was easily the best yet, in part because it centered so completely around the Aes Sedai sorceress Moiraine, played by Rosamund Pike. Up until this point, Moiraine had been somewhat inscrutable, a powerful sorceress working towards mysterious goals. “The Flame of Tar Valon” blew that wide open, revealing that Moiraine has been working with Siuan Sanche, the leader of the Aes Sedai, to find the Dragon Reborn.
“The Amyrlin Seat is one of, if not the, most powerful individual in the world in the books,” The Wheel of Time showrunner said of Siuan Sanche. “So, to bring them to life, casting was everything for us. And bizarrely, the first person that both Rosamund and I separately thought of was Sophie Okonedo.”
"I remember standing in the Two Rivers with her when we first talked about it and had that almost kismet sense of ‘if that was both of our number ones, it simply must be her.’ Then, months later, to have Sophie walk in and take the Seat itself was one of my favorite days on set in my entire career. She is luminous and authoritative and kind and imperious and everything that the Amyrlin needs to be."
Moiaine and Siuan must keep their goals secret from the other Aes Sedai, since the Dragon may be a man and it’s a given among Aes Sedai that men must have connections to the One Power cut off lest they go mad and break the world again, as they did in the Age of Legends.
What’s more, we learn that Moiraine and Siuan are in an intimate relationship that they also must keep secret. “In the books, it’s made very clear that Moiraine and Siuan are ‘pillow friends’ at the White Tower, which is code for an intimate relationship,” Judkins told Nerdist. “After that, the two of them were the only witnesses to Gitara Moroso’s foretelling of the birth of the Dragon Reborn. Since that moment, the two of them have lived their whole lives in tandem leading up to the moment we see them first meet ‘on screen’ in the books in Book Two (The Great Hunt), working from within and without of the Tower to bring the prophecy they witnessed to fruition.”
"In the show we’ve stuck exactly with that story. And while it’s only hinted at in the books that Moiraine and Siuan continued their intimate relationship into adulthood, we’ve brought that to the forefront. As a gay person reading these books in the ‘90s and ‘00s, to see Moiraine being represented as having a relationship with another woman in New Spring was such a huge moment for me, and even still today to have a queer person as a lead in a fantasy series feels almost shocking. In the writing of this episode, we tried to bring in a lot of those first scenes they had together in Book Two to their relationship (Siuan pretending to upbraid Moiraine in front of other Aes Sedai before the reveal that they are secretly in cahoots, etc.)."
While I’m a little afraid that the increased focus on Moiraine will short-change the other characters, the most recently episode did feel alive and vital to me in a way that the others didn’t, solid as they were. Moiraine may not have been the “main” character in Robert Jordan’s books, but after watching the show, I wonder if she should have been.
Rosamund Pike talks about Moiraine and Siuan Sanche’s relationship
Rosamund Pike herself also weighed in on the revelations from the new episode. “It’s surprising. It’s dangerous. It just adds so so many layers to Moiraine’s character. And you realize what the stakes are for her,” she told Out.
"I think there’s this tremendous tension when something that should be deeply private…has to play out in public…I think it will inform Moiraine going forward…Certainly, you’ll have more understanding of her with that in the background."
Pike has definitely helped make Moiraine a compelling character, and the one I’m personally most excited to watch as the show marches towards the end of its first season. “It’s been a joy. It’s opened up the world in new ways for me,” Pike said of the role. “I was drawn to her serenity. And then I find that once more, I’m playing a much more complicated woman than I anticipated — on a crusade to save the world, at tremendous personal cost.”
New episodes of The Wheel of Time drop on Amazon Prime Video on Fridays.
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h/t Nerdist