The fourth episode of The Wheel of Time season 2 is here, which means that I can finally discuss my single biggest issue with the show. While I generally think this season has been a huge step up from season 1, there’s one plotline which I’ve really struggled to get behind: Moiraine and Lan adjusting to their new dynamic following Moiraine losing the ability to use magic in season 1.
I’m going to open the full can of worms below, which warrants a MAJOR SPOILER WARNING. The only way I can fully discuss my concerns with the show is by referencing things which happen in The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan, up through books 6 and 7, Lord of Chaos and A Crown of Swords. So if you haven’t read The Wheel of Time books and don’t want major plot points spoiled for you, proceed with caution.
The Wheel of Time and The Witcher made the same questionable decision
In Amazon Prime Video’s adaptation of The Wheel of Time, the Aes Sedai Moiraine Damodred loses her access to magic during a confrontation with the Forsaken Ishamael during the season 1 finale. In season 2, she’s dealing with what it means to be unable to touch the True Source and use the One Power.
In the novels by Robert Jordan, Moiraine never loses her magic. She remains a powerful sorceress for pretty much the entirety of the time we spend with her. So why did the TV show take away her magic?
The answer is that Moiraine doesn’t really appear much in The Great Hunt, the novel which forms the basis for this season. She mostly crops up a bit at the beginning and end, with a single chapter tossed in the middle. In that chapter, she and Lan are researching the Prophecies of the Dragon at Adeleas’ villa. We more or less see that adapted in the season 2 premiere.
Since benching the show’s lead actor Rosamund Pike for a whole season wasn’t an option, The Wheel of Time had to come up with something else to fill that time. They took away her powers, which gives her something to struggle with.
This is the same thing that The Witcher did with Yennefer in its second season, for pretty much the exact same reason. The Witcher season 2 adapted the book Blood of Elves, in which Yennefer does not feature heavily. The show had her lose her powers to give her something to do.
So two fantasy shows which highlight powerful women couldn’t find a way to develop those characters without taking away their powers, which isn’t the best look. In the case of The Wheel of Time, it’s also created some storytelling problems. The Wheel of Time is a much longer and more complicated book series than The Witcher, and this decision could create a butterfly effect that will make it difficult to adapt later events from the books. In “Daughter of the Night,” we started seeing what that could look like.
Lan’s plotline is all over the place in this season of The Wheel of Time
In Episode 202, “Strangers and Friends,” Moiraine threatens to have the Aes Sedai Alanna take Lan’s bond by force in order to get him to leave her alone. Moiraine tells Lan that he failed in his duty as a warder, that he is not her equal and that she wants him to go away.
Lan and Alanna never really spend time together in the novels, and Moiraine never sends Lan away like this. Instead, Moiraine tells Lan in The Great Hunt that she’s made arrangements for his bond to pass to Myrelle, an Aes Sedai of the Green Ajah, in the event that she ever dies. Lan doesn’t take this well, since Moiraine made the arrangements without his consent. But Myrelle has a reputation for rehabilitating warders who have lost their Aes Sedai, and Moiraine is adamant that she doesn’t want Lan’s skills to go to waste if the worst should ever happen to her.
The show is seemingly giving Myrelle’s story to Alanna, who is similarly a member of the Green Ajah with multiple warders. In “Daughter of the Night,” we see Lan actually go off and spend time with Alanna. She reassures him that she doesn’t think he’s going to kill himself, a common fate for warders who lose their Aes Sedai, because Moiraine isn’t dead; she’s just cutting him out of her life and masking their bond so they can’t feel one another anymore.
When I watched this episode for the first time, I shouted at my TV. Let’s get into why, and one more time: BIG SPOILERS are ahead.
So in the books, Lan does eventually have to confront what he would do if his bond with Moiraine was ever severed. In the fifth novel, The Fires of Heaven, Moiraine falls through a magical door ter’angreal while defending Rand from an attack by the Forsaken Lanfear. After that point, it’s assumed she’s dead since Lan can no longer feel her with his bond. It’s then that the Myrelle plotline really kicks in; Lan has no choice but to go to her since Moiraine already made arrangements for his bond to pass to her automatically.
On the show, the stuff about whether Lan might kill himself has its roots in that much later plotline with Myrelle. And in that context, it makes way more sense. Lan is in a situation that commonly causes warders to commit suicide, so it’s a pressing issue that can’t be avoided.
The show has shoehorned those ideas into the season 2 plotline with Alanna, where they make far less sense. Lan isn’t getting rehabilitation because Moiraine is gone, but because he can’t deal with her pushing him away. No one should even be remotely worried about Lan committing suicide in these circumstances. Moiraine is still around, so why would he? Just because she needs space?
Don’t forget: Lan is the last living king of a Borderlands nation that was swallowed by the Blight. In the novels, he very much has a personal mission to fight the forces of darkness. They address the idea of whether he would commit suicide because of the unavoidable mental backlash warders go through when their Aes Sedai bond is severed, not because he’s nothing without Moiraine. The idea that Lan would give up on life not because Moiraine was dead but just because she didn’t want him around feels like a disservice to the character. It’s also making the rules of magic in this world very confusing…