The Wheel of Time co-author Brandon Sanderson harshly criticizes season 2 finale

Mat and the ruby-hilted dagger

One of the biggest thing Sanderson took issue with in “What Was Meant To Be” is when Mat Cauthon (Dónal Finn) ties the ruby-hilted dagger he took from the city of Shadar Logoth in season 1 to a staff to create a makeshift weapon. If you recall, the dagger infected Mat with a kind of magical darkness, and he needs to stay away from it.

“Sorry. I really tried. I tried so hard,” Sanderson murmured as the scene started. When his co-hosts expressed confusion, he claimed that the weapon Mat just made was “the ashandarei.” This is a reference to Mat’s bladed spear that he wields for most of The Wheel of Time books, which is in no way related to the ruby-hilted dagger. When Greene asked if Mat was just going to keep the ruby-hilted dagger spear as his ashandarei throughout the series, Sanderson said “as far as I know. Maybe they’ll change it, but…”

We’re not going to discuss the details for how Mat gets his ashandarei in the books, but if this is true, it’s a huge deviation from the text. Personally, I’m inclined to take it with a grain of salt. Sanderson told fans on Reddit the morning after this stream that he hasn’t read scripts for The Wheel of Time season 3, and the show’s Wheel of Time book expert Sarah Nakamura seemed to contradict his assessment that this was Mat’s ashandarei on Twitter X. Until we see next season, how exactly the show will handle Mat’s ashandarei remains a mystery.

Putting that aside, Sanderson still had a lot of issues with Mat using the dagger at all in the finale:

"I’m sorry, using the dagger on a spear is the same thing as using it. You’re touching it…it’s a metaphor for using the darkness and accepting it. It’s a metaphor for turning to the Dark Side…it misses the whole point. Mat’s arc is not about weaponizing his darkness. That’s Perrin’s arc, and finding that balance. Mat’s arc is very different from that, and doing this just bothers me. I don’t feel it was built up through the season that his arc would be about weaponizing his own darkness, and walking that line."

Brandan Sanderson has a “big problem” with Egwene’s story in The Wheel of Time season 2

Another thing that Sanderson really struggled with was the moment where Egwene kills her sul’dam, Renna (Xelia Mendes-Jones). Egwene’s torture at the hands of the Seanchan was a major storyline this season. In the books, Nynaeve and Elayne’s plan to sneak into the damane kennels actually works. They find Egwene and free her. In the show, Egwene manages to put a damane collar on Renna and then use the One Power to kill her without help from her friends; she frees herself on her own.

Setting aside the physics of how Egwene could do this when her own collar should prevent her from being able to, Sanderson’s biggest issue is what it means for Egwene’s arc:

"Now, Renna was even more evil…in the television show than she was in the books, but I still had a pretty big problem with this. I will have to see how it goes in future seasons, but Egwene freeing herself really undermines a whole bunch of what’s going on with all of this. Part of the idea that I feel Egwene needed to learn was there are some situations you can’t get yourself out of. That’s a theme of the entire Wheel of Time that goes right up until the ending in my last book. You need everybody. You can’t do it yourself. Jim said that was one of the themes of The Wheel of Time in interviews. And Egwene frees herself and then kills her tormentor…I can see the brutal, kind of more grimdark version being she has to do the killing, plus there’s an argument of, you know, leaving someone as [damane] is crueler than killing them anyway. But I really don’t like that she just got herself out. It’s setting up the heroes don’t need each other. They don’t need anybody."

Sanderson also points out that that by having Egwene free herself, Nynaeve had much less to do in the finale:

"I feel like Nynaeve and Elayne didn’t have a lot to do after the really cool White Tower scenes earlier on, which were fantastic. I loved Nynaeve’s Accepted test. But yeah, if Nynaeve let Egwene go here, then Nynaeve has something, right? And it’s okay, I like that they’re foreshadowing the block, but…"

All that said, I think it’s see how Egwene freeing herself is very empowering, especially to portions of the fanbase who are not privileged white men. This may be an instance of prioritizing a cool scene over magical physics or adhering strictly to the books, but it’s very easy to imagine why the show made this decision. Plus, we get that idea that the heroes can’t do it all themselves a few minutes later when Rand faces down Ishamael.

Brandan Sanderson doesn’t think The Wheel of Time “earned” Hopper’s death scene

Now we come to the pet owner trauma portion of tonight’s program. Sanderson, Hatch and Greene were all struck by the brutal moment in the finale where Hopper, Perrin’s wolf companion, was killed by Whitecloaks. Sanderson said that he “tried” to get the producers to include more scenes of Perrin and Hopper bonding before Hopper died, which also happens in the books, albeit in a different context.

“I don’t disagree with this whole sequence. You’ve gotta accelerate, and you’ve gotta have this moment,” he said of Hopper’s death. “That is good…but we didn’t have enough time with Perrin, or Hopper…to earn the moment.”

This is an interesting criticism. In many ways, Hopper’s death is Perrin’s inciting incident as a wolfbrother. Perrin meets Hopper along with a few other wolves in The Eye of the World, and if anything, the show has given Perrin and Hopper more of a specific connection than they had at this point in their relationship in the books. Hopper is only alive for around 100 pages before the fateful encounter with the Whitecloaks. Hopper does remain relevant for a long time afterward, but most of that development happens after his death.

Next, let’s meet the Heroes of the Horn: