The third season of The Wheel of Time is at an end, but we'll be picking through the fallout for quite a while yet. "He Who Comes With The Dawn" was a dark, epic finale to a great season of TV; as of this writing, it's currently got a 9.1/10 rating on IMDb, the second-highest out of any episode of the series. Season 3 as a whole is sitting at a 97% critic score and 83% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a huge step up from the previous two seasons. Nielsen also just released viewership data for the week that the season's show-stopping fourth episode dropped that put it in the top 10, another strong achievement. By all signs, The Wheel of Time season 3 crushed it.
We're still waiting for Amazon and Sony to officially renew the series, but the best way to stay occupied in the meantime is by looking back on season 3. Which episodes were the best? Which were the worst? Which left our jaw on the floor and our brains a melty pile of goo?
Let's go through and rank every episode of The Wheel of Time season 3 from worst to best, starting with...
8. Episode 303, "Seeds of Shadow"
Let's just make this clear right at the top: from where I'm sitting, there wasn't a single bad episode of The Wheel of Time season 3. But since we have to rank them, we're going to be making a lot of hard decisions.
The third episode of the premiere block, "Seeds of Shadow," set the stage for the season to come by moving a lot of pieces around on the board. Rand gets a few scenes traveling the Aiel Waste, Perrin meets Faile and starts to get a grasp on the situation in the Two Rivers, Mat duels Galad and Gawyn, and the Tanchico team departs the White Tower. Those White Tower scenes are the heart of the episode, and while they're plenty compelling, things play out a little too conveniently for the characters. For example, they find out that Tanchico has a specific death ritual which happens to reveal beyond a shadow of a doubt that Liandrin went there.
We did also get to meet a bunch of new Forsaken in this episode, which was pretty great. "Seeds of Shadow" is by no means a bad episode of television, but we have to have something at the bottom of the list, and this one's easiest to justify.
7. Episode 301, "To Race The Shadow"
The Wheel of Time season 3 opened with a thrilling sequence in Tar Valon, where the Black Ajah turned the Hall of the Sitters in the White Tower into a bloody ruin. After that, we get to spend some quality time with our heroes relaxing together as a group in the city before it all goes to hell and they are attacked by assassins sent by two different Forsaken, Lanfear and Moghedien.
"To Race The Shadow" is by far the best season premiere the show has had yet, and made it clear immediately out of the gate that The Wheel of Time was bringing its A-game this season. The only reason it lands as low on the list as it does is because the rest of the season is even better.
6. Episode 302, "A Question of Crimson"
After how much excitement went down in the premiere, the second episode of the season dials the action down a bit — while still keeping the tension very high. "A Question of Crimson" is a traveling episode for Rand and Perrin, whose groups set out for the Aiel Waste and the Two Rivers respectively. We get lots of great scenes for each of them, but the highlight is undoubtedly the White Tower, where Elayne Trakand's mother Queen Morgase arrives with a retinue that includes her cocky sons Prince Galad and Prince Gawyn, a scheming Aes Sedai advisor named Elaida who has an old beef with Siuan Sanche, and "Lord Gaebril," aka a Forsaken in disguise. There are layers to this episode, and the layers are juicy.
Morgase's trip to the White Tower stands out in part because this is the only episode of the season she appears in, and the show gives it an ample spotlight. The episode needed to do a lot of heavy lifting to establish Elayne's various family dynamics in a short amount of time, and it pulled it off splendidly, with great performances from all the guest starts making their debuts. Add in the fact that this episode has some incredible rewatch value for all the subtle foreshadowing around Lord Gaebril, and "A Question of Crimson" just beats out the rest of the season's premiere block episodes.
5. Episode 305, "Tel'aran'rhiod"
It really is very hard to pick favorites in The Wheel of Time season 3. "Tel'aran'rhiod" was an amazing episode that brought me to tears with its ending dream-travel montage...but the competition is fierce, and so it ends up squarely in the middle of our list.
This episode's biggest achievement is how dramatically it expands the world of The Wheel of Time, giving us meaningful moments for many characters along the way. We get to see Cold Rocks Hold and learn more about the Aiel; aboard a Sea Folk ship, Elayne and Nynaeve confront some important truths about how other cultures view the Aes Sedai; we get our formal introduction to the Dream World of Tel'aran'rhiod as Egwene trains with the Wise Ones, and more.
Back in the Two Rivers, Perrin staged a daring rescue to try and save Mat's sisters and mother, which leads to a fight with the Whitecloaks where he and the Aes Sedai Alanna are nearly killed. This episode truly has it all.
4. Episode 307, "Goldeneyes"
The penultimate episode of season 3 is a banger, as well as one of a couple episodes this season to focus exclusively on one location. "Goldeneyes" is all about the Battle of the Two Rivers, where a horde of Trollocs and Darkfriends descend on the Dragon Reborn's idyllic hometown. His childhood friend Perrin Aybara rallies the villagers to fight them off with the begrudging help of the Whitecloaks.
This is by far the best battle that The Wheel of Time has yet staged, up there with many of such sequences from comparable shows like Game of Thrones or The Witcher. The effects and stunts are great and the cinematography is on point. It's sheer mayhem front to back.
The other big highlight of "Goldeneyes" is getting to spend so much time with Perrin himself, as well as those closest to him like Faile, Bain, and Chiad. And of course, we can't forget the tragic sacrifice of Loial, who stood his ground before a charging army of Trollocs and sealed off the Waygate to prevent the Shadow from getting reinforcements. It's the sort of episode that will always stand as a highlight in The Wheel of Time's run, no matter how many more seasons it gets.
3. Episode 306, "The Shadow in the Night"
One of the difficult things that an epic fantasy series like The Wheel of Time has to balance is giving us enough time to care about the characters while still fitting in all the events it needs to cover in the time it has. Because each season only has eight episodes, those quiet moments where we get to enjoy spending time with the characters become all the more important.
The focus on giving our characters a breather is a huge part of why "The Shadow in the Night" ranks so highly in this season for me. Perrin recovers from his wounds in the Two Rivers and his romance with Faile begins to blossom, Rand learns more about Aiel culture at Cold Rocks Hold, and things get truly fun in Tanchico, where Nynaeve, Elayne, Mat and Min have a night out on the town while they gather intel about the Black Ajah. Don't tell me it didn't have you singing "The Hills of Tanchico" for weeks, there's no reason for lies among friends.
The sense of false security comes crashing down by the episode's end with a pair of outstanding scenes. The first is when Moghedien sneaks into Elayne and Nynaeve's room at their Tanchico inn and uses Compulsion on them, turning them into childish puppets who happily give away the dangerous artifact they procured only minutes earlier. The second sees Rand and Egwene have a bitter (but honest) break-up scene, before they're attacked by the Forsaken Sammael. Rand manages to defeat Sammael by channeling the One Power, but he accidentally kills a little Aiel girl in the process. The episode ends with Rand feverishly trying to bring her back to life. It's the closest we've ever seen to him acting truly mad in the series, and it's as compelling as it is chilling.
Because "The Shadow in the Night" balances the light and the darkness just as well as the Dragon Reborn himself, it lands high on my list for season 3.
2. Episode 308, "He Who Comes With The Dawn"
When I started putting this together, I originally had "He Who Comes With The Dawn" a little lower. But it's gradually inched its way up, because no matter how much I may have personally loved other episodes more, it's hard to deny the power of The Wheel of Time's season 3 finale.
After the epic action of "Goldeneyes," it was always going to be hard for The Wheel of Time to top it in the season finale. But this last episode is loaded with amazing scenes that give resolutions to so many members of the cast. The Tanchico crew pursue the Black Ajah to the Panarch's Palace, where Mat encounters an Eelfinn, Min uses her visions to save his life, Elayne channels Balefire and learns that Lord Gaebril is a Forsaken, and Nynaeve finally overcomes her block after being launched into the bay by Liandrin. In the White Tower, Siuan Sanche is deposed, stilled, and executed in a shocking series of events engineered by the Red Aes Sedai sorceress Elaida. Moghedien kills her fellow Forsaken Sammael. Moiraine fights another Forsaken, Lanfear, in the desert and narrowly defeats her. And Rand cements his place as the Car'a'carn of the Aiel by making it rain in the desert.
Part of what makes "He Who Comes With The Dawn" so compelling is that it's a very dark episode, which leaves a pit in your stomach long after the credits have rolled. This is no triumphant victory for our heroes, but a series of events which suggest darker days yet to come. When Egwene shouts for Rand to release the tainted magic he's taking into himself, he only stares at the camera before it cuts to black. We never see whether he complies, only that he's done being shepherded by others. It's chilling in the best way, and I desperately need to see what happens next.
"He Who Comes With The Dawn" marks some of the largest deviations from the book series yet, like killing off Siuan and Sammael, and omitting Nynaeve's fight with Moghedien at the Panarch's Palace. It's a testament to the episode — and the trust The Wheel of Time has earned with its storytelling — that it has gone over as well as it has with fans even with those sorts of bold decisions.
1. Episode 304, "The Road to the Spear"
Was it ever in doubt that "The Road to the Spear" was going to top this list? The fourth episode of The Wheel of Time season 3 is all about Rand and Moiraine's journey into the mystical Aiel city of Rhuidean, where they go on seperate vision quests that leave them forever changed. Rand relives the history of his blood ancestors, traveling back through time to see the true history of the Aiel. It was an ambitious, incredible sequence that's unlike anything I've ever seen on television. Rand actor Josha Stradowski played seven different characters over the course of each episode, many with incredible prosthetic work that makes the actor nearly unrecognizable. It's powerful and dials deep into The Wheel of Time's most central themes, as the cyclic nature of the conflict between good and evil is shown over the ages.
Meanwhile, Moiraine is shown glimpses of a thousand thousand futures, and nearly every single one ends in tragedy. If Rand's visions are a powerful odyssey, Moiraine's are a horrible acid trip gone wrong, each flash lasting barely the blink of an eye before either Moiraine or Rand is brutally murdered in some new setting. She comes away haunted by the knowledge that in order for Rand to make it to the Last Battle, she'll have to die somewhere along the way.
"The Road to the Spear" is one of the most unique episodes of the series, and the sort of thing that wouldn't work in another fantasy show. The Wheel of Time is only able to attempt it because of the deep lore of the series and incredibly vast source material from Robert Jordan, and the show pulls it off because of how strong and confident of a production it has become. "The Road to the Spear" is by far the best episode not only of this season, but the series as a whole. I can't wait to see how the show tries to top it whenever we get more seasons.
The first three seasons of The Wheel of Time are all available to stream now on Prime Video. We'll have our ear to the ground for renewal news.
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