The Wide Screen - With Leith Skilling -

December 11, 2021

In “The Wheel Of Time” Episode 4, Gender And Magic Intersect

**SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME EPISODE FOUR AHEAD!**

In the age of streaming television and the controversial “skip intro” button that allows audiences to jump straight into the action of their favorite shows, opening credits sequences are increasingly seen as a vanity – which is how they’ve managed to stick around at all, because they’re almost always strikingly beautiful or creative. But as more and more fantasy streaming series’ in particular forego the opening credits sequence entirely (looking at you, Shadow And Bone and The Witcher), The Wheel Of Time obviously stands out as an exception to this rule.

And I suppose that’s why Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s sprawling fourteen-book fantasy has drawn ire from some fans of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, who feel that the opening credits sequences of the two shows have too many similarities to be purely coincidental. Perhaps you could argue that both Wheel Of Time and Game Of Thrones‘ opening credits depict something being constructed, but I see that as an obtuse surface-level reading of both series’ opening credits sequences, as illogical as if you were to say that the two are identical because they share the word “of” in their titles.

The opening credits for both these series’ are more than just pretty animation; they’re an extension of their individual themes. For instance, Game Of Thrones‘ opening credits play over a montage of tiny little mechanical castles and fortresses springing up across the map of Westeros, itself revealed to be nothing more than an elaborate gameboard on which humans play out their power fantasies through artifice and intrigue. But Wheel Of Time‘s opening credits illustrate the story of the gender divide that is central to the series’ worldbuilding and magic system.

That’s why I’ve held off on even talking about the opening credits sequence in my reviews of the first three episodes, because only in episode four does The Wheel Of Time dive into the complex subject of the gender divide, and its consequences on gender roles and gender expression in this world. The episode and its opening credits are thematically intertwined almost as firmly as any of the threads that make up the vast cosmic tapestry being woven in the background while the credits play.

This tapestry starts its journey as a single white cord comprised of many threads, representing the One Power – the magical energy that permeates the world of The Wheel Of Time. In the books, the act of reaching into the One Power, absorbing it into oneself, and expelling or redirecting it is known as “channeling”, and people capable of doing so are called “channelers”, emphasizing that they are in fact merely conduits of a power which flows through them but does not belong to them or derive from them, and can easily destroy their fragile bodies.

This concept has been translated into live-action very literally, with Rosamund Pike’s physical performance as Moiraine Damodred in particular capturing the strength, dexterity, and above all vulnerability required of a powerful channeler in this world. Pike is almost always in motion, her body bending and limbs snaking swiftly yet purposefully as if allowing the One Power to flow directly through her towards her targets without giving it time to build up inside her and potentially burn her to a crisp.

We actually see one Aes Sedai sorceress, Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood) of the Red Ajah, come dangerously close to spontaneously combusting in this episode. The One Power burns beneath her skin and in her veins, and all the while more and more strands of magic are flowing into Liandrin’s body; too many for her to absorb and dispel simultaneously. In Jordan’s books, these strands are frequently described as “threads”, and magical constructs built from threads are known as “weaves”. Powerful channelers like Moiraine can wield many threads at once and build elaborate weaves.

Weaving and textile-work is often used in The Wheel Of Time as a metaphor for channeling and other uses of the One Power. Even the titular Wheel is a spinning-wheel which relies upon the One Power to continue endlessly rotating, weaving people and events into the inconceivable Pattern of human history over and over for all eternity. But if that all seems fairly straightforward, this is the part where Robert Jordan suddenly superimposes a rigid gender binary over his magic system, and things get…complicated.

Because Jordan’s fantasy mythology is heavily reliant on dualism, it’s no surprise that the One Power has two halves, which correspond to the nebulous concepts of masculinity and femininity. Jordan really went the extra mile, however, when he decided that men can only access the male half of the One Power (known as saidin) and women can only access the female half (known as saidar). Saidin and saidar are intended to exist in a symbiotic relationship, each challenging and complementing the other but both required to keep the One Power healthy and the Wheel of Time turning.

The show appears to be keeping that concept, but doing away with some of the bizarre rules that Jordan worked into his magic system. Not content with giving men and women two separate forms of magic to use, Jordan was also annoyingly insistent that women can only channel by surrendering themselves to the One Power, while men channel by forcefully taking the One Power. Get it, because, like, women are submissive and men are dominant, right? If we could take that whole concept and throw it in the garbage where it belongs, and then set the trash bin on fire, I wouldn’t be opposed.

Anyway…in the books, men and women were both able to channel until a couple thousand years before the events of the story, when the Dark One permanently tainted saidin so that men couldn’t access it without going mad, even generations later. We see this taint spreading up the rope representing the One Power in Wheel Of Time‘s opening credits before the cord splits into two halves, one white, the other dyed black. The question of where people outside the gender binary fit into this situation has yet to be answered satisfactorily.

The consequences of the rift are visible throughout Amazon’s series, from the very first scene onwards. By the time the story opens, the order of Aes Sedai, which once accepted both men and women into its ranks of channelers, has become an all-female organization with entire subdivisions dedicated to eradicating male channelers. We’re told upfront that the women of the Aes Sedai rule the world and protect it with the One Power, but new fans will have become increasingly aware that that is not the case, and that the reality is…a mess, honestly.

And in episode four, our close focus on Logain Ablar (Álvaro Morte) allows us to go deeper into the messiness and complexity of that situation as we follow his meteoric journey. Even though Logain is only able to channel aggressive tentacles of blackened, decaying saidin that whisper threats and taunts in his ears, the world in which he lives, in which he can declare himself the Dragon Reborn without any proof and win allies in his rebellion against the Aes Sedai from both the peasantry and nobility, is one that still revolves around the notion that men are meant to lead, regardless of whether they can channel without going mad – regardless of whether they can channel or not.

I don’t think The Wheel Of Time wants us to view Logain as a misogynist, to be clear. He does imply at one point that the Aes Sedai are supposed to follow him, but that’s because he’s totally confident in his assumption that he’s the Dragon Reborn – which makes his epiphany at the end of the episode that he’s not the Dragon hurt all the more, because it truly shakes him to his core. It’s only after that, in episode six, that he resorts to overt sexism, and even then it’s in a desperate attempt to provoke the Aes Sedai into killing him. It’s infinitely more interesting to see Logain as a tragic figure buffeted by forces beyond his control.

Because outside of Tar Valon, patriarchal systems of government and society are still alive and well in this world, and the One Power wielded by the Aes Sedai doesn’t necessarily translate into political power. In that respect, and also in their pomp and pageantry, the Aes Sedai are The Wheel Of Time‘s rough equivalent to the medieval Catholic Church (an amusing parallel, given that the latter institution has for centuries exalted one woman as being above all other saints in heaven while oppressing them on earth). The semi-divine authority that the Aes Sedai claim to possess over the entire world is similarly theoretical and dependent on tradition.

The effortlessness with which Logain accumulates followers and support is therefore unsurprising. He’s irresistibly charming and incredibly powerful, of course, but one gets the sense that it wouldn’t matter if he were neither of those things, because as Logain himself acknowledges later, men across the world are looking for any opportunity to test the limits of Aes Sedai power. Logain is merely a weapon of the old patriarchy trying to reassert itself, a shield behind which its true objective could be masked. That the Aes Sedai themselves are hardly a “good” organization muddies the waters significantly.

We saw hints of that way back in the cold open for episode one, when Liandrin led a pack of her Red Ajah sisters in a literal man-hunt to find a male channeler and “gentle” him. “Gentling”, the process of removing a man’s ability to channel, is depicted in this episode as violent and torturous – there’s nothing gentle about it. As we learn from Thom Merrilin (Alexandre Willaume) when he recounts the story of his nephew who was gentled by the Red Ajah, and as we later see evidenced in the hollowness of Morte’s Logain after his own gentling, men stripped of their ability to channel are almost always shattered by the experience.

The parallels between gentling (and its equivalent for female channelers, “stilling”) and the heinous real-world practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ people are unmistakable. And throughout this episode, as Thom and Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) struggle to help Mat Cauthon (Barney Harris) through the fear and loneliness of even potentially being able to channel, the language they use seems to intentionally play on the idea that the experience of being a male channeler in The Wheel Of Time is vaguely akin to the real-world experiences of many queer people, particularly in oppressive religious environments.

Showrunner Rafe Judkins, himself a gay man raised in a Mormon community, wisely balances out these instances of queer-coded metaphor with substantial queer representation. Following the casual confirmation in episode three that there are no social stigmas attached to same-sex relationships throughout most of this world, the show has a responsibility to show that onscreen – and in episode four, we’re introduced to Maksim (Taylor Napier) and Ihvon (Emmanuel Imani), a pair of queer Warders who love each other as deeply as they love the third member of their polyamorous trio, the Aes Sedai Alanna Mosvani (Priyanka Bose).

Examining the sacred bond between an Aes Sedai and their Warder(s) proves to be a large part of both this episode and the next. People tied together by the bond become true soulmates, gaining an almost telepathic ability to communicate their thoughts and emotions from one to the other – thereby allowing them to bridge them the gender divide of their world. For some, the partnership is completely platonic, as is the case with Moiraine and her Warder, Lan Mandragoran (Daniel Henney). For others, it’s romantic and/or sexual. But on every level, the bond increases a person’s capacity for love and empathy.

Of the two groups, however, the Warders clearly receive more love from a screenplay that favors their perspective on Aes Sedai teachings and practices to those of the Aes Sedai themselves. Through Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins), whose animosity with Lan in the previous episode is quickly developing into mutual curiosity and affection, we’re invited to spend time with the Warders around their campfire as they idly chit-chat and share stories. And it’s through the raw grief of the Warder Stepin (Peter Franzén) that we experience for the first time the severing of the bond after his Aes Sedai, Kerene Nagashi (Clare Perkins) is killed by Logain.

This choice would make more sense to me if the Warders were depicted as clearly the more relatable of the two groups, and the Aes Sedai as enigmatic and aloof as they were typically shown in the books – or even in The Wheel Of Time‘s opening credits sequence, where the tapestry being woven slowly resolves itself into an image of seven women arranged after the seven spokes of the Wheel of Time, representing the seven color-coded Ajahs of the Aes Sedai. But that sequence promises a mystique and magnificence that I feel we don’t quite get from the Aes Sedai in episode four, and even thereafter only see in quick glimpses.

Of course, there’s the caveat that the group of Aes Sedai we meet in episode four have been on the road for months, and are worn down by the exhaustion of trying to hold Logain captive without gentling him. But it’s harder to feel the effects of that mental and physical toll when we’ve barely gotten a chance to admire the full power and glory of the Aes Sedai – even Moiraine, awesome as she was in the battle of Emond’s Field, spent a fair amount of episode two and all of episode three wavering on the edge of unconsciousness after a single injury sustained in that fight.

And then there’s the costumes. I haven’t been impressed by many of the costumes on this show, but the Aes Sedai in particular were a missed opportunity to flaunt Amazon’s big budget with luxurious fabrics, unique textures and patterns, stylish cuts, and priceless jewelry. Even taking into account that they’re traveling, the Aes Sedai are always keenly aware of their image outside of Tar Valon for reasons I think I made clear above – what they lack in political power, they make up for with their influence. Look to the Catholic Church, and there’s a richness and brilliance to the traditional papal vestments that is designed to inspire awe.

But in the show, outside of a few stylish leather pieces like Liandrin’s knee-high boots and accessories like Moiraine’s shoulder-pads, the costume design is severely lacking when it comes to accentuating any sense of ostentatiousness or grandiosity that the Aes Sedai are supposed to have cultivated around themselves. Alanna’s costume perhaps comes closest to achieving a balance between practicality (which, for a member of the Green Ajah, is a top priority) and showiness (a little gold ornamentation here and there, nothing too outlandish really), but the rest are just…drab.

This lack of synchronization between the costumes and the characters wearing them is exacerbated by the overly bright lighting, which continues to be a major problem for this show but here really gets into every nook and cranny of the spotless soundstage that serves as the Aes Sedai camp, exposing just how little effort has gone into making this look like a lived-in environment with dirt and grime and wear. There are moments, particularly during action scenes, when the camp looks like a bad cosplay convention or an overly polished historical reenactment.

But if the Aes Sedai are lacking any depth and substance to their costumes, the far greater problem is that their subplot throughout this episode is itself devoid of much nuance. After being warned by Moiraine that Aes Sedai are master manipulators each with their own hidden agenda, we’re introduced to a group of Aes Sedai whose motives are shallow and obvious, and whose schemes are only half-baked. How much more compelling would Liandrin be as a villain if, instead of openly voicing her desire to gentle Logain, she only subtly encouraged debate of the topic and allowed others to prove her points for her?

For our introduction to the Aes Sedai, that weak writing coupled with poor costuming threatens to tear apart the tapestry so carefully constructed in the opening credits, but there are moments that save this episode for me. Balancing the badly-lit battle between the Aes Sedai and Logain’s army is a duel between Thom Merrilin and a Myrddraal that, while significantly shorter, is so up-close and personal that you can’t help but shudder in admiration for the practical effects used to achieve the Myrddraal’s hideous physical presence. Balancing the weak emotional impact of Kerene’s death is the pain and horror we feel from Nynaeve when she thinks she’s lost Lan.

(Without getting into spoilers for the books and presumably the season one finale, there’s not much I can really say about the incredible power display from Nynaeve at the end of this episode except that…well, it’s incredible. I think there are as many downsides as there are upsides to prolonging the mystery of the Dragon Reborn’s identity, and I hope new fans are allowed in on the big secret soon so we can all theorize together).

So while I can’t say that I loved this episode, it’s still very enjoyable and is interspersed with enough excellent scenes and heartfelt character moments to warrant just as much praise as criticism. Director Wayne Che Yip again delivers a thematically rich story that draws upon Robert Jordan’s fantasy cosmology and theology for inspiration, and if it’s less bold with regards to gender than episode three was with morality, it still has fun tinkering with the rules that Jordan laid out for his world and improving upon his dated representation.

Episode Rating: 7.5/10

December 8, 2021

With Episode 4, “Hawkeye” May Have Bitten Off More Than It Can Chew

**SPOILERS FOR HAWKEYE EPISODE FOUR AHEAD!**

Hawkeye is doing an awful lot of meandering and walking in circles for a show that only has two episodes left in its first season and about a dozen subplots and mysteries currently ongoing, none of which is any closer to a satisfying resolution now than they were last week. And rather than checking items off the list in preparation for the finale, Hawkeye just keeps adding more, clarity and coherency be damned. One-upping last week’s Kingpin tease, this week it’s Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) who enters and exits again just as quickly, apparently realizing that she’s so far removed from the actual plot that there’s no reason for her to be here.

Of course, I’m sure Hawkeye will find some role for her to fill in the finale, because you don’t hire Academy Award-nominee Florence Pugh for a single action sequence in which she’s only unmasked for roughly twenty seconds (well, you shouldn’t; I wouldn’t put it past Marvel to do so, though). But unless it’s revealed that she’s somehow connected to Kingpin or is also going after the mysterious Rolex wrist-watch that everybody and their mother suddenly wants, I feel pretty confident that her only purpose is to continue the storyline set up in the Black Widow post-credits scene.

And that’s great and all, and I am interested to see where that story goes, but…can it wait until after we’ve finished the story that’s actually going on right now? Leaving aside the fact that Yelena will mean nothing to people who haven’t watched Black Widow or its post-credits scene, in-universe she still has no personal significance to Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) or Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) either, so she’s just another mystery for them to add to their steadily growing pile.

Perhaps the even greater issue is that with all these story threads hopelessly tangled up together like Christmas lights, the writers and directors can’t seem to decide on just one that takes priority over any of the others, even for a single episode. The aforementioned Rolex wrist-watch that is so crucial to this episode’s final action sequence, and which Kate recovers from Echo (Alaqua Cox)’s apartment after a harrowing home intrusion? This is our first time even seeing the damn thing again since episode one, and we still have no clue how it connects back to the plot.

Just for fun, let’s play along with the mystery being built around this wrist-watch, which actually does seem to have personal significance for Clint at least. He claims it belongs to an old colleague of his who’s been off-the-grid for a while, and that it could blow their cover if it fell into the wrong hands. Whoever sent Echo and the Tracksuit Mafia to specifically locate this watch in episode one (probably Kingpin) is presumably also aware of this, and there’s a strong chance that Echo now knows the wrist-watch’s secrets, having been in possession of it for a while.

But does the wrist-watch’s original owner have any relevance to the narrative of Hawkeye, or is this another tease for future MCU storylines? My immediate assumption was that the watch belonged to Steve Rogers, because the question of where he went in the aftermath of Endgame is not only hotly debated among fans but apparently in-universe as well, something that we saw in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier. I’ve also seen it theorized that the watch belonged to Bobbi Morse, better known by her alias Mockingbird in both the comics and in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., or to Laura Barton (Linda Cardellini).

The latter theory is intriguing, because from a storytelling and thematic standpoint it makes more sense for the wrist-watch’s owner to be Clint’s wife, running from her own past as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, than for it to be a completely new character to the MCU like, say, Mockingbird (much as I want to see the latter character return, played by Adrianne Palicki of course), or a character we likely wouldn’t ever see on Disney+ to begin with, like Chris Evans as the elder Steve Rogers.

But I also have a hard time believing that Clint wouldn’t have returned speedily to be by his wife’s side if he suspected she was in that much danger, or that Hawkeye will turn out to be centered around a character who has only appeared in the show on the other end of phone conversations, or that someone of Kingpin’s high status would go to such great lengths to try and find one retired S.H.I.E.L.D. agent – unless Laura is in possession of some highly-classified information. And if that’s the case, then what is the point of everything else going on in this show?

While Clint has an obscure connection to this wrist-watch, a personal connection with Echo and through her a tangential connection to Kingpin, it’s Kate Bishop whose sprawling subplot feels like the heaviest baggage that this slim series has to carry. Even though the murder of Armand Duquesne has been completely forgotten, and Kate has yet to do any real sleuthing into her soon-to-be stepfather Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), we’re constantly being reminded in casual tones that Jack is possibly a murderer, probably the Swordsman, and definitely a corrupt and shady businessman regardless.

Meanwhile, Vera Farmiga’s Eleanor Bishop is taking a long time to properly materialize into the criminal mastermind that we all know she is behind her warm and friendly façade, and it’s starting to get a little embarrassing for both Farmiga (she’s doing the best she can with this role, I’ll give her that) and especially for Hawkeye‘s writers, who seem to think they’re being very clever by using Jack as an obvious red herring and an ineffective distraction from Eleanor’s evil antics, when in fact the only real question at this point is whether Eleanor murdered Armand herself or got Jack to do it for her.

The link between these tales of two cities is Kingpin, who stands in Colossus fashion with one foot in the dark and treacherous underworld in which Clint operates, and with the other in the glittery high society and intrigue into which Kate was born. But my fear that he would overshadow the entire series as more and more of him was gradually revealed each week proved to be unfounded, as he’s entirely absent from this episode. Now I find myself longing for any character who could bridge the gap between Hawkeye‘s split narratives.

At the very least, we still have Clint and Kate themselves…well, at least until the end of this episode, when Clint decides to send Kate away and reject her help because now and only now, after being beaten half to death by the Tracksuit Mafia and stealing a car and jumping off a bridge together, he’s finally decided that it’s too dangerous for Kate to continue playing at being a superhero. There’s a touching moment where Clint nearly loses Kate in similar fashion to Natasha Romanoff that helps sell the big dramatic break-up, but we all know they’ll reunite in the finale to take down Echo, or Eleanor, or Jack, or Yelena, or all of the above.

In the meantime, I fear that without the light-hearted banter between Clint and Kate, Hawkeye might not work as well as it has up until this point. Kate on her own has proven to still be every bit as entertaining as she is when paired up with Clint (she’s the one with the Pizza Dog, after all), but Renner’s Clint sucks the joy and energy out of even comedic moments, and without Kate to keep him on his toes, I fear he’ll be back to the same old routine.

And I mean that in more ways than one. Clint’s got the precious wrist-watch now, and the Ronin suit and sword that he came for in the first place. But after this episode, his objective has changed from evading Echo and the Tracksuit Mafia to stopping them once and for all. And although theoretically it’s to save Echo herself from straying down the same path that Clint took after Infinity War, I can’t help but wonder if this mission will dredge up any of the bloodlust and reckless desire for justice that powered Clint while he hid behind the Ronin mask for five years. Maybe what Echo needs is to see firsthand what she could easily become.

Yelena is the wild-card in the middle of all of this, because she’s on her own totally separate misguided mission for vengeance against Clint, and she seems a lot more ruthless than Echo – based on what we’ve seen from her character in Black Widow, and on how she handles herself in battle here, during the epic four-way fight that caps off the episode. Hilariously, she and Echo land a few blows on each other, neither realizing that they share a common goal. Echo is soundly defeated, which is a little unfortunate. So far she hasn’t had that awesome action beat I think we all want from her, and that I know Alaqua Cox can deliver.

But after her incredible introductory scene, Yelena spends a few seconds onscreen out of her spider-eye mask (which I’m extremely happy to see in live-action, although it doesn’t look quite as good as it does in the comics) before vanishing into the night. And even though I love Yelena, I don’t feel satisfied by this random tease that could just as easily have been inserted into any other episode or cut completely for all the difference it makes. It’s merely a reminder that Yelena is going to appear later, probably in a post-credits scene where this sort of story development ought to have happened anyway because it has nothing to do with this story.

Hawkeye is an advent calendar of character reveals and plot twists, but all the boxes have been opened at once, without rhyme or reason. Hopefully the show remembers that it has just as many boxes to close now, and that it’s running out of time to do so.

Episode Rating: 6.5/10

December 6, 2021

“The Wheel Of Time” Episode 3 Dives Deep Into Robert Jordan’s Cosmology

**SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME EPISODE THREE AHEAD!**

It brings me great joy to report that The Wheel Of Time‘s third and fourth episodes, two of its best, were both helmed by director Wayne Che Yip. His resume is extensive, but it’s his work for Amazon Prime Studios that’s of pertinent interest to me. In recent years, he’s become one the streaming service’s go-to directors, having contributed to some of their biggest series’, including The Wheel Of Time, Hunters, and, yes, The Lord Of The Rings. I’m sorry that it’s always on the back of my mind, but if The Wheel Of Time is any indication, then the four episodes of Lord Of The Rings that Yip directed will be extraordinary.

In just two episodes of The Wheel Of Time, Yip broadens the scope of the entire series to include a spiritual or metaphysical dimension. Just as the extensive mythology of Tolkien’s Middle-earth was created not as a supplement to his published writings but as the backbone of his entire legendarium, Robert Jordan’s fantasy world (which I guess now is a good time to point out is technically just our world in another “Turning of the Wheel”) and all the stories that take place therein are built on a staggeringly vast and intricate cosmology partially inspired by Hindu and Buddhist theology.

And although The Wheel Of Time wades confidently into the deeper end of that pool, Yip uses purposeful direction and cinematography to weave Jordan’s themes of repetition, rebirth, and the permanence of human nature into the fabric of Amazon’s series so that any information you don’t get in the dialogue you’re still absorbing through recurring motifs and subtle details. This is a show that I know will stand up on a rewatch, as fans scour every episode for clues they missed the first time around.

That being said, it’s also clear that The Wheel Of Time has no intention of upholding the rigid binary systems around which Jordan’s cosmology is structured. Dualism is another prominent aspect of his novels, from the conflict between good and evil that spans the entire Wheel Of Time series, to the rift between men and women in Jordan’s world, which itself is derived from another clear-cut divide between saidin and saidar, the masculine and feminine halves of the One Power that permeates the cosmos and fuels the Wheel. To “channel”, i.e. use magic, men always tap into saidin, women always into saidar.

For the 1990’s, that seemed really progressive. But our understanding of all these subjects is constantly evolving, and Amazon’s Wheel Of Time reflects that by blurring the lines between the broad concepts that Jordan positioned as clear opposites in his books. The series depicts a world where gender and sexuality are more fluid, to the point where even the prophesied Dragon Reborn, who in Jordan’s books is always a man regardless of whatever else changes in his appearance, personality, and the circumstances of his birth and upbringing, is not locked down to being male or female.

And in keeping with Jordan’s own deconstructions of fantasy tropes like the chosen one, the series plants that persistent seed of doubt in our heads that this Dragon Reborn, whoever they are, will actually be able to fix the world – assuming they don’t just tear it apart in a mad rage, as everyone in-universe agrees is just as likely. In episode three, we meet our very first Darkfriend, a barmaid named Dana (Izuka Hoyle) who just wants the Dragon to break the Wheel of Time and let her and all of humanity escape from an endless cycle of pain and suffering. Until she attempts an abduction, her only crime is demanding better from the world.

But a well-timed knife throw from the gleeman Thom Merrilin (Alexandre Willaume) puts an end to all her dreams of escaping the mining town of Breen’s Spring and being uplifted to a place alongside the Dark One for her accomplishments. The other characters are forced to leave her body crumpled in an alleyway, while Yip’s framing of the moment forces us to seriously contemplate what is right and what is wrong, who gets to draw the line between the two and where, and how we enforce that often arbitrary distinction.

The Wheel Of Time poses these same questions over and over, just as the titular Wheel weaves endless variations of the same people and events out into the tapestry of human history, over and over. That the Wheel is sentient to some degree, and weaves into existence whatever it feels is needed at any particular moment to preserve the overall integrity of the pattern, is taken for granted the world over. As far as I remember (and to be fair, I haven’t read the books recently), nobody except the Dark One wants to break the Wheel, and even that’s just to fulfill an archetypal mission of chaos and cosmic destruction.

Here, it feels a bit more nuanced than that, which I appreciate. We don’t really know anything about the show’s version of the Dark One yet (apart from that vague title), but as evidenced by Dana, the Darkfriends at least seem to have opinions of their own on whether the Wheel is a good or a bad thing. Even the prevalent theory that Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford)’s wife was a Darkfriend before she died in the first episode indicates that in Amazon’s adaptation, the Darkfriends aren’t just randomized vices in human shells. They’re humans, and their motives are understandable, if not sympathetic.

But The Wheel Of Time presents an alternative to their ideology that, while not without flaws of its own, is aimed at freeing humanity from the violent cycle in which they’ve been trapped for eons. In this episode, Perrin and Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden) run into a band of the nomadic people known as the Tuatha’an. Heavily inspired by the Irish Travellers, and in the Amazon series also by the Amish, the Tuatha’an don’t believe in breaking the Wheel by force. Their “Way of the Leaf” preaches that nonviolence begets nonviolence just as the opposite is also true.

Although the Way of the Leaf is focused on more heavily throughout episode four, I’ll talk about it in this review because, well, I’m behind on reviews anyway and the first five episodes are out at this point, but also because it makes such a fitting counterbalance to the Darkfriend philosophy represented by Dana in episode three. The Tuatha’an aren’t scared by the Wheel’s endless turnings, because they don’t regard themselves as trapped in it. Instead, they see it as sobering that if they work harder to make the world a better place in the lives they have now, then the world into which they’re reborn will be better because of it.

Because most of this is explained through a very touching monologue in episode four, however, it doesn’t excuse the fact that in episode three itself the Tuatha’an feel like a detour. Egwene, who for the first two episodes was almost by default the series’ lead, is reduced to a supporting character in the series’ third-most important subplot as she and Perrin walk around the Tuatha’an camp looking baffled by their surroundings. Even given the state of their world, I find it hard to believe that pacifists are really the most shocking thing they’ve ever seen when they literally just escaped from a city that wanted to eat them.

With Rosamund Pike’s Moiraine Damodred unconscious throughout most of the episode courtesy of an injury sustained in episode one that conveniently waited until Shadar Logoth to knock out the powerful Aes Sedai, the burden falls on Zoë Robins to carry the series’ primary subplot. And after being given only a handful of scenes in episode one, Robins’ Nynaeve al’Meara is revved-up and ready to go when she returns in full force to let you know, dear viewer, that she’s not a damn side character, and it’s gonna take more than a Trolloc to stop her.

From her opening scene in this episode, in which the introverted village Wisdom brings down the aforementioned Trolloc on her own turf, to the revelation that she somehow tracked Lan Mandragoran (Daniel Henney) from Emond’s Field to Shadar Logoth, Nynaeve is clearly formidable and impressive on many levels. But she’s not invulnerable, and she’s not above feeling frightened just because she outwitted one Trolloc. She’s scared for herself, and you genuinely get the sense that she’s terrified for Egwene and for the others through Robins’ raw line-delivery and physical performance.

Reading the early books of Jordan’s series, I didn’t feel anywhere near as strong a connection between Nynaeve and the other characters (least of all Lan, with whom she’s suddenly in love one day; the premise of most of Jordan’s romances). Granted, it’s been a minute since I’ve read the books, but Nynaeve’s decision to join the group there is framed as something of a reluctant obligation, if I remember correctly. And from that point on, she falls into a semi-comedic babysitter role; constantly distracted yet self-righteous, controlling yet completely ineffective at monitoring the others.

Robins’ Nynaeve is still stubborn and impatient and endearingly irritable, but we get to see a more fiercely caring side of her in her interactions with the injured Moiraine, and even with Lan; not because she cares deeply about him (yet), but because he stands in the way of her finding her friends again. When forced to work together for their mutual benefit, Nynaeve and Lan quickly develop real tension and chemistry that foreshadows their eventual romantic relationship in the books.

Speaking of romantic chemistry, I can’t not mention that the first barely audible word out of Moiraine’s lips when she wakes from sleep near the end of the episode is the name “Siuan”, a nod to one of my favorite characters in the books, Siuan Sanche. Like many of the women in the Aes Sedai order, Moiraine and Siuan were canonically lovers in their youth, but Jordan’s books explain this away as a consequence of there not being any men around. In other words, it’s queer enough for straight men to fetishize their relationship, but not queer to the exclusion of straight men. That’s the kind of queer representation that fills The Wheel Of Time.

But in the Amazon series, I’m hopeful that Moiraine and Siuan’s relationship will just be queer, without any caveats or asterisks. Episode three indicates that the world of The Wheel Of Time is accepting of queer relationships, with Dana misreading Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) and Mat Cauthon (Barney Harris)’s relationship as more than platonic, only for Rand to tell her that if he wanted a man, he could do much better than Mat. Harsh, but true.

It’s not that I don’t like Mat (although I’ll admit that Harris’ performance hasn’t blown me away, and the news of his recasting for season two doesn’t fill me with sorrow as it does others), but I still feel that we didn’t get enough time to know the real Mat in the first two episodes before getting stuck with the mean and temperamental post-Shadar Logoth Mat. His best scenes involve him bouncing off of Thom Merrilin, who is simultaneously sympathetic to Mat’s plight and unprepared to waste precious time humoring his nonsense.

Perhaps the most obvious example of a character whose been changed in the adaptation process, Amazon’s Thom is a far cry from Jordan’s version of the traveling gleeman with his harp and gaudy, brightly-colored patchwork cloak. For one thing, he no longer carries a harp, and his patches are more subdued – a mere flash of color in the folds of his coat, quickly hidden away. These and other physical changes to the character may have their critics (even I was taken aback by the lack of mustaches), but Amazon’s Thom isn’t meant to be the stereotypical, instantly recognizable bard of Jordan’s books.

The craggy, gravelly-voiced Thom of Amazon’s Wheel Of Time, who stuns a crowd speechless with songs of grief and madness accompanied by plaintive guitar-strumming, owes more to modern folk-singers and rock-stars than to medieval bards. But that makes total sense for a character whose responsibility as a gleeman is to preserve ancient oral histories and traditions, because as I pointed out above, The Wheel Of Time takes place in what is implied to be our far-distant future. Cars and computers didn’t survive the Breaking of the World, but someone in the future is looking out for Led Zeppelin, and I think that’s beautiful.

Thom takes that responsibility seriously, too. He may not be as garrulous as his counterpart in the books, but when he does share a story or a monologue or even just a few words of advice, it’s always to pass along some piece of profound wisdom enriched by personal experience. When Thom finds Mat attempting to rob a corpse so he can afford to get back home, that’s the moment where we expect him to step in and gently dissuade the younger man. But Thom stands aside, not because he approves of Mat’s actions, but because he knows what desperation is and you feel in Willaume’s performance that he knows it intimately.

All he asks of Mat is that he have the decency to bury the dead after he’s finished. And on my first time watching the episode, I misinterpreted Thom’s words as a subtle jab at Mat, but by the tone of Willaume’s voice you can tell he means it sincerely, not as an insult or some kind of burn, but as a plea to Mat to never lose his humanity even when dark times force him to do terrible things. Because sometimes the wrong way is the only way, as we see when Thom himself kills Dana to save Rand and Mat.

And in true Wheel Of Time fashion, that brings us full-circle to the question of what is right and what is wrong, a question to which there is no easy over-arching answer. The best we can usually do is find a balance between doing what’s right by others and what’s best for our own wellbeing, but the capacity for good and bad, even heroism and villainy, exists in all of us. And as long as Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time continues to play in that inherently gray area that is the human heart and soul, I believe the series will continue to feel faithful to Jordan’s spirit of exploration.

Episode Rating: 8.5/10

December 3, 2021

“Hawkeye” Episode 3 Tells Echo’s Side Of The Story

**SPOILERS FOR HAWKEYE EPISODE THREE AHEAD!**

Of the few people who are actually talking about Hawkeye and making their opinions known on what is potentially the least-watched live-action Marvel Disney+ show yet, it seems from social media that most are just sticking around to witness the return of Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, better known by his supervillain alias, Kingpin. And after Hawkeye‘s third episode debuted yesterday, the series may have just ensured that Kingpin will continue to overshadow the rest of the story, much like how the character looms over everyone thanks to his impressive 6’7″ stature.

And mind you, all we see of Kingpin in episode three, in the roughly five seconds that he’s onscreen, is one of his hands, and a little bit of his suit. We hear him chuckle, but he doesn’t actually say a word to confirm that Vincent D’Onofrio is back in the iconic role. I’m excited to see Kingpin, don’t get me wrong, but it’s slightly frustrating that in five seconds he managed to pull focus away from everything else that happened in this episode, including our official introduction to Hawkeye‘s primary villain for the moment – Echo (Alaqua Cox).

To some degree, that’s on head writer Jonathan Igla and directors Bert & Bertie for not giving Cox’s adult version of Echo a standout action sequence or emotional beat, even though there were plenty of opportunities to blow audiences away on both counts. Her child version, played by Darnell Besaw, has one brief fight at a karate class that translates her photographic reflexes from page to screen, but while promising, we have yet to see Cox’s Echo utilize those abilities again. And her final scene with her father, who famously dies in the comics leaving a bloody handprint on Echo’s face, is significantly less impactful when Disney shies away from showing much blood.

But at the same time, it’s worth noting that MCU stans will find a way to overshadow Echo no matter what. Even when it was revealed that she would become the first Marvel character introduced on Disney+ to receive their own spinoff, all that anyone could talk about was how Kingpin and Daredevil could use Echo’s show as an arena in which to continue their conflict from the Netflix Daredevil series, as if Echo doesn’t have any stories worth telling from her own viewpoint.

And that’s a shame, because Echo happens to be a fascinating character, and Alaqua Cox in her debut performance brings a commanding presence to the role. A deaf Native American woman (and in the MCU, an amputee like Cox), left in the care of Kingpin after her father’s murder, Echo in the comics has a reputation as one of the most formidable street-level antiheroes in the global criminal underworld. There’s already so much going on with her in this episode that Hawkeye doesn’t even have time to reference the fact that in the comics, Echo was the original Ronin before Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) took on the mantle.

Nonetheless, the two characters still have a very intriguing dynamic in the MCU. There’s a somewhat generic revenge storyline going on, with Echo under the (most likely false) impression that Clint as Ronin murdered her father, but what’s most compelling about their relationship to each other is how they interact as two characters with hearing disabilities. Hawkeye depicts a range of experiences through Echo, the MCU’s second deaf character after Lauren Ridloff’s Makkari in Eternals, and Clint, who has partial hearing loss.

This includes depicting the stark differences between the two, as well as the similarities. Echo uses sign language and as a child had to rely on lipreading because she wasn’t able to attend a deaf school, while Clint is still in the process of learning sign language and can’t hold a full conversation with Echo without the help of a translator using simultaneous communication (or SimCom), a controversial method where one signs and speaks at the same time, sometimes to the detriment of both languages but particularly to the signed language because the speaker is often a hearing person who mentally prioritizes their spoken language even while using SimCom.

I have not been able to find any articles specifically regarding the use of SimCom in Hawkeye, and thus it would be impossible for me to say as a hearing person who doesn’t speak any sign languages whether the SimCom in the show is accurate and intelligible. But something that I have seen others address, and that I noted myself while watching this episode of Hawkeye, is that the way shots are framed, the characters’ hands are often out of frame while they’re signing. It might seem like a small thing to some, but it also demonstrates why representation can’t stop at onscreen visibility. It takes a diverse team behind the camera to make sure that visibility is…well, visible.

I do appreciate, however, that Hawkeye actually utilizes its diversity for more than just surface-level visibility; Clint and Echo’s disabilities are an integral part of both their characters, and in this episode at least both deal with unique situations and challenges that arise because of their disabilities. At one point, Clint’s hearing-aid gets smashed under Echo’s boot during a fight, which in turn requires him and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) to work together more closely, culminating in a scene where she helps him through an abrupt phone call from his son. It’s strongly reminiscent of a scene in The Umbrella Academy‘s season one finale, but still poignant and powerful.

In the superhero genre especially, it’s also important that diverse characters get the chance to be cool, which is why Makkari’s magnificent power display in Eternals was such a joy to behold. And here, it’s great to see that Clint at least is finally being given that chance thanks to his collection of trick arrows, each more dangerous than the last. Even though it’s pretty obvious that the show’s CGI budget got diverted elsewhere (let me guess, it’s all going into making Kingpin look taller), several of the arrows are very well-used, and the Pym Tech size-alteration arrow is particularly clever in theory.

In next week’s episode, we’ll also presumably see Clint take up a sword as he deals with the Swordsman himself, Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), who pops up right at the end of episode three (wielding Ronin’s blade) to remind us that, oh yeah, there’s a whole separate plot revolving around that unsolved murder mystery in episode one that has yet to tie into everything going on with Echo and Kingpin. At this point, with my theory that Echo would be connected to the MCU’s Red Room officially very unlikely to materialize into anything substantial (a shame, I thought it was a good theory), I have no idea when or why Yelena Belova will show up.

Perhaps, in trying to wrap up all these storylines with a neat little bow (and arrow), Hawkeye will bite off more than it can chew, but for the time being I’m just enjoying the ride. As long as Renner and Steinfeld continue to have great banter and chemistry, and Echo continues to develop into a more well-rounded antagonist to the duo, that shouldn’t be hard. I just have to hope that they don’t let Kingpin steal the show from them without putting up a fight.