This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for The Wheel of Time season 3 Episode 8, as well as Robert Jordan's book series.
After a thrilling run, The Wheel of Time season 3 is officially at an end. "He Who Comes With The Dawn" closed out Prime Video's fantasy show with a bang, featuring so many twists and turns that our heads will be spinning for weeks to come. Few hit harder than the shocker death at the episode's end, when the Amyrlin Seat of the Aes Sedai, Siuan Sanche (Sophie Okonedo), was deposed, stilled to permanently cut off her access to the One Power, and then executed by the new Amyrlin Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan (Shohreh Aghdashloo).
While The Wheel of Time season 3 finale may have been one of the darkest episodes in the show's entire run, this sequence of events was by far the most brutal. Siuan is outfoxed at every turn by a more politically savvy opponent, deprived of her dignity, and then murdered in a way which draws attention to Elaida's vindictive nature. After Siuan has been beheaded, the camera even lingers on her body for a prolonged moment, searing the image into viewers' minds in a way the show has rarely done with death scenes.
If you've seen the finale, you probably fall into one of two camps. Either you haven't read the book series and you're curious whether this all goes down the same way for Siuan on the page, or you have read the book series and you have a mess of complicated emotions about it because you know it went down differently.
Let's break down the details for how the coup at the White Tower differs on The Wheel of Time television show.
Does Siuan Sanche die in the books?
In many ways, the White Tower coup is extremely faithful to the source material in the television show. It happens more or less the same in the novels, with Siuan losing her grasp on power, Elaida deposing her in a barely legal meeting at the White Tower, then stilling and torturing her. Elaida rises to become the new Amyrlin Seat, and goes on to wreak all sorts of havoc.
But the coup differs in one very major way: in the books, Siuan does not die. Instead, Min Farshaw and Elayne Trakand's brother Gawyn help her escape the White Tower, along with her Keeper of the Chronicles Leane, who is also stilled during the coup. Gawyn remains behind, but Min, Siuan, and Leane flee Tar Valon together, and eventually encounter a disgraced general named Gareth Bryne, the former consort of Queen Morgase of Andor who was relieved of duty after the Forsaken Rahvin inserted himself into the royal family. Siuan forms a relationship with Bryne which eventually grows into romance, and the group end up joining a rebel faction of Aes Sedai in Salidar who oppose Elaida's coup.
Siuan remains a part of The Wheel of Time book series all the way until the Last Battle, where she eventually falls along with many other characters. She's especially crucial as an advisor to the rebel Aes Sedai faction, and plays an important role in a plotline where Nynaeve discovers that the effects of stilling an Aes Sedai can be healed, to a degree.
Since the show cut Siuan's story short, we won't see her involved in any of those plotlines. However, showrunner Rafe Judkins did confirm in an AMA on Instagram that the show has "plans for who will take on her other main story as the books move forward." I'd bet on Leane (Jennifer Cheon Garcia) getting Siuan's later book material, since she's still alive in the show and is mentioned in almost all of the events mentioned above alongside Siuan.
Whether the show gives Siuan's book material to Leane or someone else, it's still a bitter pill to swallow that Siuan is well and truly gone. However, Judkins also teased that "if the show continues, it’s not the final scene we intend to have" between Siuan and Moiraine. Whether it's through a flashback or some other fantasy magic, we may yet see Siuan Sanche back on our screens before the show's run is through.
All eight episodes of The Wheel of Time season 3 are streaming now on Prime Video.
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