Long before it was a hit fantasy show on Prime Video, The Wheel of Time was one of the most successful fantasy book series of all time. Author Robert Jordan penned 11 volumes of the main series and one prequel before his untimely passing in 2007. After that, up-and-coming author Brandon Sanderson was selected to finish the series using Jordan’s notes and a ton of support from Jordan’s wife/editor Harriet McDougal and her team.
The final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, marked its 10-year anniversary over the weekend. To celebrate, Sanderson appeared on The Dusty Wheel Show to talk about his experience working on the book. The far-ranging discussion between the author and The Dusty Wheel’s Matt Hatch covered all sorts of intriguing topics, including some deep dives on the decision-making process behind some of the novel’s more shocking twists and turns. Sanderson also revealed an enormous secret about the final book, one which casts certain elements of the ending in a new light.
We’re going to talk about a few of the highlights from Sanderson’s interview, but first, a MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t read A Memory of Light, turn back now. I mean it. We’re going to be discussing the ending of The Wheel of Time in detail below.
Brandon Sanderson is “not the definitive voice for The Wheel of Time” anymore
The Wheel of Time was not Brandon Sanderson’s creation, so even though he wrote the last three books in the saga, he can’t claim to know exactly what original author Robert Jordan intended in every instance. Over the years, he’s debated theories with fans, sharing what he’s able to share and acknowledging when “evidence-based” fan theories have the one-up on him.
“I am not the definitive voice for The Wheel of Time, right now in particular,” he explained. “Even when I was writing it…I could be the definitive voice if I wanted to be. Anything I wanted to canonize into the books I could, and I made the choices I made very deliberately to try to preserve things I thought that Robert Jordan wanted to be left a mystery.”
Naturally, he made a Lord of the Rings analogy to set us nerds at ease: “As I often say, I was Sam carrying the Ring for a while. I gave up the Ring after I finished The Wheel of Time, and I stopped being the definitive voice for The Wheel of Time. And so I can only give you my impressions and recollections.”
Brandon Sanderson explains how the body swap worked in A Memory of Light
Humility aside, Sanderson’s impressions and recollections are rather comprehensive. When writing the books, he worked off extensive notes compiled by “Team Jordan,” which helped him write as engaging and powerful a tale as he could.
One particular part of the ending that was outlined for him by Team Jordan was the fate of Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn. In the novel’s final pages, Rand finds himself locked in a duel with the Dark One that stretches across realities. He’s also confronted by a man named Moridin. Moridin is a reincarnated version of Ishamael, the karmic rival and former best friend of the previous Dragon, Lews Therin Telamon.
It’s eventually revealed that Rand and Moridin swap bodies in their final moments. Moridin, now living in Rand’s body, dies, leading everyone to believe the Dragon Reborn has breathed his last. Meanwhile, Rand, in Moridin’s body, sets out to live a normal life now that his duty to overcome the Dark One has been fulfilled.
But how exactly did the body swap happen? Sanderson confirmed the accuracy of a fan theory which posits that when Moridin and Rand both used balefire during an earlier clash in Shadar Logoth, their magic crossed and “entangled” their souls, which made it possible for their souls to switch bodies. “I believe the balefire entangling, connecting their souls is canon,” Sanderson said. “I believe that that is legit the way it happened. I think teased it and stuff…I consider that straight up canon, personally. And I wrote the books as if that were the canon answer.”
He also discussed something shared with him by Jordan’s widow/editor Harriet McDougal, that “the soul that wanted to live found the body that wanted to live, and the soul that wanted to die didn’t go to the effort, or something to that effect.”
"That’s the best answer we have. That phrase I use there, like that comes straight from the [Robert Jordan]. It might be filtered through a few people, but it at one point came from the source, and so you can hold to that explanation pretty firmly."
Sanderson admits that he hadn’t anticipated that this would be how Rand al’Thor’s story ended before it was revealed to him by Team Jordan, but that he found it a satisfying conclusion to the character’s arc:
"What Robert Jordan was looking for was for a chance for Rand to just put down the weight and go live a life. And I can only assume that he knew once you’re Rand al’Thor, you can’t do this without being recognized. Even your description is super distinctive. And so the idea of putting him in another body seemed like a perfect way for this to happen, and for…you know, the idea that the Dragon has died, there’s the corpse we can hold a funeral, you know and things like that, is a fitting end. It’s such an Aes Sedai answer to ‘the Dragon Reborn has died’ that it’s like a fitting end philosophically to the series as well."