Warning: SPOILERS for The Wheel of Time season 3 episode 4.The Wheel of Timeseason 3 episode 4 is a stunning and ambitious journey already being regarded as one of the series’ best entries. Straight from the pages of Robert Jordan’sThe Shadow Rising(book 4 from the 14-book series), the episode took audiences through the ancestry of Rand al’Thor and the history of the Aiel people, shattering notions that their culture was always one of battle and war. Series star Josha Stradowski took on the sizable challenge of not only portraying Rand, but bringing many of the character’s vastly different ancestors to life.
Realizing this specific storyline, in which Rand visits the holy Aiel city ofRhuideanand uncovers secrets of the people’s past, has been a priority forThe Wheel of Timeshowrunner Rafe Judkins since day one. It was one of the filmmaker’s favorite sequences from the book series and, in Judkins’ eyes, was a clear marker of Robert Jordan’s literary genius. After pastThe Wheel of Timeseasons were forced by unpredictable circumstances to make major adjustments away from the source material, the Rhuidean episode envisions its source material more clearly than even some readers’ imaginations could.
ScreenRantspoke with Judkins aboutThe Wheel of Timeseason 3 episode 4and how he brought this aspect of Jordan’s vision to life. Judkins shared the reasons why he had to be the one to write the episode, explained why he cast Josha Stradowski as all of the episode’s primary characters, and more. Plus, did Judkins just teaseThe Wheel of Timeseason 4?
Rhuidean Was A Massive Undertaking Across All Of Production
“It doesn’t feel like it may be sometimes, but to pull off so many different eras, to have Josha in different makeup, to have him giving a different performance… every single thing that we did through building this episode is really hard to do in television,”Rafe Judkins said when describing the ambition of the episode, which is titled “The Road to the Spear”.“One of the reasons I wrote the script,”he revealed,“is because, if another writer on the show had done it, the network, studio, and all the HODs would’ve just said ‘No, we’re not doing this.’”
“‘It’s too f***ing insane,’”Judkins continued. But the showrunner had to have this moment in the series:“I think it’s one of the best things The Wheel of Time books do–this sort of trippy look at ourselves, our pasts, our futures, and the circularity of time. If we didn’t pull off Rhuidean, I would’ve felt like I failed as a showrunner.” “When I sent the script out,”Judkins admitted,“everyone’s brain exploded, and they all wanted to kill me, because it’s a huge production undertaking.”
Judkins put trust in Josha Stradowski to build each character he played, and worked closely with director Thomas Napper to create visual distinctions between eras:“He and I would have countless sit-downs [with] him just asking questions about these different worlds and what they look like. We had hundreds of charts of carts through the ages, [asking ourselves], ‘What year is this happening? What does this mean emotionally?’”
“More so than just getting the timeline,”Judkins continued,“we had to get the feeling of the story so that as you watch it, you’re feeling something.”He praised his other most crucial collaborators as well, saying,“I’m so lucky that I had Ondrej [Nekvasil], our production designer, Sharon [Smith] and Davina [Lamont], who did costumes and hair of makeup… all of these people started months in advance of shooting this episode to build out what this world is.”
Josha Stradowski Was Always Going To Play His Own Ancestors
It Was in Judkins’ Mind “From The Conceptual Stage” So Audiences Stayed Invested
From the episode’s first jump into the past, it became clear that Josha Stradowski had his work cut out for him. Judkins reflected on the choice to have Stradowski play not only Rand, but all of his ancestors as well, saying it was a clear one:“That was important to me from the conceptual stage of it in the writer’s room. I felt like I needed Josha to play all the characters because the most important thing to me was that the audience could emotionally connect with these stories.”
Judkins believes the casting also helped ground the journey in the show’s present:“I felt that if Josha played these characters, it would let the audience feel like Rand was seeing these worlds through his own eyes … Even though you’re able to view them all as individual characters who are different,”he said,“as you watch it, you are feeling that Rand is experiencing these emotions and feelings of those characters in the past.”
Image via Prime Video
While discussing Rand’s journey through Rhuidean, Judkins called the story moment important not just to the episode itself, but to Rand’s journey as a whole. His wording, however, seemed to imply that there could be moreThe Wheel of Timecoming. Read the transcript and draw your own conclusions:
Rafe Judkins: It’s very important to what happens to him–at the end of this episode, but also through the whole rest of the season and the series. It’s a really powerful and important part of the story for him.
ScreenRant: Was that a subtle way of saying we are getting season 4?
Rafe Judkins: I think it’s a very important part of the series for Rand.
The Relationship Between Rand & Lanfear Just Got So Much Deeper
Rand’s Ancestor Knew Lanfear Before She Was Forsaken
One ofThe Wheel of Timeseries’ biggest strengths is its expansion of the novels’ villains, especially Natasha O’Keeffe’s Lanfear. With “The Road to the Spear”, her character, and her connection to Rand, grew even deeper and more nuanced. Judkins explained how the scene of Lanfear–then Mierin–opening the Dark One’s prison came together:“It’s something we thought a lot about how to bring to screen, because it’s essentially the beginning of evil in the world. It’s the inciting incident, almost.”
“In the books,”Judkins continued,“you don’t actually talk to Lanfear. But for me, it was really important to see her and who she was.”It was a unique opportunity to drive home the show’s expansion of the Lanfear and Rand relationship as well, the showrunner said:“I thought it was quite interesting, and something we could only do on The Wheel of Time television show, that one of our characters could see another character thousands of years ago, and who she used to be–essentially, who she was before she became a bad girl.”
“I think it’s actually really important to the Rand-Lanfear relationship,”he said,“this moment that he sees who she was and what she wanted, because she was a different person before she swore her Dark Oaths. A lot of that’s hinted at in the books … but to actually see this woman in those shoes aspiring to a greater scientific goal lets you feel for Lanfear in a different way.”
Rand rightfully steals the show inThe Wheel of Timeseason 3 episode 4, but Moiraine has some huge moments as well, one of which being when she steals the world’s most powerful sa’angreal out of the trunk of Avendesora, otherwise known as the Tree of Life. Judkins explained Moiraine’s motivation for doing so:“There’s something really interesting that happens in the books. When Moiraine is in Rhuidean, she just starts grabbing s*** and pocketing it, which I’ve always thought was just so weird and kind of iconic at the same time.”
“Of course she would,”he continued,“She’s a spy.”It’s a revealing statement that continues to cement the idea that Moiraine plays only by her own rules.“These are objects of power,”Judkins said,“she can grab whatever it is and buckle down. That’s the kind of person she is, even if you don’t think of her that way sometimes because she seems so purposeful.”
There is a big future for the item Moiraine grabbed, even if it looks a little different than book readers remember:“We collapsed it down from her pocketing all this random stuff in Rhuidean that doesn’t end up playing too big of a role, ultimately, in the books, into her finding this one thing that does play a really big role in the books, and is something that we really need to pay attention to.”
He got more specific for Jordan-heads:“There’s the Choedan Kal in the books, then there’s Callandor and Vora’s wand, and we wanted to combine all of those things into this one incredibly powerful sa’angreal for men, Callandor, and this one incredibly power sa’angreal for women, the Sakarnen.”
Moments after finding the Sakarnen, Moiraine steps into a ter’angreal that thrusts her into an impossible world of infinite futures. It’s one of the episode’s most visually stunning sequences, and required a special approach:“That was all Thomas Napper,”Judkins revealed,“Thomas Napper found this guy who developed a camera in the seventies or something, and we had to build it from scratch for the show to pull this off … we made, basically, a whole new camera rig to do this, and we’d drag that camera rig around with us to places.”
As for the content of Moiraine’s visions, the writers concocted a mix of wishlist moments and emotionally devastating ones:“Some of them were just things that we wanted to see. It is an incredible visual to be able to bring to life the Emond’s Field Five as the Forsaken.”But, the goal was ultimately for audiences to“have their own takeaways from it [that will] affect how they view Moiraine’s future in the show.”
This Episode Even Intimidated Composer Lorne Balfe
Thankfully, The Mission: Impossible Composer Chose To Accept The Challenge
The biggest reveal from “The Road to the Spear” came when Rand learned that the warrior-like Aiel were initially pacifists who splintered off from what would becomeThe Wheel of Time’s nomadic Tuatha’an. Also known as the Tinkers, that group roams the world in search of a long-forgotten song–a song that may have been heard for the first time as audiences saw peaceful Aiel singing while working fields in the distant past.“Who knows if this is actually the song,”Judkins said,“but [it was] something that could be their song.”
“This was a moment to do a love letter to so many of the things we love in the books,”the showrunner said.“I had this call with our composer, Lorne Balfe, explaining that this song had to be birth and death and the circularity of life, and it had to be something that a whole group of people spend all of their history searching for, and that when they’re looking on the fields of the Last Battle, they’re still looking for this song.”
“No pressure,”Balfe replied. But, as Judkins put it,“He wrote this really simple chant that is just so beautiful. When we all heard it, the very first thing he wrote was correct, and it was perfect, and it’s exactly as it is in the show from the very first time he wrote it.”
All of this talk of journeying back through times naturally brought up Prime Video’s in-developmentThe Wheel of Timefilm (or film trilogy?) based on The Age of Legends. With actors like Fares Fares (who played Ishamael in previous seasons) and Natasha O’Keeffe making Jordan’s Forsaken more compelling than they’ve ever been, of course, audiences would want to see a series focused on them. Too bad, says Judkins, when asked about the status of the project:“It doesn’t have anything to do with the TV show. That’s from a separate rights holder group.”
Check out our otherThe Wheel of Timeseason 3 interviews. More coming soon!
New episodes ofThe Wheel of Timeseason 3 drop Thursdays on Amazon Prime Video.
