Last week, The Wheel of Time aired one of the most ambitious episodes in its entire run: "The Road to the Spear," where chosen one Rand al'Thor (Josha Stradowski) and his Aes Sedai mentor Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) journeyed into the sacred Aiel city of Rhuidean. This is a key part of Robert Jordan's book series, and it was equally important for the TV show. Over the course of the episode, Rand goes on a heart-wrenching vision quest where he experiences important events in the lives of his ancestors, laying bare the history of the Aiel. Meanwhile, Moiraine is subjected to the Wise One's trial of the Three Rings, which bombards her mind with glimpses of possible, often tragic, futures.
Each of those visions required new costuming and sets — or in the case of Stradowski, prosthetics to make him look like completely different people. Filming "The Road to the Spear" was one of the most complicated challenges The Wheel of Time has yet attempted, but the results speak for themselves. As of this writing, it's rated 9.5 out of 10 on IMDb, the highest rating for any episode in the entire series.
We caught up with director Thomas Napper, who helmed "The Road to the Spear" as well as the season's third episode, "Seeds of Shadow." Napper shared his experiences filming this iconic episode for the show, and discussed what it took to pull off the myriad visions which blew viewers' minds. Watch the full interview below, or read on for a transcription edited for length and clarity:
DANIEL ROMAN for Winter Is Coming: First off, congratulations. Episode 4 is out, and it's currently the highest-rated episode of the series of all time on IMDb. I imagine this has been the culmination of quite a lot of work for you. How are you feeling now that your two episodes from the season are out in the world?
THOMAS NAPPER: Yeah, it's been kind of overwhelming. The response has been pretty cool, to be honest. You never know how things are gonna go down. And I think [showrunner Rafe Judkins] said in an interview a couple of weeks ago that it was either going to be the most hated episode of all time or the most loved, and he couldn't quite tell which one it was, and I didn't know either...you just don't know how it's gonna sit because it's such a crucial kind of opening up of the history of the show. It's a massive kind of time slice through the Aiel culture and the way it works, and also...helps you to understand time within the show, I think above and beyond everything else. So I hope people find their feet with it. It took me ages to kind of feel like really secure with it because on the page it was just overwhelming and it felt like...it was gonna be a real challenge to make it.
WiC: Speaking of the challenge of it, we see Josha Stradowski (Rand) experiencing six different lives throughout this episode, of his character's ancestors. Which of those was either the most fulfilling or interesting — or challenging — to film?
TN: I think they're all challenging in different ways. I would be interested to know how Josha feels about that. For me, because we've done quite a lot of thinking beforehand — we'd been working on the characters, the prosthetics, the costumes for months prior to actually beginning the process — but Janduin was the first one in the sequence and then also the first on that we were gonna do. And it starts with a huge fight sequence which is kind of echoing Tigraine's fight at the end of series 1 that [director Ciaran Donnelly] shot, which is [an] iconic fight sequence with a pregnant woman killing multiple warriors on Dragonmount. A really memorable scene...and that's the level we're coming in at. It's her husband, and it's Josha. So it felt like we were coming in, the bar was quite high...there was quite a lot of pressure on that.
And yet somehow Josha and I had been talking and working on the characters so much that we just felt totally in the zone together about what we were doing. And it became kind of enjoyable because we felt that Janduin was like a beast in war...he was gonna fight, he was gonna be nasty, and that felt kind of fun to go with it to begin like that. And then he finds Tigraine, his dead wife, and the baby's gone, and we go through that intense emotional scene with Tigraine,..and Josha just felt so in the zone, he felt so present with that performance. And then it turns to rage and then it links back to the columns. And that was our first chapter.
So it was just really intense, quite intimidating but kind of really intense to do. And then I just felt like Josha was just so well prepped, and he just knew what he wanted to try and achieve. Then we found this kind of real emotion in the scene and really beautiful moment and so...I have to say that one.
WiC: On the opposite end of the spectrum, you had a lot of Moiraine flashes as well, and those are all very quick flashes with a rolling camera rig. I'm sure that putting those together had its own challenges in terms of sets and costumes and schedules and everything. Can you talk a little bit about how those scenes came together, and was there any specific one of those visions that was maybe the most memorable for you to work on?
TN: Oh gosh...I mean, she's going to have thousands and thousands of visions, which you know, on the page is like, "Well, hold on a second guys..." [Laughs] So there were lots of lines in the script that were different visions, What I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve with it was this feeling of powerlessness, so that she is able to see her futures play out, but she's not able to interact with them. She's only able to witneess them, curcumnavigate them, and then they're gone. And before they go, they go upside down so it feels kind of out of control. So they have a feeling of...destiny unfolding, like you can't stop this, like being in the Wheel, right?
So it's sort of a one hit deal and so it meant working a lot with fight choreographers and the stunt team to choreograph the action. Jan Petrina's the stunt choreographer extraordinare, and then [Marek Svitek's] his assistant who is also brilliant. And we worked building the scenes so that you could see everything as it unfolded. It was kind of like working out dance moves...I know it doesn't look like it in the finishes scenes, but they're really specific moves. And they had to be rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed.
And at the same time as that we were building the camera, because it didn't exist. It's called a rollover rig and we had to kind of engineer it. A Czech engineer called Tomas worked with the director of photography and myself developing this camera system. And they botch kind of came together, so we were rehearsing and building the scenes, designing and engineering the camera and the rig, and then testing it. And then when we started to shoot it I think people got it, but it felt like we were trying to do something that...we weren't quite sure it was going to come off, you know?
But as I said, I think the feeling for me was Rosamund's experience in the Rings is about seeing possible futures, and making them feel distinctive, and making them feel as though they had a power of their own. Like there was nothing she could do to change it. Like fate.
WiC: That's a very cool difference between her visions and Rand's. I think we've got time for one more super-quick question. If The Wheel of Time is renewed for a 4th season, would you want to return to work on it again?
TN: Yeah, absolutely. I don't even have to think about it.
A huge thank you to Thomas Napper for taking the time to talk Rhuidean with us!
The Wheel of Time is currently airing its third season on Prime Video. We'll be covering it extensively, so check back for more in the coming weeks. The fifth episode, "Tel'aran'rhiod," is out now:
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