Diksha Sundriyal
With the strain of the battle against the Forsaken and the Darkfriends picking pace, the third season of Prime Video’s ‘The Wheel of Time’ focuses on expanding the powers of Rand al’Thor. However, to do that, he must go through a trial that will either make him the Car’a’carn or break him completely. After the fast-paced three episodes, where a lot of moving pieces result in a very unpredictable board, the fourth episode focuses simply on Rand’s journey to give us an insight into what his past looked like and to give us a hint of what his future might be. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Rand and Moiraine Enter Rhuidean
At the beginning of the season, Moiraine had planned for Rand to go to Tear, where he would find the sword named Callandor, which is instrumental in fighting against the dark forces. However, he chose a different path by taking the group to the Aiel Waste and fulfilling the prophecy of being their Car’a’carn. However, he must go through the Trial of Rhuidean in order to prove that he is, in fact, the savior and destroyer who was promised to the Aiel. The beginning of this episode finds him training with Lan, entirely unaware of what is in store for him. While he knows that he must go through the trial, Moiraine is not so sure about it yet. Her suspicions about his failure are made worse when the Wise Ones let slip that should a person fail the trial, they never come back.
The same night, it turns out that Rand is not the only one who must go through the trial. Before Aviendha left the Aiel Waste in search of the Car’a’carn, she had been called to become the Wise One. Reluctant to give up her weapons, she ran away in search of another purpose, but now that she has returned, she must answer the call. For her to take the next step in her journey, she, too, must go through the trial, and she ventures into the land the very night. The next morning, Rand, Moiraine, Lan, and Egwene are taken to the edge of what Rhuidean is. To enter it, a person must ask permission from the Wise Ones. Only those who receive a “yes” as the answer are allowed to go in. They discover that another Aiel tribe already has a person in there and are ready to send another one should the first one fail.
Seeing this, Rand immediately asks for permission and receives a yes. The rest are told to go back to the tents, but Moiraine stays back and asks for permission as well. From the words of the Wise Ones the previous night, she had a hint that things might go badly for Rand, which is why she didn’t want him to take the trial so early without any preparation. However, he made it clear that he would not be controlled by her anymore and would do what felt right for him. While she cannot stop her, it doesn’t mean she will let him go through this path alone. The Wise Ones already knew this was coming, so they give permission to Moiraine as well, and the duo walks into Rhuidean.
The Trial of Rhuidean Calls Rand and Moiraine
Before they cross the boundary into the City in the Clouds, they are told what it will be like for each of them. For Moiraine, the trial is about looking into the future, with its myriad possibilities, to understand what direction the present will take. For Rand, every step that he takes will lead him into a previous life, connecting him to his ancestors, so it is through his past that he can truly understand who he is. Any man who survives the trial gets a mark of the dragon on their right hand. However, in the case of the Car’a’carn, the mark would appear on both hands, and that’s how his identity will be confirmed.
As they walk into the fog together, Rand and Moiraine come across a tree that they identify as the fabled Tree of Life, which is said to be more than three thousand years old. Moiraine reveals that a sapling of the tree had been sent to her home as a peace offering. However, when her uncle became the king, he decided that he wanted a throne that could not be replicated, so he had the tree cut down. The Aiel saw it as an act of war, which is why they came after him. They swept through the Wetlands, leaving carnage in their wake, and it was only on the slopes of Dragonmount that they found and killed her uncle. Rand realizes that this is why his mother was at Dragonmount when she gave birth to him, which means that destiny connected Moiraine and Rand even before he was born.
As Rand walks into the fog to meet his trial, Moiraine sticks behind. She finds a white ball inside the tree and tucks it into her pocket. Later in the episode, we discover that this is the Sa’angreal Sakarnen that Lanfear told Rand about in the last episode. She then moves on to find three rings, one of which has Aviendha. As Moiraine is sucked into one of the rings, she starts to flip through the futures one by one. In the beginning, she sees everything, like surrendering to Rand, killing Rand, declaring loyalty to Rand as the Dragon Reborn, and killing Rand as the Amyrlin Seat. She sees freeing the bond with Lan and then bonding with Rand. She sees killing Rand with Lan and then having sex with Rand. And then, Lanfear comes into the picture. From here, all the possibilities see Moiraine being killed by Lanfear in the future.
The Many Lives of Rand al’Thor
While Moiraine goes through the torture of being killed painfully and repeatedly, Rand steps into his past. Each step takes him further back, and it helps him understand his people’s journey. He goes back to the battle of the Dragonmount when his mother gave birth to him and then died. Then, he sees himself as a leader of the Aiels who is called into Rhuidean by the Aes Sedai to go through a trial of their own. Then he finds himself in the skin of a young Aiel who discovers that his sister and the sister of his friend have been kidnapped. They are advised not to retaliate, but Rand and his two friends still do so. By the end, they have succeeded in bringing the women back, but they end up killing the kidnappers, which means they have broken the oath of living by the pacifist Way of the Leaf. When they are left behind by their people, Rand and his friend (with the third one dead) decide to stay back and protect them from any incoming danger.
Then Rand goes back thousands of years, in the time of Lews Therin and the rise of the Forsaken as the Dark One takes over the world and creates chaos. His ancestor is given the Sakarnen by the Aes Sedai, who wants his people to take it as far away as possible. They reveal that the other part of it, the Callandor, is in Tear, surrounded by war and blood. To balance the scales, Sakarnen must be surrounded by the people who live by the Way of the Leaf. The Aes Sedai makes them take the oath to keep moving on and never resort to violence. It is this oath that they take with themselves over generations, and when somewhere down the line, three men break this oath to protect their sister, they branch off into the oathbreakers.
But there is another life before it. This life is in the world when the Dark One is still in the seal, Lanfear is Mirien Sedai, and Rand is a wheat farmer. Lanfear tells him that she has found a place in the weave where it is possible to push back and take a peek into the other side. She wishes for the world to be such that the power of weaving is in everyone’s hands. She tells Rand to join his people in harvesting the wheat, sing songs with them, and enjoy the time they have. At first, it seems like generally good advice, but then, as the seal breaks and the Dark One is set loose right in front of his eyes, the wheat farmer understands what Lanfear was talking about.
With this vision of his past, the trial ends for Rand. The two marks of dragon appear on his arms, confirming his identity as the Car’a’carn. During the trial, he saw the Aiel man who came in before him die. Outside, he finds Aviendha, who has also completed her trial. Moiraine, however, is still there, and Rand refuses to leave without her. Back at the tents, Lan and Egwene worry about them, especially considering that it has been seven days since they left, and Aviendha returned two days ago. Egwene briefly considers going in to look for them, but their wait ends soon enough when Rand walks out with Moiraine in his arms. Both seem shaken up by their experience and undeniably changed forever.
You must be logged in to post a comment.