Rand walks a “very ugly and raw” path in The Wheel of Time season 2

The second season of The Wheel of Time premieres tomorrow! Rand, Moiraine and all the rest will return to prepare for the battle against the Dark One, the ultimate evil at the root of the world.

The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series with a capital “F”; there’s magic aplenty in this world, and some characters are so powerful they’re a danger to each and every person they come into contact with. Take Rand al’Thor, played by Josha Stradowski. Rand is the Dragon Reborn, a messianic figure with power the likes of which hasn’t been seen in millennia. The last time the Dragon was around, he was corrupted by the Dark One and took part in an event called the Breaking of the World. With a name like that, you know it wasn’t fun.

And now Rand is staring down that same corruption, as do all men who can channel the One Power, aka use magic. “It’s just overwhelming,” Stradowski told Entertainment Weekly. “Being able to access that much magic, I feel like there are no words to describe how powerful that is. For women channelers, there is an education program, there’s a school that you can go to, but for men, there’s nothing. It’s just completely open. You have to figure it out yourself, and also in secret, because you can’t talk about it with anyone.”

"That learning curve is just very ugly and raw for men. For women, it’s surrendering, but for men, it feels like you can’t surrender because then you die. You have to fight it, you have to dominate it. It’s like a war inside of your own body, and then that’s also tainted by the Dark One, which drives you mad. Rand is just trying to cope with that. He’s looking for a teacher, but who is out there to teach him?"

“Separation anxiety is the key” to The Wheel of Time season 2

One potential teacher is Moiraine (Rosamund Pike), an Aes Sedai sorceress and the only person from Rand’s old circle to know that he’s still alive; he faked his death at the end of season 1 to avoid endangering his friends, which every man who can channel inevitably does. But Moiraine has problems of her own. To start, she is now cut off from the One Power, which for channelers is a pain worse than death.

“She has a lot of things to defend herself from and a lot of people to protect, and now she has to do those same things without access to her greatest weapon,” Pike said. “She’s feeling an aching loss of the One Power. It is a sweetness, it’s a life force. I think it would be akin to entering a deep period of depression, but Moiraine is resilient and she still has all the other things that she always had: Her guile, her ability to manipulate others and think ahead, her layered plans, her foresight and intuition.”

We’ll see this change reflected in Moiraine’s costuming and hair; expect fewer blue outfits, at least at the start of the season when Moiraine is at her emotional nadir. But Moiraine has a mission that keeps her going:

"Her ultimate loyalty is to one thing and one thing alone, which is preparing the Dragon Reborn to face the Last Battle. Everything else that matters to her will fall by the wayside in pursuit of that goal and honoring that commitment. So she will keep that information of Rand being alive even from Lan [Daniel Henney]. She’ll keep that to her chest at the expense of everybody close to her. When there comes a moment where she does confess it, it’s to hurt somebody else and say, ‘this is how much this matters to me. I will prioritize this above all else. And if that means hurting you in the process, then so be it.’ That’s when you see what this woman is made of."

Moiraine and her warder Lan are indeed going through some rough times in season 2. “Separation anxiety is the key to season 2,” Pike said. “We’ve got everyone separated from the person who they got comfort from in season 1. Moiraine quickly separates from Lan, and that was interesting. I discovered Moiraine with Daniel. He was Lan by my side, and that relationship was very strong, we were a duo. We moved in a kind of symmetry and pairing, and so without that, she seemed like she was missing a limb really. But that made way for all these new actors to come to the fore.”

Meanwhile, Rand is apart from his friends and his friends are apart from each other. Egwene and Nynaeve are at least in the White Tower together, Perrin is out hunting the Horn of Valere, and Mat…well, we can’t give away everything.

The first three episodes of The Wheel of Time season 2 drop September 1 on Amazon Prime Video.

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