Let’s analyze The Wheel of Time’s gorgeous new character posters for season 2!

New posters for The Wheel of Time season 2 are here! What secrets can we find?

The Great Hunt for more Wheel of Time promotional material continues! This week, Prime Video dropped a slew of new character posters for its fantasy series ahead of the release of season 2. The huge ensemble cast of characters was always at the heart of the beloved Wheel of Time book series by Robert Jordan, and now they take center stage in these posters.

Each poster features a pair of characters. Some are exactly the sorts of pairings you’d expect, while others are a little surprising. Let’s run through them all!

Moiraine and Lan

First up we have the Aes Sedai Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) and her warder bodyguard Lan (Daniel Henney). These two have been at the center of The Wheel of Time TV show; they were the ones who whisked the rest of the main cast out of Emond’s Field back in the series premiere.

When last we saw them, Moiraine had just lost her powers after a confrontation with the Forsaken Ishamael. The poster’s caption teases that Lan and Moiraine will “struggle to adjust to their new relationship” without her magic. We can see hints of that in the poster itself, where they have their backs to one another.

Notice that there’s a hazy scene of a battle at the bottom of this and every poster. From the blonde hair and the strap around the head, we’re guessing the person fighting at the bottom of the poster is Uno (Guy Roberts), a one-eyed Shienaran who wears an eyepatch. It looks like he’s facing off against a Seanchan warrior to me.

Rand and Selene

Next is Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski), the Dragon Reborn, and a new character named Selene, played by Natasha O’Keeffe. Rand went into hiding at the end of season 1, leaving all his friends to believe he had died at the Eye of the World.

But in season 2 he’ll be making a new connection with Selene. According to the poster’s caption, Selene is an innkeeper from Cairhien, a city which appears in the book The Eye of the World but which didn’t show up in season 1 of the TV show. We won’t talk too much about Selene herself; book readers already know the dirt on her and we don’t want to spoil it for show-only folk.

Egwene and Elayne

From there we head to the White Tower, where the Aes Sedai train aspiring novices to join their ranks. The Wheel of Time season 2 is largely adapting the second of Robert Jordan’s books, The Great Hunt. That one features quite a lot of chapters set in the White Tower, so we’re expecting it to feature prominently in this season of the show.

Here we have Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden), who has seemingly gone to the Tower to learn how to better harness her magic following the showdown with the Trollocs at Fal Dara in the season 1 finale. She’s standing with a new character, Elayne Trakand (Ceara Coveney). Elayne is hugely important in The Wheel of Time books; she’s the daughter heir to the kingdom of Andor, and will become fast friends with Egwene, Nynaeve, and the rest of the Emond’s Fielders.

Nynaeve and Liandrin

Sticking with the White Tower, our next poster features Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins) alongside Liandrin Guirale (Kate Fleetwood), an Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah. Nynaeve is as stubborn as they come, and in the books she brings that stubbornness along with her when she goes to study at the White Tower.

Seeing Nynaeve paired up with Liandrin is interesting. The Red Ajah have an intimidating reputation among the Aes Sedai; they don’t use warders, instead relying on their own strength. Liandrin showed interest in Nynaeve during season 1, possibly as a new candidate for the Red Ajah. It makes me nervous to wonder what sort of pressures she might exert on Nynaeve in season 2.

Also, can we just pause for a second to talk about how Nynaeve, Egwene, Elayne and Liandrin all have the One Power swirling around them in their posters…but Moiraine doesn’t? We still don’t know if the loss of Moiraine’s powers is permanent, but that little detail stings. At least the magic weaves are all kinds of different colors, which is a welcome change from season 1, where they looked more monochrome.

Perrin and Aviendha

Leaving the White Tower behind, we visit with Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford). We’ve seen Perrin on the road with the Shienarans in the trailer for season 2, so we’re guessing he’ll be on the hunt for Padan Fain just like he is in The Great Hunt. We have to call out his golden eyes in this poster; that’s a side effect of Perrin’s wolf powers in the novels. The first season only featured a few flashes of Perrin’s golden eyes, but it looks like they’ll show up a lot in season 2. I like that.

Standing with Perrin is another new character, Aviendha (Ayoola Smart). Like Elayne, Aviendha is a crucial character and it’s incredibly exciting to see she’ll be making her debut in season 2. She’s a member of the Aiel, a desert-dwelling culture of fierce warriors. Aviendha is one of the warrior women known as Maidens of the Spear.

Mat and Min

Our next poster is very interesting, because this is not a pair we saw coming at all. This one has Mat Cauthon (played by Dónal Finn, following the departure of Barney Harris), and Min Farshaw (Kae Alexander).

First and foremost, it’s great to see more images of Finn as Mat. He’s a really important character and we’re all looking forward to seeing how Finn will play the role. But it’s also fascinating to see Mat paired with Min. Min has a rare gift to see people’s futures; we met her near the end of season 1.

Min and Mat don’t really spend much time together in the novels that I can recall, so this pairing seemingly promises some new material (or they had two characters left over and wanted to stick with the two-per-poster theme). We’re excited to see what the show does with these two!

High Lady Suroth and Ishamael

Finally, we end on some villains. The imposing woman is High Lady Suroth, one of the leaders of the Seanchan people played by Karima McAdams. The Seanchan run an empire on a different continent; we saw them make landfall at the very end of season 1. We’ve already seen a lot of the Seanchan in the trailers, so expect them to be in the season quite a bit.

Kudos must to be given to the costuming. Every single time I see pictures or images of the Seanchan, I’m struck again by how cool the show’s take on them is shaping up to be. They feel strange and different and severe, which is very much in line with how Jordan describes them in the books.

The man behind Suroth is…well, that’s hard to answer. The TV show has gone back and forth on whether to name him outright or just refer to him as “The Man.” But this poster’s caption names him, so let’s stop playing coy: that dude is Ishamael (Fares Fares), the foremost of the Forsaken, which is a group of magic users who swore themselves to the Dark One many generations ago.

The first three books try to fool you into thinking Ishamael is actually the Dark One, which is probably why Prime Video has flip-flopped on it. But here we have his name in official marketing materials. It seems safe to say that if the rest of the characters on the show don’t know his name is Ishamael at the start of the season, they will before long.

The Wheel of Time season 2 drops its three-episode premiere September 1 on Prime Video.

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