Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for The Wheel of Time Season 3.
After spending most of its third season squeezing as many characters as possible into each episode, The Wheel of Time devotes its latest chapter, “Goldeneyes,” to a single arc. This is a spotlight on Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford), taking place entirely within the mountainous Two Rivers where he was born. It’s not often that a high-budget streaming series can risk interrupting its main story to focus on a one-shot, but in this case, it absolutely pays off.
Alpha Wolf of the Two Rivers
The plot is simple: Perrin and his companions must defend his home from a horde of Trollocs and a suspicious battalion of Whitecloaks. Although he resists the mantle of leadership at first, Perrin is known and respected by the Two Rivers villagers, and once he takes charge, he truly comes into his own.
When battle breaks out, it’s reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings, complete with ranks of archers, spreading flames, and unearthly monsters. Many scenes are packed with full crowds of actors, giving the action a sense of grand scale. The sets and the choreography show real dedication in bringing the combat to life. There are moments when all seems to be lost, and there are moments focused on individuals whose courage and sacrifice bring a ray of hope.
Ogier, Aiel, Tinkers, and More
Perrin’s allies provide a few secret weapons as well as rounding out the adrenaline with their personal stories. Loial (Hammed Animashaun), whose steady and kind nature makes him prefer books to battle, goes on a side quest to close the Waygate that’s letting the Trollocs through. He’s accompanied by Bain (Ragga Ragnars) and Chiad (Maja Simonsen), two Maidens of the Spear who steal every scene they appear in, because they owe Loial their allegiance according to the esoteric Aiel customs of honor and obligation.
While Bain and Chiad’s brash condescension for “wetlanders” is sometimes played for laughs, there’s also a bleak contrast between them and the pacifistic Tu’atha’an who take shelter in the Two Rivers. Earlier this season, we saw the history of the two cultures and how both of them lost something by going to their respective extremes, but the characters don’t know that and won’t change their ways.
Meanwhile, Perrin’s love story with Faile (Isabella Bucceri) advances, and Alanna (Priyanka Bose) and Maksim (Taylor Napier) are back on their game and doing the work that only they can. This includes training some of the Two Rivers’ latent channelers, which may lead to some interesting developments down the line.
A Painful Loss
Another factor that makes “Goldeneyes” stand out in the series so far is a major character death, one which even book readers won’t have anticipated. Some genre shows, like Game of Thrones, gained a reputation for frequent, brutal death scenes, which in that case were generally faithful to the source material. The Wheel of Time books have the opposite reputation: it’s very rare for characters to be killed off once they’ve been firmly established.
That pattern leads to problems of its own, where the reader would too easily know what to expect, and some characters would tag along for lengthy stretches of the books without having much to do. With that in mind, it’s little surprise that the TV adaptation of The Wheel of Time is taking a different approach, but that won’t be much consolation to fans who have grown attached to a fictional somebody and now have to say a premature goodbye.
What does help is that the death is treated with care, honoring the character and allowing others some screen time to mourn. It’s also a sign that there may be more deaths coming, but if they follow suit, they won’t be gratuitous.
Next week’s episode of The Wheel of Time will be the Season 3 finale, and it’s likely that Perrin and his companions will be absent. That means a long wait until we find out what happens to him after the twist at the end of “Goldeneyes,” but as far as send-offs go, he couldn’t have had any better.
