Brandon Sanderson reveals huge secret about The Wheel of Time ending

Brandon Sanderson reveals a huge secret about The Wheel of Time: [REDACTED] lives!

As intriguing as Sanderson’s explanation of the body swap is, that wasn’t the biggest bombshell. He recalled how he approached finishing Jordan’s series by trying to get into the headspace of each character, imagining what their “ideal situation” would be if the story went their way. For many, like Rand, the answers were obvious or laid out in Jordan’s notes (“he wants to be left alone for a while”), but for others this was a far more difficult process.

That brings us to Lanfear, one of the Forsaken who constantly influences events from behind the scenes throughout The Wheel of Time. “I asked the question, ‘what does Lanfear want?'” Sanderson recalled. “And my answer was, ‘Lanfear is screwed,’ because no solution to this puzzle, that is an obvious solution, ends with her in a good situation.”

"Because if the Dark One wins, she’s screwed, right? She has been playing her own game. Everyone knows it. She’s way down on the totem pole right now, everyone hates her. Dark One wins, she is just…it’s a terrible, terrible situation for her. The good guys win, that’s also terrible for her because they’re gonna hunt down the remaining Forsaken and they’re going to you know, take them out. You don’t leave Forsaken around. And if the good guys win, that means they’re stronger than the Dark One, there’s no hope for [Lanfear]."

Sanderson imagined how “the best schemer of them all” would get out of this impossible dilemma. “What she needs is everyone to think she’s dead, but the good guys to win. If all the other Forsaken get taken down and she’s the only one, and no one knows she’s alive, the world is her oyster. She is suddenly one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful being alive. Nobody knows it, she can go into the shadows and do her thing.”

Lanfear spends much of A Memory of Light toying with Perrin in order to use him to help her overcome Rand after his battle with the Dark One. But in the final moment, Perrin seemingly breaks out of his magical compulsion and snaps Lanfear’s neck, ending her life. However, this is all happening in Tel’aran’rhiod, the world of dreams.

But Sanderson reveals that…Lanfear survived that encounter! She survived The Wheel of Time. As of this writing, Lanfear is still out there in Randland somewhere, doing whatever it is that Lanfear does.

Sanderson has been surprised that more fans didn’t pick up on this twist, or call him out on Lanfear’s odd behavior in A Memory of Light. The plotline with Lanfear and Perrin feels tonally off; she’s a great schemer, but makes a lot of weird choices in that final book, including helping Perrin in his fight against his nemesis Slayer and announcing her intentions to subdue Rand with uncharacteristic clarity during the novel’s final chapters. According to Sanderson these were intentionally designed to clue readers in that something was amiss.

"So the whole plot on her side was she needed to give something plausible that when it got back to Rand if he lived, he would believe that this all happened. And so the whole idea of playing with Perrin and things like this was to give as credible a witness as she possibly could to her demise so that there would be no question in the minds of the heroes if she lived. And then she also got the bonus of supporting Perrin to try to make sure that the good guys won."

This was always Sanderson’s plan for Lanfear, and one he came up with rather than something left for him by Jordan. The Dusty Wheel’s Matt Hatch is one of the few people who knew about Lanfear’s survival; Sanderson revealed it to him before the book’s release during the BETA read for the novel. The author even exchanged emails with Harriet McDougal about Lanfear’s fate when he was writing the book so that he had a record of it in case he was ever accused of retconning the story after it’s release, like J.K. Rowling and her many addendums to Harry Potter.

So there you have it: one of the last big secrets of The Wheel of Time revealed. I don’t know about you, but I’m itching for a re-read. All those Lanfear and Perrin scenes are going to hit quite differently.

Season 2 of The Wheel of Time TV show is slated for release sometime this year, which means we’ll most likely see Lanfear onscreen sometime in the coming months.

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