Ever since The Wheel of Time finale aired, lots of new fans have been wondering about the identity of the villain that Rand faced off against at The Eye of the World. Referred to only as “The Man” in the credits, this character haunted the dreams of our heroes throughout the season, appearing as an apparition with fiery eyes. While book readers likely knew right away who this character was, Amazon has been decidedly cagey about revealing the identity of The Man, so much so that some began to wonder whether the television show would be reworking the character altogether.
However, we do have a couple of confirmations of who The Man is, so we can lay any fear of him being some other character to rest. We’ll be getting into SPOILERS for The Wheel of Time show and books below.
Who is The Man in The Wheel of Time?
As longtime fans of the books suspected, The Man is not the Dark One (thankfully), but is Ishamael, also known as Ba’alzamon in the first three novels. We got a recent confirmation of this during an episode of the Intentionally Blank podcast, where Brandon Sanderson, who finished writing The Wheel of Time books after original author Robert Jordan passed away, talked a bit about The Man. You can hear the discussion around the 21:00 minute mark.
After Sanderson referred to the character as Ishamael, Intentionally Blank cohost Dan Wells asked him to explain a bit more. “This guy is basically the Dark One’s right hand man, and the leader of the Forsaken,” Sanderson said. “And he was also Lews Therin’s good friend in the past.”
So we have a confirmation there that should basically surprise no one. The Man, played by Fares Fares, is Ishamael. However, Sanderson wasn’t the first one to spill the beans on Ishamael’s identity — Amazon actually did that themselves.
Why is Amazon hiding the identity of The Man?
As YouTuber Daniel Greene points out in the video above, Amazon originally named Ishamael on their website, but later removed it. So the more interesting question here is why the production is hiding this character’s identity when he’s so well known by the fandom. The answer is that they aren’t doing it for the diehard fans of The Wheel of Time…they’re doing it for everyone else, and it is totally the right call.
With 14 massive tomes and one prequel book, there’s an awful lot of source material in The Wheel of Time. If you’ve read all the books, or even read them multiple times, it’s easy to forget that the identity of Ba’alzamon, the name of Ishamael’s fiery-eyed avatar, is actually a mystery at first. The fact that Ba’alzamon isn’t the Dark One is a twist in the final chapter of the third book, The Dragon Reborn. In that novel, Rand has his final showdown against the fire-eyed version of Ba’alzamon in the Stone of Tear. After Ba’alzamon is vanquished, Rand and the rest of the Emond’s Field Five think that he’s killed the Dark One. It isn’t until Moiraine points out that the being Rand killed left behind a human body that it becomes clear it wasn’t the Dark One.
"“I can be sure [it wasn’t the Dark One] for the simplest of reasons, Nynaeve. However fast decay took it, that was a man’s body. Can you believe that if the Dark One were killed he would leave a human body? The man Rand killed was a man. Perhaps he was the first of the Forsaken freed, or perhaps he was never entirely bound. We may never know which.” — Moiraine, The Dragon Reborn Chapter 56, “People of the Dragon.”"
Egwene then puts the pieces together from an ancient text she was given that Ba’alazamon and Ishamael might have been the same person. This gives us our first hint of confirming that the supposed “Dark One” Rand had fought at the climax of the first three books was Ishamael. Considering how the books unraveled the mystery of Ba’alzamon’s identity, it makes total sense that the show is taking its time with it as well.
Season 1 of The Wheel of Time is available to stream on Prime Video. Season 2 is currently in production.
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