The 10 most powerful looks from The Wheel of Time season 2

2. Lady Suroth: Nails for days

Lady Suroth’s outfit is a little like High Lord Turak’s, but it’s more tightly fitted, the colors are less chaotic, and I like the how precisely the train is arranged in front of her feet. Ditto the golden swooping shoulder pads. Most importantly, Lady Suroth is the first Seanchan leader we meet, and we are not ready for how different they’re going to look.

Like Turak’s costume, Suroth’s outfit is entertainingly impractical. You’re not playing kickball in that outfit. You’d be lucky to walk three steps without tripping. And then there’s the foot-long nails. Again, the Seanchan are aliens in this country. They’re traditions are strange. How many millennia must it have taken for foot-long nails to have become a marker of high status? Clearly, there’s a long history here we don’t know.

The final element that makes Lady Suroth’s outfit so effective is the mask. I’m repeating myself, but it makes her look unknowably odd. A lot of the Seanchan costumes incorporate weird masks. There’s Suroth’s mask, the damane mouth-stoppers, the fearsome masks worn by the Seanchan foot soldiers…Everything plays a part in making the Seanchan feel distinct from anything else we’ve seen before.

And now for our grand finale. The envelope, please…

1. Lanfear: Dominatrix from the dark side of the moon

When I first saw Lanfear wearing this outfit in Episode 205, “Damane,” I think I did a double take. Instantly, I knew that this was how I would remember her.

The context in which we first see this outfit matters. Before this, we’ve seen Lanfear in the guise of Selene, suspiciously well-dressed innkeeper. When Rand falls asleep and Lanfear meets him in Tel’aran’rhiod, we see her as she would like to be seen.

And apparently, how she would like to be seen is as a Power Rangers villain. She’s the black heart at the end of the kaleidoscope. She’s a dominatrix from the dark side of the moon. She is a gaudy, campy villain with three capital ‘V’s. This outfit flies out of nowhere and brains us.

I haven’t actually talked about the outfit itself yet. It’s neat. I like the pure black color, the strappy boots, and especially the winged headpiece. But again, what’s almost more important is how Natasha O’Keeffe wears it, reclining like this is no big deal; she’s the queen of the universe and she will see you now.

I applaud The Wheel of Time costume team for bringing a wide variety of looks for us to gawk at this season. On to season 3!

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