The Wheel of Time boss confirms Uno combined with another character

The Wheel of Time season 2 finale featured many spectacular scenes, but one of the most beautiful was when Mat Cauthon (Dónal Finn) sounded the Horn of Valere, summoning forth the spirits of past heroes to join him in battle against the Seanchan. Throughout season 2, Mat has been imprisoned, manipulated by the Forsaken, and told he will betray his friends by succumbing to his own inner darkness. In “What Was Meant To Be,” he proved the naysayers wrong in dramatic fashion.

“[We wanted to] make it have an emotional impact for Mat,” explained showrunner Rafe Judkins to Nerdist. “We needed a way to clearly communicate to the audience that one of his core character traits is that he doesn’t believe he’s a hero, but he is one. That’s a big part of what we wanted his story to hit hard to the audience who isn’t familiar with the books by the end of the season. This is a guy who is a hero, even if he doesn’t believe it.”

This epic moment for Mat was the culmination of a few different elements of his character from The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan. In the books, there’s room to introduce them all separately; the show streamlined things.

"There’s a couple of different things that happened for Mat in the books in terms of his ability to speak Old Tongue, the memories in his mind, the holes in his memories, the skills he has with the staff. There’s all of these various disparate traits that he has. Sometimes in the show, we’ll try to—Dave Hill from Game of Thrones always calls it fantasy duplication, where sometimes there’s multiple reasons that things happen and that one thing to look for in adaptation is how to bring it to one thing. Mat’s most iconic thing is blowing the Horn of Valere. We tried to tie some of these things to this moment of blowing the Horn of Valere. I think it actually tracks really cleanly and makes a lot of sense."

Confirmed: Uno Nomesta has been combined with Gaidal Cain

While the sounding of the Horn was important for Mat, it also gave viewers a huge surprise with the return of Uno Nomesta (Guy Roberts), who was killed off in the third episode of season 2. Uno’s death was a major departure from the books, where he sticks around for quite a long time. But when the Heroes of the Horn appeared out of the mist, Uno was right there with them, ready to do battle.

While this may seem like just a fun little easter egg for fans, Uno appearing with the Heroes of the Horn held an even deeper secret. “We did have that plan [for Uno] because we’re combining… This is a little bit of an Easter egg spoiler. Some hardcore fans will notice. But we signal very clearly another character in the books that we’ve combined Uno with. Two swords,” Judkins teased.

In The Wheel of Time books, there is a Hero of the Horn named Gaidal Cain who notably wields two swords. Cain plays an interesting role in the books, primarily through his ties to another Hero, Birgitte Silverbow, who was the blonde woman with a bow standing beside Uno in the finale. Birgitte is a major character we’ll see later in the saga.

While Birgitte plays a notable role in this battle in the books, she only appeared as a cameo in the season 2 finale. Judkins explained to Decider that this was because the show will eventually have to cast a recurring actor as Birgitte once she becomes more of an important player in the story. Instead, they focused on Amaresu (Hélène Tran), who will presumably only feature in this episode.

"There’s a lot of characters in the books that just sort of continue forever and it’s very happy that they all make it to the Last Battle, but we can’t really carry a cast that large. So we try to, as much as we can, give people a big chunk of time where they’re really involved in the show and then bring their time to a close and really give them a good payoff.We are kind of obsessed with her and we’re obsessed with the actress who played Amaresu. She’s just incredible in the fight. You just wanted each of those heroes to feel iconic in their own way.We showed Birgitte, but also, as you know, Birgitte plays a really large role in the books to come. So we want to someday cast an actress to play Birgitte who can really, you know, bring Birgitte to life in the way that she has to function in the show."

So what does all this mean for Uno/Gaidal Cain? Will we eventually see Guy Roberts back in the part once his tie to Birgitte becomes more relevant?

Maybe, and maybe not. The Wheel of Time is a show which heavily features reincarnation, however; in the books, Cain is eventually reborn as a child, but his identity remains a mystery. So the series could deviate and bring Roberts back, or not, depending on what works best for the story it decides to tell. We’ll have to wait for future seasons to find out.

The Wheel of Time season 2 is streaming now on Prime Video.

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