Wheel of Time: The Road to the Spear Show Only

March 21, 2025 11:28 AM - Season 3, Episode 4

Rand faces the forgotten history of his family as Moiraine learns the devastating truth of her future.
posted by Kyol (11 comments total)

Finally! Some action!

Aviendha and Lan duke it out before the dreamreaders tell her to put down her spears and read some books.

Rand and Moiraine go into the city and find Avendesora - the tree of life.

Moiraine does a little hand magic and gets the sa'angreal out of Avendesora when Rand is off taking history lessons.

So let's see, Rand's timeline goes:

Rand!Dad found Rand!Mom dead on the mountain side and expressed that he had killed the oathbreaker. (Moiraine's uncle! ooooooo.)

Earlier, some Aiel warrior goes in to Rhuidean and talks to an Aes Sedai who takes some sa'angreal out of Avendesora, and she tells them the "of the blood but not raised by the blood" schtick, and that all future Aiel chiefs need to come to Rhuidean and learn their history and why the Aes Sedai call them oathbreakers.

Next scene, hippie leaf dude Rand is looking at a sapling Avendesora before learning that his sister was taken by bandits. He hatches a plan on rescue her after dark even though the rest of the clan is nonaggressively turning the other cheek. But things go wrong! Historic Rand kills a dude with a spear and justifies it that a spear can be used to put food in pots, while a sword has no other use. They all go back to camp and Rand and some other dude are exiled to become the future Aiel. The hippie dudes think of themselves as the Aiel currently. (ooooooo.)

Rand's next history lesson is Hippie Leaf Dude's grandpa or whatever waking up to a destroyed caravan and repeating the "we bury our dead and we move on, what else can we do" mantra. They keep their oaths! And some history of Rhuidean. Then look - it's sapling Avendesora and the sa'angreal again.

The next one is Apocalypse!Rand being told to scatter with avendesora cuttings, and here's the sa'angreal for good luck. The male equivalent is hidden in a stone in a fortress. (Was that Last Season on The Wheel of Time?) We get a little history about how a Sedai opened the dark one's prison and became Lanfear. The Aes Sedai commands the Aiel to follow the way of the leaf, of peace. (oop! the oath they broke!)

The next one has a death star floating over a field of hippies cutting wheat with scythes where historic Rand meets Meirin Sedai - Lanfear! Who has found a place they can punch through to get to a power that can be used by men or women, something that anyone anywhere can use, not just Lews Therin and the Aes Sedai. Rand goes down to the field to harvest the wheat when AW SHIT the deathstar implodes on itself and falls out of the sky, being replaced by a broken mirror.

Meanwhile, Moiraine's futures seem to be alternating between fêting Rand, killing Rand, and being killed by Lanfear.

Then Rand gets some sick tats and carries Moiraine out of Rhuidean while Aviendha keeps giving him shade.
posted by Kyol at 11:59 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

It definitely looks like Moiraine is getting killed by Lanfear one way or another.

I'm not sure why they had to scythe the wheat in a world with floating death stars. Unless someone comes up with an actual answer my headcannon is going to be this is part of some harvest festival and normally the wheat is harvested by less labour intensive means.

I wonder now what happens if an adopted Aiel, or the descendent of one, goes to Rhuidean?

10,000 wagons go out with saplings of the tree but the one with the sa'angereal is the one that actually makes it. Makes me wonder what happened to the other ones.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:12 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

Oh y'know, reading through it a second time, we had two oathbreakers - Moiraine's uncle who carved his tree of life into his throne, and the children of the Leaf who eventually broke their non-violent oath to become the Aiel.
posted by Kyol at 1:37 PM on March 21

The Costumes of the Dark Ones during Moraine's glimpses into the Multiverse were

::chef Kiss:: Yesh. Yesh.

I like that Lan got five seconds not to feel miserable this episode.
posted by Faintdreams at 2:45 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Like I mentioned in the comments for last episode, I've been hyped for the Rhuidean flashbacks since the show was announced and I was riveted the entire way through. I can't believe "Charn witnesses Mierin Sedai bore a hole in the Pattern from the Sharom" is something that exists on a tv screen now. Josha Stradowski was great this episode, both as Rand's various ancestors and as Rand himself.

Both the future warrior Aiel and the future Tuatha'an broke oaths. The original Aiel were sworn to the Way of the Leaf, then made a further commitment to the Aes Sedai to protect the objects in the wagons.

- Some Aiel broke their oath to protect the Aes Sedai objects, but kept to the Way of the Leaf. Their descendants are the Tuatha'an, who still seek the harvest song they've forgotten.
- Some Aiel broke their oath of non-violence, but stuck around to protect the other, peaceful Aiel and the objects in their care. They no longer remember either oath, other than to refrain from using swords, and to protect Rhuidean and Avendesora.
- Some Aiel followed their oaths, and successfully carried out their mission to find and build a safe place for the Aes Sedai objects and Avendesora. However, these true Aiel have since died out.

So including King Laman, there were three instances of pathbreaking this episode. (Maybe four including Aviendha? Though that was more a deferment.)

I also loved the Evil Squad outfits -- here they are in closeup on Instagram, and someone posted them on reddit for ease of access. Big fan of whatever the heck Mat's got going on, but Nynaeve and Rand are probably my favorite looks.
posted by bettafish at 8:42 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

Yeah, Aviendha didn't break any oaths, she was just an adolescent.

God, thank you for posting those costumes. I kind of want to take apart Moiraine's whole dream sequence scene-by-scene but I suspect it's already being done, painstakingly, probably on YouTube.
posted by restless_nomad at 5:15 AM on March 22 [1 favorite]

The next one is Apocalypse!Rand being told to scatter with avendesora cuttings, and here's the sa'angreal for good luck. The male equivalent is hidden in a stone in a fortress. (Was that Last Season on The Wheel of Time?)

This is Callandor (sp?) which Rand has been told he needs to go retrieve from the Fortress of Tear.

I enjoyed this episode, especially the fun way they showed Moraine seeing her possible futures. I was mixed on some of Stradowski's efforts, some roles he was great, some he came across a little wooden. I couldn't help but think of him in the scene when he becomes an oathbreaker as "Hobbit Rand."
posted by Atreides at 5:55 PM on March 22

That was most definitely the Hobbit crew with a little Matt and a little Perrin (the actors were all Hobbit-sized but they used visual effects to make them look Aiel-sized).

More seriously, Rand's actor has been growing in still since season 1 and I'm happy about that!
posted by Acari at 6:48 PM on March 22

This is Callandor (sp?) which Rand has been told he needs to go retrieve from the Fortress of Tear.

Ah, I wasn't sure if it was the thing they dug out of the other fortress at the end of season 1, I think it was? So many magical artifacts, so little time...
posted by Kyol at 7:39 PM on March 22

Yeah, Callandor is the sword in the Stone (the sword that isn't really a sword, as Mat remarked incomprehensibly in the Old Tongue a couple eps ago.) Jordan very much enjoyed fucking with Arthurian legends.
posted by restless_nomad at 4:05 AM on March 23

However, these true Aiel have since died out.

I don’t think they all got objects? It seemed like just the one guy got an object and everyone else just got trees. But also, did everyone else die? The oath was to keep moving until they found someplace safe. We only saw some people die, and since Rand can only see his ancestors, he’s seeing the grandfather, but the grandson may have kept moving and found a wife.
posted by corb at 10:56 PM on March 23