‘The Wheel of Time’ Boss Previews Season 2 Finale’s Iconic Book Moments
Q&A
The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills and trust us, you will NOT want to miss The Wheel of Time‘s second-season finale on October 6. Capping off a fast-paced and gorgeously rendered run, the Prime Video adaptation of Robert Jordan’s novels delivers one of its most exciting and pivotal hours so far.
“What Was Meant to Be” drives all of the season’s plots into one massive, beautifully executed event, all centered on Rand (Josha Stradowski) taking a massive step toward fulfilling the prophecy that he’ll be revealed as the Dragon Reborn in the city of Falme. As that reaches a boil, Two Rivers wisdom Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) and Aes Sedai novice Elayne (Ceara Coveney) are racing to save his beloved Egwene (Madeleine Madden) from by her Seanchan enslaver Renna (Xelia Mendes-Jones), Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) is ready to unleash his animalistic abilities, and Mat (Dónal Finn) is, well, just wait for that one.
It’s as major as the development Aes Sedai channeler Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) and her warder Lan (Daniel Henney) are barreling toward now that they have put their trust in Foresaken manipulator Lanfear (Natasha O’Keefe).
Jan Thijs/Prime Video
Oh, and the White Cloaks are back, war is about to break out in Falme, and the Dark One’s lieutenant Ishamael (Fares Fares) has a new betrayal to deal with. It’s juicy and bloody and heartbreaking…and the perfect time to talk to showrunner Rafe Judkins about it all. So we did our best to avoid spoilers, but there are some details in here that could clue readers of the globally adored fantasy series into what is coming. Just trust us, this is only a fraction of the action packed into the episode.
Oh man, what a great season.
Rafe Judkins: Oh, thank you. No, we love it.
There was just no stopping. And I’m still not a full book reader, but you got to synthesize a bunch of stuff from different books to really push this story forward, right?
Oh, yeah. The big challenge of Season 2 was figuring out how to combine the key moments from books two and three (The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn), using mostly the spine of book two to really punch home for the audience. And the finale is fun. We get to give all of these iconic moments from the books, and we just try to infuse them with as much emotional content for the characters as we can, so that you really feel like you’re there in Falme with them and feeling what they’re feeling. It’s fun to get to make TV like this.
I’m not going to run any spoilers, but there is a moment at the end at the top of the tower where I swear…absolute chills. I think fans have been waiting for this, and to see Rand and who falls in behind him, it’s like “This is our story now.”
We really wanted the audience to connect to those [characters] and their connection to each other. By separating them for the whole season, it could really build to this moment when they finally come together where you’re just like, “All I want is you all together.” And that’s what you have to feel about those five the whole way through the series. So hopefully we got to achieve that in Season 2.
Jan Thijs/Prime Video
Also, LOVE Elayne. Oh, My. God.
Ya gotta have Elayne! [Laughs]
And then you give us a perfectly framed shot of her that feels like it’s telling us something.
That was really the signal to the audience. Hopefully you’ve already liked her this season, but pay attention. This is the last member of this core group.
Daniel Henney hinted during an interview way before the SAG strike that the Moiraine-Lan journey wouldn’t get back together immediately, but the way they earned that reunion was gorgeous.
Oh, yeah. I love that scene. It was on the most remote place that we’ve ever shot on the show in Dakhla, on this beach. No one’s ever shot there before. You can only be there during three hours, once a month for the tide, like it was insane. [Laughs] But it was also one of the most special days of filming I’ve ever had, with the two of them doing that scene.
The previous episode with the smirk, just Daniel’s smirk? I was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s on.”
He can speak volumes with the smirk! [Laughs]
There is a massive moment for Mat that I had to look up and WOW.
That is one of the moments we just worked and worked and worked for literally years to be like, “OK, how can we pull this off? How can we do this? How can we do this justice?” We really put everything we had into it for the audience, because when you read that in the books, really it was one of the things that made people forever A Wheel of Time fans. And so we had to figure out a way to pull that off.
Jan Thijs/Prime Video
And you achieved a potent rehabilitation of Mat.
Mat is this big character through the whole series. He is the hero that doesn’t believe he’s a hero and we need the audience to know that that’s the core of him by the end of this season. And so hopefully you come away from that [moment] understanding Mat in a more fundamental way than you ever have.
So much fun. And of course, we need to discuss the Seanchan stuff, first because they were absolutely terrifying, and secondly, because their costumes were spectacular.
Oh, Sharon Gilham and Davina Lamont, who do the costumes and hair-and-makeup, just ate it up and down with the Seanchan. It’s incredible because when we started it, I was like, “This is one of the most different and special things in the Wheel of Time books. It’s one of those things that, even now 30 years later, there aren’t characters like the Seanchan in any other fantasy book. We have to make them so unique and so interesting on screen that it matches up with what they are in the books.” And that is a hard brief. You know, “Can you just make them so incredible that people have never seen anything like it?” And they achieved it! They’re really, really, really amazing.
Jan Thijs/Prime Video
Absolutely. There’s the aquatic lines, the military looks, and sort of like a darkly fetishist kind of vibe.
And they got the insect stuff from the books in there! They were like, “Oh…?” but they did it. You can see that beetle hump on their back.
So you have them as really the driving Big Bad, but then White Cloaks get back into the game and remind us that they’re also awful.
[Laughs] A lot of bad guys! We have the Forsaken, Seanchan, Liandrin [Kate Fleetwood], the White Cloaks.
I’m glad you mention Liandrin. Because, no spoilers, but she isn’t even a factor in the finale, which means she’s off somewhere else.
Yeah, she’s off somewhere that you’ll see in Season 3 in, I think, a very exciting way.
You really got to develop her as a true villain. I did not expect the Black Ajah to be revealed this early into this story. I also didn’t expect to be so moved by her backstory — you humanized her in a way we can sympathize with her a little bit, to feel like maybe she’s trapped in a deal that she regretted from the get-go.
When you have Kate Fleetwood, you’ve got to give her every scene you can give her. She’s so incredible. And it’s really important to us on the show that you understand the human side of all of the so-called “bad,” that you really see that they have reasons for doing what they’re doing, and that maybe you could even agree with them. Because if the big concern is whether any of our characters ever swear to the shadow, you have to see that there’s something in the shadow worth swearing to. So that’s what we’re always trying to do. And Kate’s such an incredible actor that to be able to do that with Liandrin, it really sets her up, hopefully, well, for…let’s say she plays a massive role in what happens next in the books. And so hopefully we’ve laid the groundwork for that for her.
The show really has made me such a fan of this WoT world that I’m constantly looking things up. I’m constantly verifying connections, going to the books. And I do know you have made a very big shift in the story with Egwene and Renna.
We did.
And how do you feel fans are going to feel about that?
I think that they’ll hopefully feel feelings about it because it is a change from what’s in the books. But what we are trying to do is give glimpses here at the end of Season 2 of who these characters are, long-term — that Mat is the hero who doesn’t believe he’s a hero, that you see Egwene and know she’s the person who can make the hard choices. She’s the one who has to make the darkest choices for the most correct reasons as the books go on and on. And so having this moment with Renna, I think, is really important for that.
I think that was part of the fun of the season, watching these characters grow up and own their s**t. Because Moiraine in Season 1 was really there holding all of their hands. This time, they were literally on their own. And every member of the ensemble seems to have brought their A-games. They all killed it.
That was really important to us because while the show has been very centered on Moiraine, the ultimate story of the books is about these five and who they really are. So we wanted, by the end of Season 2, for you to come away from this finale and look at each of those five and know who they are, what the core of their character is, and who they’re going to eventually become in the books. Having that separation at the beginning of the season and then that moment where they’ll all come back together at the end hopefully gives the audience that good feeling you get in the books when the characters come back together.
You introduce someone at the very end of the episode…
Damian, [they] are going to be your new obsession in Season 3, I promise.
They seem a little deranged.
More than a little deranged. [Laughs]
So excited. Can you tell me a location that we’ll be seeing more of?
I can tell you that you should get ready for the desert of the Aiel Waste. The cast is going to be really, really, really hot for the next few months.
The Wheel of Time, Season 2 Finale, Friday, October 6, Prime Video.
