The Wheel of Time wanted to capture “the sex and the power” of Lanfear

The most recent episode of The Wheel of Time, “Damane,” ended in gloriously campy fashion as our hero Rand al’Thor went to sleep only to “wake up” in Tel’aran’rhiod, the world of dreams, shirtless and bound to a wheel in the middle of a vast desert (near the city of Ouarzazate, Morocco) while the Forsaken sorceress Lanfear reclined nearby, dressed like the most expensive S&M mistress on the moon.

It’s quite an entrance. In a behind-the-scenes clip, showrunner Rafe Judkins explained why this “first” meeting between Rand and Lanfear (they’d previously met when Lanfear was posing as an ordinary innkeeper named Selene) needed to feel big:

“We wanted to have this first real meeting between Rand and Lanfear have something really epic-feeling to it,” Judkins said. “It’s more about doing heightened versions of the real world. Like, this isn’t a costume you’d see Lanfear in outside the dream world. It’s the first time that the audience has really seen Lanfear as Lanfear, and so we decided that if she’s in sort of in her resting state in the dream world, what is it? And we liked the idea that it is this. We wanted to get that feeling of the sex and the power and the confidence that worked so well for Lanfear.”

There’s definitely a lot of sex and power and confidence on display. Maybe too much? I called the scene “campy” up top, and I mean it, but not in a disparaging way. I like that the show is leaning into the archness of it all, with a thousands-year-old dominatrix tempting Rand the Dragon Reborn to the dark side. I’m having a good time.

Things are tense among Moiraine’s family in clip from The Wheel of Time Episode 206

Tonight, a new episode of The Wheel of Time will drop on Amazon Prime Video. It’s titled “Eyes Without Pity,” and Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive clip!

EW has the clip embedded on their site. You can also watch it on the YouTube channel WoT Up (great name) below. In the clip, Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) has an argument with her sister Anvaere (Lindsay Duncan):

Things have been tense between Moiraine and Anvaere ever since Moiraine came home to Cairhien. Pike, who knows where Moiraine’s story is going, talked to EW about why that might be:

"That’s something that Moiraine does battle with, because she sees herself as somebody who will not ever break a promise. The promise that she made to find the Dragon Reborn and lead him or her to the Final Battle, that’s something that she takes incredibly seriously. I could play it without reading the books, but I wouldn’t have that deeper understanding of the Cairhien mindset and where she’s come from if I hadn’t."

There are only three more episodes of The Wheel of Time season 2 left! If it keeps going at this rate, we could be in for something spectacular.

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