The Wheel of Time breaks out the plot twists for “Daughter of the Night”

After a massive three-episode premiere last week, The Wheel of Time season 2 continues with “Daughter of the Night.” The season’s fourth episode contains a few major turning points and big plot twists. After some slower moments in the first three episodes, things are heating up as we head into the back half of the season. Read on for our SPOILER-FILLED review.

The Wheel of Time Episode 204 review: “Daughter of the Night”

Right from the start, it’s clear that “Daughter of the Night” is going to be a heavy-hitter, because any time an episode begins with a cold open of the show’s main villain Ishamael (Fares Fares), you know important stuff is happening.

During this scene we watch Ishamael release Lanfear, one of the Forsaken, who rises soaked in blood. This scene is cinematic, with great sound design and effects, and it gave me chills. I loved all the little touches, like the fact that Ishamael doesn’t use his hands when he channels (something Alanna told Egwene in the season premiere was more difficult), the fact that “Lanfear” is one of the words he mutters in his invocation, and the iconic “Blood feeds blood” line from the novels. It’s a great way to start the episode.

Just drink the damn tea, Moiraine!

A large chunk of “Daughter of the Night” is set in the city of Cairhien, where Rand (Josha Stradowski) has been hiding out since the start of the season. Now that Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) has arrived, things are getting more complicated.

Moiraine already knows that Rand is in Cairhien. She’s spooked into tracking him down after she reads that poem in the first episode. The poem predicts that Lanfear, one of several elite magic users sworn to the Dark One long ago, will reemerge and find her new lover. Ages ago, Lanfear had an affair with Lews Therin, the original Dragon. Since Rand is the Dragon Reborn, he might be in trouble.

Moiraine is all business, immediately setting about her search by utilizing various spies. However, her sister Anvaere (Lindsay Duncan), who you might recognize as the noble who spoke with Rand at the party in Episode 3, has other plans.

The Wheel of Time is doing a really excellent job of portraying the sorts of familial difficulties that Aes Sedai might go through as they age much slower than their loved ones. We’ve already seen Liandrin tending to her elderly son, and in this episode we see how Moiraine acts around her “little” sister Anvaere, who is an old woman. It’s a fascinating dynamic, and Duncan and Pike are terrific at playing off one another.

Moiraine continues to be just awful to people this season, though. Yes, she’s on a mission, but would it kill her to take five minutes to drink tea with her sister whom she hasn’t seen in decades? As it turns out, no it wouldn’t: Anvaere eventually outmaneuvers Moiraine by revealing that she in fact has control over the Damodred spy network in Cairhien, and that the only way Moiraine will find Rand is with Anvaere’s help. So Moiraine has no choice but to drink tea with her sister. May it be the first step in thawing out her icy attitude.

Lanfear revealed

The biggest reveal in “Daughter of the Night” is that we finally find out innkeeper Selene’s (Natasha O’Keeffe) dark secret: she’s actually the Forsaken Lanfear. The episode begins with Rand and Selene cleaning up after he accidentally burned down her inn, before she convinces him to go for a nice quiet retreat at a cabin in the wilderness.

It’s there that Lanfear finally starts making moves. This is a reveal that book-readers have all been waiting for; Lanfear doesn’t use the Selene moniker for longs in the book series, so it’s nice to have her name out in the open. The show has done a commendable job of seeding in hints that something isn’t quite right with Selene, including in “Daughter of the Night.”

Rand and Selene’s vacation is interrupted by a Myddraal. Rand channels in order to kill it. That Myddraal was almost certainly sent by Selene herself in order to force Rand to use his powers, after which she could manipulate him into spilling his secret to bring him even deeper into her confidence. The layers of manipulation in these scenes are excellent, leading to a chilling moment where Selene shows Rand that she, too, can channel, before Moiraine intervenes.

Moiraine rightly points out that she’s still bound by the Three Oaths which prevent Aes Sedai from lying, so Rand knows she’s telling the truth about Selene’s true identity. Selene has been lying to him all along. The episode ends on a fantastic cliffhanger as Moiraine and Rand run while Lanfear regains consciousness after Moiraine slits her throat. I’ve had a few issues this season with how the show handled Selene’s introduction and Moiraine’s loss of magic in particular, but this sequence was a great way to bring those threads together while launching us into the season’s next chapter.

Liandrin makes her move

Selene’s true identity was far from the only big reveal we got in “Daughter of the Night.” This episode’s final 20 minutes or so feature a compound effect where one reveal stacks on top of the other in way that I found very satisfying.

Following her traumatic experience with the arches in Episode 3, Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) is doing some soul searching. That leads to a wonderfully-acted conversation with Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood) where the Aes Sedai reveals that she’s learned that the Shienarans, Perrin and Loial were captured by the some mysterious army out west. Predictably, Nynaeve immediately sets plans in motion to go help her friends, enlisting Egwene (Madeleine Madden) to come with her. Elayne (Caera Coveney) sneaks after them too, because she’s Egwene’s friend and that’s what friends do.

But lo! It was all a trap. Liandrin appears before the three young women and knocks them unconscious with the One Power. What’s her deal?

While the episode doesn’t spell it out, we do find out through another reveal that Liandrin is working with Ishamael, who turns out to be the unknown contact that she sent Min (Kae Alexander) to meet. This pretty explicitly makes Liandrin a Darkfriend; don’t forget, we saw a black Aes Sedai ring during the Darkfriend meeting at the beginning of the season. Whether it belonged to Liandrin or some other Aes Sedai, it seems safe to say that Liandrin is in league with the bad guys.

Ishamael offers to give Min what she wants: taking away her future sight, which has been more of a curse in her life than a blessing. But in exchange, she has to bring the oblivious Mat (Dónal Finn) to Cairhien. We don’t get confirmation about why they must go to Cairhien, but considering that Ishamael probably knows Lanfear is camped out there, that seems the likely reason. We can only hope Min and Mat cross paths with Rand and Moiraine before they fall into Lanfear’s clutches.

Perrin makes some new friends

One thing I was really glad to see in this episode was Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) hanging out with Elyas (Gary Beadle) and a bunch of wolves. Perrin’s wolf connection has been much more subdued in the TV series than in Robert Jordan’s novels, but now at last the show is digging into it. Beadle is great as Elyas (though his wig did distract me a little bit). The dialogue is fun; Perrin is scared about what all this means for him, to the point where he actually wonders whether he’ll turn into a wolf himself. “Don’t be stupid,” Elyas snaps, making me laugh harder than anything else in the episode.

It was really refreshing to see Rutherford and Beadle act opposite so many actual animals; those wolf actors brought a lot of personality to the scenes, especially the one playing Perrin’s buddy Hopper. It’s also a good way to get a feel for how Perrin’s powers work. All those visions he was seeing weren’t glimpses of the past, but the wolves communicating with him about what they had seen or inferred. Elyas reveals that this bond is a deeply subconscious one, to the point where he and the whole wolf pack had been sharing in Perrin’s nightmares about killing his wife.

In an interesting retcon, Elyas also reveals that he was the one who brought the wolves to rescue Perrin and Egwene from the Whitecloaks in season 1. It’s a cool nod to the novels since that’s around the time Perrin and Egwene actually meet Elyas in the books.

Lan spends some quality time with Alanna and her warders

We’re going to end with the part of the episode I struggled the most with: Lan’s (Daniel Henney) retreat with Alanna and her warders, Ihvan (Emmanuel Imani) and Maksim (Taylor Napier). There’s a lot that’s good about these scenes: the actors all give wonderful performances, the setting and music and costuming are beautiful, and the direction is rock solid.

But I still scratch my head over this storyline, because it’s mashing up a bunch of different ideas from the books in ways that don’t make much sense to me. In the novels, Moiraine forces Lan to consider what he would do if she ever died, which leads to all these discussions about how warders often kill themselves when their Aes Sedai are killed. The idea that Lan might kill himself because Moiraine doesn’t want him around is a huge leap logic-wise from the book.

It also raises questions about how exactly the Aes Sedai bond works. Moiraine is either stilled or shielded from the One Power right now, but her bond to Lan remains intact. As Alanna says, the bond wasn’t “ripped” from Lan the way it is when Aes Sedai die, Moiraine is “taking it.” This implies she’s able to mask her bond with Lan even without access to the One Power. Maybe it’s some kind of meditative trick?

I don’t know how the show is going to explain this, but in my opinion it does need to be explained. Lan and Moiraine are making some major deviations from the source material here, which can be totally fine so long as it also makes sense in the context of the show. But I don’t know how Moiraine is able to shut out Lan when she can’t access her magic or why people are treating Lan like he could die even though his Aes Sedai is still fully alive. When book changes are made, there is extra onus on them to make sense, and so far this plotline just doesn’t for me, and that’s not even taking into account how it’s mashing up elements from several different novels and characters.

There’s still plenty of time this season for Lan and Moiraine’s story to resolve in a satisfying way, but right now it remains one of the weirder adaptation choices.

The Bullet Points of Time

• Nynaeve is wearing an Accepted outfit in this episode; note the sleeves embroidered with the colors of all the Aes Sedai Ajahs and her fancy new ring.
• Alanna tells Lan that Nynaeve is going through arches faster than any Aes Sedai since Cadsuane. That’s our second mention of Cadsuane Sedai, a crucial Aes Sedai character from the book series yet to be introduced in the show.
• Elyas mentions that he goes out of his way to avoid women who can channel; that’s a nice touch, since there’s some book backstory about him having some bad run ins with Aes Sedai in the past.
• We found out some more about Min’s backstory in this episode. It seems like her relatives used to force her to give fortunes as a sideshow exhibit. Messed up.
• Anvaere mentions that her son is supposed to marry the queen. Anvaere doesn’t have any children in the book, but my best guess is that this might be a reference to Galad Damodred. In the novels, he’s the child of Anvaere and Moiraine’s half-brother Taringail Damodred. Galad is also Elayne’s half-brother. Maybe the show is taking a different approach and setting him up as a potential suitor for the daughter-heir of Andor?
• Alanna references something that happened to Moiraine 20 years ago that changed her. Maybe she’s referring to Moiraine discovering the prophecy which would lead her to hunt for the Dragon Reborn?
• Mat and Min are playing dice! Mat plays a lot of dice in the books and has a complicated relationship with luck.
• During Liandrin’s conversation with Leane, we find out the Amyrlin is not at that White Tower and that the Aes Sedai know that villages are under attack on the western side of the continent but just don’t care. And of course, Liandrin’s veiled threat is sure to perk up the ears of book-readers.
• Moiraine and Logain had a great scene together as well, though I’m very curious where the whole “Logain will teach Rand” plotline is going.
• A final shoutout for the layered lies of Lanfear/Selene. The writers really deserve props for how they handled this, and all the subtle things Selene is referencing. Those scenes will have a lot of rewatch value once we learn more about her connections to Rand and Lews Therin Telamon, the previous Dragon.

Verdict

The Wheel of Time continues to improve in its second season. “Daughter of the Night” finally did away with the pretenses and revealed one of the series’ biggest new villains, along with the hidden malicious intentions of another. We got wolfbrother stuff, we got Aes Sedai and Moiraine and Rand and Forsaken…there was a lot of movement. Given the big cliffhangers, something tells me Episode 5 is going to be an exciting one.

Episode grade: A-

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