Moiraine Must Die In “The Wheel Of Time” Season 3 Teaser

SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME BOOK FOUR: THE SHADOW RISING AND BOOK FIVE: FIRES FROM HEAVEN, AND POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME SEASON THREE AHEAD!

Moiraine Damodred has been prepared to meet a violent end since The Wheel Of Time season one, when she accompanied Rand al’Thor to the Eye of the World expecting to be “ground to dust”, as she put it, between the opposing powers of two cosmic enemies; Rand himself, a.k.a. the Dragon Reborn, and the Dark One. In so doing, she hoped to bring about a quick end to what would otherwise escalate into a large-scale conflict between armies, in which thousands would die and chaos would reign. Given that there are eight seasons of The Wheel Of Time planned, adapting a series of fourteen extraordinarily dense novels, it should go without saying that that is not what happened. Instead, and to her great dismay, Moiraine had to pick herself up after a crushing defeat and keep fighting, for the sake of the world rather than for herself. Throughout season two, which additionally saw her wrestling with the triple-fold loss of her ability to channel, her relationship with her Warder, and the trust of her lover, Moiraine rose again: because the world needed her to.

And now the world needs her to die.

Josha Stradowski as Rand al'Thor and Rosamund Pike as Moiraine Damodred in The Wheel Of Time stand, accompanied by a group of Aiel warriors and at least one Wise One, at the edge of a cliff, looking out over a barren valley filled with fog and the ruins of ancient skyscrapers encircled by a tall wall. Rand has short reddish-brown hair and wears a white shirt and brown trousers, with a sword strapped to his back. Moiraine wears a hat, and a long dress. The Aiel warriors carry spears and wear lightweight sand-brown leather armor, while the Wise One is swathed head-to-toe in white fabric.
Rhuidean | youtube.com

The first teaser trailer for The Wheel Of Time season three follows Moiraine on a trippy journey through “a thousand thousand futures”, stalked and toyed with by the Dark One’s most powerful minions, as it’s revealed to her that across an infinite number of possible realities, one thing remains constant: either she dies, or Rand dies. And Rand is the Dragon Reborn, the only person in the world capable of defeating the Dark One at the Last Battle. He must survive until then, no matter the cost. For Moiraine, therefore, there is no choice to be made. She will die. She doesn’t know when, where, or how – though we see alternate versions of her being strangled and stabbed to death by Lanfear in different scenarios and settings, including one in which Lanfear has seemingly turned Rand and his friends to the dark. She only knows that when the time comes that both their lives hang in the balance, she will see to it that it is she who perishes and Rand who lives to fight another day.

Ironically, the person who probably stands to fare worst out of everyone here is Rand. The best possible outcome for him is the one in which he miraculously makes it to the Last Battle and saves the world before he dies, but death is as much a guarantee for him as it is for Moiraine, and he already knows exactly how his will transpire, as all male channelers inevitably succumb to madness. But even if he makes it that long, and it’s a big “if”, there’s a decent chance he loses to the Dark One and has to watch the world burn because of his failure in his final moments. And if the madness takes him before the Last Battle, it’s not only possible but likely that he’ll end up destroying the world on his own, without the Dark One having to lift a finger. Some of the Aes Sedai sorceresses would happily “gentle” him, permanently removing his ability to channel, but of course, Rand can’t go up against the Dark One without the One Power at his fingertips. And now, on top of everything else he has going on, Moiraine is gonna go and die, burdening him with the pressure that will come from knowing that she did so to save him so that he might save everyone else? I too would run off into the desert if I were Rand.

But for Rand, the solitude of the Waste only offers more grisly ways to die, and I’m not just talking about the harsh weather and living conditions. Rand has deep connections to the Waste and to the people who live there, red-haired warriors known as the Aiel. They have their own set of prophecies about him, distinct from the prophecies of the Dragon Reborn, and to fulfil them, Rand must enter the ruined city of Rhuidean and brave the “glass columns”, a labyrinth of shimmering pillars that allow a person to relive crucial events from the Aiel’s ancient history through the eyes of their own ancestors. The paradigm-altering truths revealed there are too much for some to bear, and they go mad and die inside, which probably explains the veritable forest of spears standing outside the walls of the city in the image above – the spears of all those who entered and did not return. The glass columns of Rhuidean are the setting for one of the most vivid sequences in the entirety of the Wheel Of Time book series, a sequence we can see glimpses of in the images below:

Close-up blue-tinted image of Josha Stradowski as Rand al'Thor, with a bright light shining behind him. He has close-cropped reddish-brown hair.
Rand in the Glass Columns | youtube.com
Blue-tinted wide shot of a tree with a thick trunk and sweeping boughs with moss hanging from them. A bright light shines behind it.
Avendesora | youtube.com

That tree is Avendesora, which grows at the center of the glass columns and is sacred to the Aiel, who gifted a sapling from Avendesora to the people of Cairhien to repay an old debt. The tree that sprang from that sapling, Avendoraldera, was later cut down by Moiraine’s uncle, King Laman Damodred, and its precious wood used to build him a larger throne, resulting in the Aiel War during which a coalition of the Aiel clans left the Waste, sacked Cairhien, killed Laman, and left, but not before one Aiel Maiden of the Spear gave birth to a son, Rand himself, on the blood-soaked slopes of Dragonmount. I know, I know, I just threw a lot of lore at you, but you’re here for a trailer breakdown, aren’t you? Let’s not even get into the fact that Avendesora isn’t technically a tree but a unique organism genetically engineered with the One Power…

While Rand peruses AielAncestry.com, Egwene begins learning from the Aiel Wise Ones how to “Dreamwalk” – enter the World of Dreams at will. The World of Dreams, or Tel’aran’rhiod, is the nebulous realm humans unconsciously enter when they sleep. The Wise Ones have mastered the ability to navigate this realm and manipulate it to a degree, though not to the level of someone like Lanfear, who considers herself the Queen of Tel’aran’rhiod, or Moghedien, whose power there is even greater. But Egwene in season three has just endured weeks or possibly months of imprisonment at the hands of the Seanchan and the appropriation of her own powers by a sadistic captor whom she brutally murdered. She is a very different woman than she was before that experience, and if Lanfear or Moghedien think they can toy with her in the World of Dreams, they’ve got another think coming. Let me remind you all that Egwene was able to single-handedly hold off Ishamael, the strongest of the Forsaken, for several minutes while beaten up and bruised in the immediate aftermath of the aforementioned murder.

Madeleine Madden as Egwene al'Vere and Josha Stradowski as Rand al'Thor, lying on their backs side-by-side on the floor of a tent, with pillows and rugs underneath them. Egwene has short dark hair and wears a gray top with baggy sleeves over a white tunic dress. Rand has short reddish-brown hair and wears a sand-brown coat over a partially unbuttoned off-white shirt.
Egwene al’Vere and Rand al’Thor | youtube.com
Out-of-focus close-up image of Madeleine Madden as Egwene al'Vere. She has short dark brown hair.
Egwene al’Vere | youtube.com

We see Egwene and Rand lying next to each other in a tent, hands not quite touching, possibly indicating that they’ll Dreamwalk together, or perhaps belonging to a scene in which the two finally agree to end the untenable romantic relationship that was already on the rocks back in season one, even before Rand faked his death and ran away in an effort to protect her from himself. There are not many “Randgwene” shippers out there, but I am one, and I know that Wheel Of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins is another because the doomed love between Rand and Egwene has been a focal point of both season finales and a major factor in important decisions both characters have made, even though they technically called it quits in the very first episode, and Rand was briefly in a sexual relationship with Lanfear (a relationship that Lanfear is intent on rekindling, based on the trailer). But now, with Rand and Egwene starting down diverging paths, there has to be some kind of closure there before either character begins actively pursuing their eventual love interests.

Marcus Rutherford as Perrin Aybara, seated on a bed, with Isabella Bucceri as Faile on his lap, kissing him. Perrin has frizzy dark hair and a beard, and wears a sleeveless white shirt. Faile has short dark hair and wears a long-sleeved black jacket.
Perrin and Faile | youtube.com
Marcus Rutherford as Perrin Aybara, in battle. He has frizzy dark hair and a beard. He's wearing a steel breastplate and pauldrons over a shirt of woven leather rings like chain-mail. His face is covered in blood, sweat and grime. His eyes are gold.
Perrin Aybara | youtube.com

Love is in the cards for at least one of our main characters, though, as Perrin Aybara is shown kissing a dark-haired woman whom we can safely assume is Faile, the Hunter for the Horn who follows Perrin back to the Two Rivers in book four, The Shadow Rising, when he goes home to help liberate his people from an army of Whitecloaks under the command of his archnemesis Dain Bornhald. Perrin and Faile have a…tumultuous relationship in the books; I’ll be curious to see how The Wheel Of Time adapts that, especially with the significant change they’ve made to Perrin’s backstory, giving him a wife whose death he is directly responsible for, and whose memory still haunts him. Speaking of closure, Perrin’s return to the “scene of the crime” in season three will provide him a much-needed opportunity to put Laila to rest amidst everything else going on in the Two Rivers. There’s no sign in the trailer of Dain Bornhald himself, the peddler Padan Fain, or the mysterious Lord Luc, all key players in Perrin’s The Shadow Rising arc, but we do see Perrin leading the defense of the Two Rivers, so they’re around somewhere.

Wide shot of the Hall of Sitters in the White Tower. A woman in a long red gown is sitting on the Amyrlin Seat, with a dark-haired woman in a white dress sitting on the armrest at her left hand.
The Amyrlin Seat | youtube.com

Also conspicuously absent is the character of Elaida, one of The Wheel Of Time‘s most important antagonists, expected to be played by Oscar-nominated actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who joined the cast after playfully engaging with fans and showrunner Rafe Judkins on social media who were fan-casting her as a different character, Cadsuane Melaidhrin. I thought we might have seen her briefly (see the image above), because what other Aes Sedai from the Red Ajah would be so brazenly enthroned on the Amyrlin Seat with a dark-haired woman in white at her side, but I’ve since been informed that the women in the image are more likely Liandrin Guirale and Lanfear, during some kind of dream sequence. You have to zoom in really close, but the woman on the throne does appear to have blonde hair and Kate Fleetwood’s distinctive cheekbones.

Kate Fleetwood as Liandrin Guirale, standing in a dark hall amidst a throng of masked and costumed revelers. She has long blonde hair and wears a long-sleeved crimson gown with a lace veil. She holds the edge of her veil up to her mouth with her left hand, which also sports a gold ring with a dark red gemstone set in it.
Liandrin Guirale | youtube.com

Liandrin is also shown unveiling herself at some kind of costume party (probably at the Panarch’s Palace in Tanchico, where she hides out in The Shadow Rising), speaking to the Forsaken Moghedien, and dueling Alanna Mosvani of the Green Ajah (potentially killing one or both of her Warders, based on a shot of Alanna sobbing over someone’s body) in the streets of Tar Valon itself, where violence is practically unheard of, let alone violence between Aes Sedai. But of course, Liandrin is no ordinary Aes Sedai: she may be Red Ajah, but her true loyalties lie with the Black Ajah, a faction of sorceresses sworn to the Dark One, whose existence was a closely-guarded secret. In the books, Siuan Sanche is able to cover up Liandrin’s betrayal because it happens within the White Tower, behind closed doors, but if the show has her and Alanna blowing up large swathes of the city, that obviously won’t be possible, and there could be ripple effects: maybe the people of Tar Valon will begin to feel unsafe in the shadow of the Tower, and Elaida’s attempts to undermine Siuan’s authority will center around fanning the flames of this growing dissent.

Madeleine Madden as Egwene al'Vere, Jennifer Cheon Garcia as Leane Sharif, Sophie Okonedo as Siuan Sanche and an unidentified fourth woman standing before the silver arches in the basement of the White Tower. Egwene has short dark hair and wears a white shift. Siuan has short dark hair and is wearing a silver coat and is channeling white ropes of the One Power with the assistance of Leane and the other woman, who wear blue and white, respectively.
Egwene’s Accepted Test | youtube.com

Something that I personally find very relieving is the fact that we see Siuan at the White Tower, specifically during what looks to be Egwene’s Accepted Test. You may remember that when season two was airing, I was…very vocal about my displeasure with how The Wheel Of Time was characterizing Siuan. I don’t feel like rehashing it all right now (you can read what I wrote then here) but one of my points was that Siuan being offscreen for most of the season and her long absence being hand-waved away, especially while Novices were being kidnapped from the White Tower, was not going to help endear her to audiences who still barely know her as a character in her own right, separate from Moiraine, with whom she shares nearly every scene in which she’s appeared and who is usually the viewpoint character in these scenes. It would be one thing if season three wasn’t adapting the events of The Shadow Rising, but if you’ve read that book, you probably know what I’m referring to when I say it’s about to be really important that audiences know Siuan and care about Siuan (again: separately from Moiraine!), and that’s a lot more difficult when she’s hardly ever around! And when she DOES show up, it’s to try and imprison Rand and abuse the Oath Moiraine swore to her…sorry, sorry, I said I wouldn’t rehash my issues with that episode. Let’s just say, I’m very happy to see her.

Zoe Robins as Nynaeve al'Meara. She has long dark hair pulled back in a braid. She's wearing a long-sleeved white dress with a narrow oval cutout in the front.
Nynaeve al’Meara | youtube.com

I’d have loved to have seen a little bit more than one frame each of Nynaeve al’Meara, Mat Cauthon, Aviendha, and Min Farshaw. Nynaeve, because Zoë Robins has top-billing after Rosamund Pike and Daniel Henney, and it’s a little weird to not see that reflected at all in the marketing, but also because Nynaeve had by far the least to do out of the Emond’s Field Five in the season two finale (I wholeheartedly believe that the plan up until the last minute was for her to rescue Egwene from the Seanchan kennels as she does in the books, and when the writers decided they were gonna have Egwene break herself out of captivity, they had no idea what to do with Nynaeve, and pulling an arrow out of Elayne’s leg for twenty minutes was the best they could come up with on a tight schedule and budget). I really need season three to remind people that she is not helpless without the One Power.

And Mat, well, I just want the poor guy to have some screentime this season. Though it’d sure be nice if he could have his long-awaited quarterstaff fight with Gawyn and Galad (who I suppose I should mention does appear in the trailer; there, I mentioned him). To be fair, Mat did get temporarily written off the show after the original actor abruptly dropped out midway through filming season one, requiring a recast and major rewrites, so he had to play catch-up throughout season two, but now that his storyline is pretty much back on track, I’m hopeful that season three will do more with him and with actor Dónal Finn.

A few stray observations: the cinematography has massively improved, and the budget looks much bigger, though I don’t have the exact numbers to state that with certainty. The VFX for the channeling is more seamless, the weaves more complex and more colorful, the digitally rendered environments and armies more expansive. I notice a lot of costumes from season two making a reappearance, but equally as many gorgeous new designs, with Alanna Mosvani’s gold-spangled green dress, the alternate reality Emond’s Field Five fits, and the head-to-toe white lace garments of the Wise Ones being particular favorites of mine already. And while I would never think to juxtapose the subject matter of The Wheel Of Time with “Hazy Shade of Winter” by The Bangles, I’ve gotta admit…it does work weirdly well. I mean, doesn’t hurt that it opens with the refrain “time, time, time”.

But now I want to hear what you think? What was your favorite part of the trailer? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

The Wheel Of Time returns for its third season on March 13th, 2025

First Poster For “The Wheel Of Time” Season 3 Drops Ahead Of CCXP

SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME BOOK FOUR: THE SHADOW RISING, AHEAD!

The Wheel Of Time, Amazon Prime’s best epic fantasy series that hardly anyone seems to know about, is returning for its third season sometime soon, by the looks of it. With showrunner Rafe Judkins and stars Josha Stradowski and Madeleine Madden scheduled to take the stage at CCXP in Brazil this Saturday to discuss season three and drop the release date (confirmed by Judkins over on his Instagram), and a new poster dropping this morning, there’s excitement in the air as it feels suddenly plausible that the Dragon Reborn might be back on our screens early in the new year.

First poster for The Wheel of Time season three, depicting Josha Stradowski as Rand al'Thor walking through a desert between rows of standing spears that cast long shadows in the early morning light. He is carrying Rosamund Pike as Moiraine Damodred in his arms. Rand has short reddish-brown hair and wears a short-sleeved sand-brown shirt with brown trousers. He has dragon tattoos spiraling down his bare forearms. Moiraine, whose face is turned away from the camera, has long brown hair and wears a sand-brown blouse and a gray dress.
The Wheel Of Time | Twitter @TheWheelOfTime

The poster – our first look at season three since the short video celebrating a wrap on filming early this year – is beautiful, which is something I haven’t necessarily been able to say of previous posters for the series…not that they were ever bad, but they were “floating head” posters, and I felt like the show’s marketing team could have cooked up something a little more visually arresting to entice audiences, who made The Wheel Of Time Prime Video’s most watched original series debut of 2021 but didn’t show up as strongly for season two in 2023 despite much better reviews for the season, in large part because the marketing was non-existent. The actors and writers literally couldn’t talk about the show or promote it at the time due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and Amazon did virtually nothing to fill the void. We don’t know how season two performed in the eyes of Amazon executives, but with season four yet to be greenlit, I think it’s safe to assume that they’re waiting for season three to come out first and do well before they commit to continuing the sprawling story; which was planned to run for eight seasons, condensing fourteen books worth of source material.

So the marketing can’t suck this time around – and if this poster is anything to go by, I’m cautiously optimistic that it won’t. So let’s discuss the poster itself.

The image seems obviously designed to eventually double as a book cover for The Shadow Rising, the fourth volume in Robert Jordan’s saga, which The Wheel Of Time season three will be adapting (having consolidated most of the relevant parts of books two and three into its second season). Depicting Stradowski’s character Rand al’Thor walking through a steel forest of standing spears in a desert at dawn, carrying Rosamund Pike’s Moiraine Damodred in his arms, the poster follows through on the promise made in season two to shift focus away from Moiraine, the series’ protagonist throughout its first season, and onto Rand, the books’ protagonist, who has reluctantly accepted that he is the “Dragon Reborn” destined to save the world or destroy it, and must now complete the vague prophecies written about him centuries before his birth if he is to defeat the Dark One at the Last Battle and prevent the very fabric of reality from being torn apart.

The poster transports us to one of the books’ harshest settings, the Waste, home to twelve warring clans who collectively make up the Aiel. Rand is, as the show has already revealed, the son of an Aiel Maiden of the Spear named Shaiel, who died giving birth to him on the field of battle during the Aiel War, in which a coalition of Aiel clans under the command of Chief Janduin of the Taardad invaded the Westlands to exact vengeance for the killing of a sacred tree (long story). Janduin is Rand’s father, making him half-Aiel. Wait, didn’t I say that Rand’s parents are both Aiel? I’ll let the show explain that.

Close-up image of Josha Stradowski as Rand al'Thor. He has a shaved head, and is wearing a dark blue coat with ornate gold embroidery over an open-collared white shirt. He is channeling red and gold threads of the One Power into a web that spirals around his upper body. He has a sword strapped to his back.
Rand al’Thor | nerdist.com

In The Wheel Of Time season two, we met Aiel Maiden of the Spear Aviendha (played by Ayoola Smart) as she led an expeditionary force back into the Westlands to find the prophesized savior of the Aiel, the Car’a’carn or “Chief of Chiefs”, who turned out to also be Rand al’Thor. In season three, presumably just as in the books, Rand will decide to follow her into the Waste and help his people in their hour of need, against Moiraine’s wishes. His journey will take him to the ruined city of Rhuidean, built in ages past by Aes Sedai to house a treasure trove of powerful tar’angreal (magical objects) and the secret histories of the Aiel. But in the Waste, Rand will encounter opposition not only from the Dark One’s most powerful minions, but from leaders of the Aiel who dispute and challenge his claim to be the Car’a’carn, including a hotheaded clan chief and an ambitious Wise One (the Aiel equivalent to an Aes Sedai) who join forces to take him down.

Eagle-eyed fans will have noticed right away that Rand is sporting some new tattoos on his arms in the season three poster, which have great significance but are kinda a spoiler, so I won’t give away too much. Let’s just say, the process of obtaining those tattoos is an arduous one, and comprises one of the most memorable sequences in the entirety of Jordan’s saga, a sequence I hope The Wheel Of Time can do justice, as I firmly believe that it could single-handedly put the show on the map, so to speak. If not, The Shadow Rising still has plenty of other outstanding moments that could also do the trick (it is regarded by many fans as the best book in the series), some of which I’m looking forward to even more, but that particular sequence has the potential to be uniquely brilliant on every level. I already know Stradowski’s gonna kill it; it’s just a question of whether the show’s writing, direction, cinematography and production design are able to match the energy he’s going to bring.

Ragga Ragnars as Bain, Ayoola Smart as Aviendha, and Maja Simonsen as Chiad standing in a row in a dimly-lit room with stone walls. All three have long reddish-brown hair and wear lightweight brown leather armor over sand-brown garments with hoods and black scarves. They have spears strapped to their backs and small bucklers at their sides.
Bain, Aviendha, and Chiad | lrmonline.com

Oh, and as for why Rand is holding Moiraine in his arms, well, I have my theories. Which I will not be sharing at this time, because again, that would require spoilers and the source material is just obscure enough that I don’t feel comfortable revealing everything that happens even though it’s been over thirty years since The Shadow Rising‘s publication. I envy those of you who will be watching the season with fresh eyes, completely unaware of what’s coming. Because everything I’ve seen thus far – i.e. this poster – tells me it’s gonna be great.

What do you think of the poster, and what are you hoping gets revealed or shown during Saturday’s CCXP panel? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

“The Rings Of Power” Season 2, Episode 6 Is Fine, But Lacks Focus

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO, EPISODE SIX, AHEAD!

The question posed in the title of The Rings Of Power season two, episode six – “Where Is He?” – is one the show has already answered: in fact, to clear up any confusion on that front, we were given the full rundown on everywhere Sauron (Charlie Vickers) has been in the last millennia of Middle-earth’s history. We’ve followed his movements so closely this season that there can be no doubt as to where he is at any given moment (usually Eregion, but he does make a quick excursion to the Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm in this episode). The suspense comes from waiting for the characters in-universe to figure it out for themselves, with the limited information they have at their disposal.

Charlie Vickers as Sauron, looking into the flames of a brazier standing in the foreground, which have taken the shape of a Balrog with curled horns, glowing eyes, and a gaping maw. Sauron has long blond hair, and wears the faintest of smirks on his face.
Sauron and the Balrog | youtube.com

Ironically, the person closest to Sauron physically, Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), is the furthest from the truth, his mind beginning to fracture under the pressure of constant emotional abuse and manipulation tactics, even as his soul stubbornly defies corruption. Having waxed poetic about Edwards’ masterful turn as the tortured Elven-smith many times already, I always fear that I will run out of words to express the fullness of my awe and admiration for his talent, or that they will begin to feel hollow, but as his performance evolves subtly from episode to episode, new praises always rise in my throat. Edwards conveys his character’s deeply internal disintegration with discomforting palpability while never resorting to trite affectations – one particularly forceful example of his unconventional, heightened approach to the subject matter his fiery reading of an almost Shakespearean monologue as he labors over the Nine Rings. Something that Edwards ensures we never forget is that Celebrimbor is not a human, and he’s not just any Elf either – he is one of the mightiest of the Noldor, proudest and wisest of all Elves.

Per usual, Vickers matches Edwards beat-for-beat, his “Annatar” morphing into a more overtly devilish figure with each day that passes, trading out his humble white garments for a somewhat unsubtle black robe with gold trim. The seemingly genuine regret with which Sauron tortures Celebrimbor makes him a far more terrifying villain than if he took great pleasure in his atrocities – he has convinced himself that his ultimate goal, building a utopia in Middle-earth, will justify the suffering he must necessarily inflict on its denizens to force them to accept him as their rightful ruler, but he hates that he feels he has to be violent. After all, he was originally an angelic being who delighted in perfection and order, and abhorred chaos. In a sequence near the end of the episode, Sauron ensnares Celebrimbor in a wide-scale simulation of Eregion at peace – while in reality, the city is under siege by Adar (Sam Hazeldine)’s army of Orcs – and although the deception is intended to pacify the Elven-smith and keep him in his forge, Sauron himself is deeply immersed in the illusion.

Charlie Vickers as Sauron and Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor, standing outdoors in the main square of Eregion. Sauron has long blonde hair and wears a black robe with gold trim and a wide gold belt. He is presenting a gilded hammer to Celebrimbor. Celebrimbor has short brown hair and wears a green velvet gown.
Sauron and Celebrimbor | msn.com

 

 

 

 

 

The elaborate transition back from hazy, gold-hued fantasy to stark reality, a combination of complex camera-work, practical effects, and VFX, has become one of the season’s most talked-about moments: a showcase for director Sanaa Hamri and cinematographer Alex Disenhof. As the camera circles Sauron, the last vestiges of illusion fall apart, day turns into night, and the quiet sounds of idyllic life give way to weeping and wailing. On the other side of the river, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) begs Adar to stop his assault on Eregion, warning him that he’s playing right into Sauron’s hands, but Adar is intent on ridding the world of Sauron once and for all, and he feels that the Elves have failed, now it’s his turn. His motivations are noble, but what Adar fails to realize is that he’s turning into the very thing he seeks to destroy, leading his children to battle like lambs to the slaughter – the very thing Sauron threatened to do that resulted in him being Julius Caesar-ed by Adar thousands of years earlier.

Unfortunately, I can’t help but feel (especially in retrospect, now that the season is over) that the series rushed through the steps of Adar’s character devolution, hitting all the vital beats, one immediately after another, without enough time and space between to give each one weight and meaning. Adar is far and away The Rings Of Power‘s most compelling original character, a fascinating and valuable addition to the legendarium, and I’m not sure the writers were fully aware of the potential their own creation had, or he would have been afforded the necessary screentime to let his journey play out organically, at a more natural pace.

In what is becoming a major problem for the show, we bounce back-and-forth between disconnected subplots throughout this episode, never spending quite enough time in one setting to get immersed or totally invested before we’re moving on. In Rhûn, we catch up with The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) towards the tail-end of what has apparently been…days? weeks? months?…of rigorous training with Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), who seemingly advises him – without actually saying it outright – to stop worrying about his friends and start seeking out the staff that will bestow upon him unfathomable power. Of course, such a message would be antithetical to the themes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing, which is why I say “seemingly” because, as is fairly obvious, Bombadil is testing the Stranger. Meanwhile, Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) helps prepare the Stoors for a confrontation with the mysterious masked horsemen who roam the desert, while Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards), who is inexplicably heterosexual in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, shares an eve-of-battle kiss with her Stoor boyfriend of approximately one day, Merimac (Gavi Singh Chera). Aggravatingly, both the Stranger’s and Halflings’ subplots cut off abruptly at this point – before the Stranger’s final test and presumably spur-of-the-moment decision to forsake the quest for his staff and find his friends, or the battle in the Stoor village. Next time we see them, in the season finale, the Stoors are already prisoners and the Stranger has arrived to help, with no connective tissue between these scenes whatsoever.

Rory Kinnear as Tom Bombadil and Daniel Weyman as the Stranger, standing with their backs to the camera on the edge of a cliff overlooking a forest of bare-branched trees in a rocky valley. Tom wears a pointed hat and wears a long blue coat. The Stranger has shoulder-length gray hair and wears a mossy gray-green robe.
Tom Bombadil and The Stranger | youtube.com

 

 

 

 

 

In Khazad-dûm, Disa (Sophia Nomvete) and her husband Durin IV (Owain Arthur) spend the entire episode engaged in environmental activism, blocking Durin’s increasingly covetous father King Durin III (Peter Mullan) from digging deeper under the mountain. There’s a cool moment where Disa sings to summon a swarm of bats that attack the King’s miners…and that’s pretty much it on that front. For two such vibrant characters, Disa and Durin are routinely given some of the least engaging material to work with, and it’s an injustice to Nomvete and Arthur, who are both delightful actors.

On the isle of Númenor, Elendil (Lloyd Owen) stands accused of treason, while the King’s son Kemen (Leon Wadham), who murdered a man in a place of worship, unsurprisingly gets off scot-free, his “punishment” a governorship in Middle-earth’s Southlands. I must confess to feeling rather miffed that the murdered man in question, Valandil, is never mentioned again after his death – he wasn’t a major character, per se, but he appeared in eight episodes across two seasons, Elendil treated him like a son, and he was the best friend of Elendil’s children, Isildur and Eärien (Ema Horvath), the latter of whom….knows about his death and her boyfriend Kemen’s involvement? Doesn’t know? Will we ever know? I don’t know! What I do know is that the show’s diverse ensemble cast does not immunize it to all criticism of how its predominantly white writers actually handle characters of color (Valandil’s actor Alex Tarrant is of Māori, Samoan and Niuean descent), and fans are well within their rights to raise an eyebrow at The Rings Of Power‘s trend of casually killing off characters of color this season – including Valandil and two out of three non-white named Elves.

On that note, we should probably talk about Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), who increasingly feels more like a prop than a person as the season progresses. Míriel, the usurped Queen-Regent, abruptly insists that she be put on trial in Elendil’s place, and upon being cast into the ocean to face judgement from a sea monster, the sequence even more abruptly cuts away before anything actually happens. The scene, which I was excited to see play out, ultimately left a bitter taste in my mouth for a couple of reasons – firstly, because I love a good sea monster, and this is the second time now that The Rings Of Power has teased a sea monster only to show it onscreen for maybe ten seconds: secondly, and more importantly, because this is ostensibly an important beat in Míriel’s fragmented character arc this season, a moment of truth for her and all that she believes in, and yet we as the audience have virtually no access to her thought process and internal conflict throughout. For a sequence which culminates in her staggering out of the ocean, having been found innocent, accompanied by cheers of “Tar-Míriel!” (strongly implying a shift in her favor that was either unintentional or was immediately undone offscreen between this episode and the finale), this scene needed to hold greater weight than it does. Míriel’s lack of interiority is a problem, one that becomes especially apparent any time she’s paired up with Elendil, who has so much.

For example, Elendil’s disintegrating relationship with his daughter Eärien is the focus of a truly moving scene shortly prior to the trial, where the two speak for what they believe to be the last time, Eärien begging him to repent for his crimes and accept Ar-Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle), something that Elendil cannot bring himself to do. I mentioned in my review of episode five that Elendil and Pharazôn are more similar than they’d probably care to admit when it comes to parenting, and this scene exemplifies that. Elendil isn’t wrong, but he’s so assured of his rightness that he refuses to explain to a clearly distressed and confused Eärien why he’s choosing to die for his beliefs over staying alive for her, after she already lost her brother (so she thinks); pushing her away instead of letting her in. Is it any wonder that her and Kemen get along, when both their fathers are severe, closed-off, and patronizing? Elendil, to be fair to the guy, is all of those things without meaning to be, but he needs someone to knock some sense into him, and my money’s on Amandil, his own father, whom we’ll presumably meet in season three.

Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Miriel with Lloyd Owen as Elendil standing behind her, holding her arm steady as she walks up a rocky path between rows of soldiers and citizens. Miriel has long dark curly hair and wears a sleeveless white gown. Elendil has shaggy shoulder-length brown hair and wears a brown tunic.
Míriel and Elendil | Twitter @TheRingsofPower

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the episode pinballs between the numerous subplots it’s being asked to rush along, perhaps we do lose sight of our main villain – and The Rings Of Power‘s central throughline – somewhat, making the title “Where Is He?” more apt, albeit ironically. If I were to summarize this episode into a single word, it might be “nebulous”. Not bad, not boring, but unfocused and a bit vague about what it’s trying to accomplish. As a prelude to the Siege of Eregion, it tries to slowly ratchet up the tension, but there’s just no time to make Adar’s dramatic heel-turn feel entirely appropriate for his character at this moment, while as a stepping-stone in various other story arcs, it feels almost irrelevant, with both Míriel and the Stranger undergoing trials we don’t get to see and which don’t move them forward so much as reassure them that they were already on the right path. It’s not my least-favorite episode of the season, but it has the misfortune of being wedged between two excellent episodes that make the dip in quality feel more drastic.

Episode Rating: 6/10

Exclusive: “The Rings Of Power” Costume Designer Talks Season Two, Sauron, And More

SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO AHEAD!

Charlie Vickers as Annatar in The Rings Of Power, standing with his right hand raised to his chin in a contemplative gesture. He has long blond hair held back by a serpentine gold circlet, and wears a brown leather apron over a silver robe with minimal silver embroidery around the collar. He also wears brown leather arm-wraps.
Annatar | Amazon MGM Studios
Credit: Ben Rothstein / Prime Video

Just before the premiere of Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power season two in late August, I had the pleasure of speaking with the epic fantasy series’ costume designer, Luca Mosca. We touched on Sauron and Tom Bombadil, but at the time, he couldn’t tell me much about specific characters and their costumes. Now that the season is over, I sat down for another interview with Mosca to talk a little bit more in-depth about the season, specific costumes, and his experience working on The Rings Of Power.


Leith Skilling: So I wanted to start by first saying congratulations to you and your entire team. Season two was so well-received, and the costumes were just beautiful across the board.

Luca Mosca: Thank you so much. I should really stress on the word “Team”, because I was nothing in the face of the skills and professionality and efficiency of my entire Team. Not one of those costumes would be there were it were not for the Team. It takes a village and it’s really like a bee-hive operation and I’ve been chosen to be the queen bee. And everybody around me was just pure excellence. So I wanted to make sure that you are aware that you’re not talking to one person but you’ll be talking to hundreds.

LS: Especially on a production of this scale, I can only imagine how many people are involved at every level.

LM: I think we have been the largest TV show ever made. In New Zealand in particular, one really had the feeling that we were doing something colossal and immense.

LS: Well, on that note, how did you get involved with The Rings Of Power?

LM: I got a call out of the clear blue sky from one of the executive producers who explained that they were sadly losing their costume designer [Kate Hawley] and who invited me to join the show in New Zealand, so I interviewed, put together a few sketches and I was hired.

Luca Mosca standing with his arms wrapped around his sister Erica. Luca is wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt. Erica is wearing a blue-green headscarf and black-and-white dress.
Luca Mosca with his sister Erica | image courtesy of Luca Mosca

I was coming from the John Wick trilogy but could not join John Wick 4 because I had to go to Italy and join my family for a couple of months because my little sister who had gone skiing off-trail had met her death together with her boyfriend in an avalanche and I had to go tend to my elderly father who had been left alone. That was a true emotional cataclysm in my life. Once my father was taken care of, I was able to leave my dad in capable hands, fly to New Zealand and join the show. It was the proverbial “rollercoaster” or the “peaks and valleys” of life.

LS: Had you read the books or was this world entirely new to you?

LM: Although I was familiar with the trilogy, I read the books again in order to become an “expert” but here’s another intimidating thing: you think you know Lord Of The Rings because you know Saruman and Gollum but then you go into this kind of production and you are surrounded by so much knowledge and you hear people talk and it’s like “what are they talking about?” It’s gigantic, it’s a culture, it’s a language of its own, there are people who know how to write the runes and people who know how to read them, people who know everything and every single detail inside-out, it was an intimidating feeling.

Trystan Gravelle as Pharazon in The Rings Of Power, striding towards the camera with his hands by his side, as a wind whips at him. He has long dark hair going gray and a beard streaked with black. He wears a crimson robe with a long cloak and an ornamental silver breastplate with numerous belts around his waist.
Pharazôn | Amazon MGM Studios
Credit: Ben Rothstein / Prime Video

LS: We have to talk about Sauron, because he really is the center of season two. There’s so much fan art that’s been made of Sauron in his “fair form” as Annatar: did you try to reference any of that, and what other references and influences went into creating his new look?

LM: I had to tap into my background, my culture and my heritage and I started researching how in the Middle Ages a good monk would be depicted or a good prophet or a good Samaritan or a good messenger, since we drew a lot of visual inspiration from Middle Ages art or from the Byzantine period or from the Renaissance. One feature of that costume is that it is very drapey even if it looked like it was made out of burlap. The fabric was actually a precious raw silk that looked like burlap because the weave was open and rustic looking. We used this open weave quality and underneath it we put a shiny, silvery fabric that – only at times, only with movement when the knee or the elbow or the chest were pushing against the fabrics and only in places of contact – it shimmered through.

And that to me was one of the most successful costumes because it showed the “deceit” of Sauron: “Oh, look at me, I’m a humble creature, I’m a humble man, I’m dressed in burlap like a poor monk begging for scraps of food”. But in reality, if you dug through his costume, you would find all this decadent luxury underneath the first layer of fabric that is not typical of a monk. It was a beautiful concept and this is what we do as costume designers since we are storytellers and sometimes we even inform the actor of who their character is. Actors sometimes meet their character in front of a mirror in the fitting room, and Charlie Vickers loved that costume.

LS: Sauron and Galadriel obviously have a very close relationship and their journeys parallel each other this season. Do you design one’s outfit with the other one in mind?

LM: Absolutely. Always, always. We prepare “line-ups” of costumes: the illustrations are all lined up on a sheet of paper or on a board, to make sure – and this is something I do in every movie – to make sure that there are no clashes, or no similarities, or if there are similarities, they happen on purpose. Only once I display them out, only after seeing them all together I realize conflicts or issues, so yes: we do design costumes with that in mind, with a palette in mind and the costume of Sauron, the “fair form” at least, had a little bit of an Elven quality. It wasn’t the coloring of Celebrimbor, it wasn’t the greens and the purples of Eregion, but in terms of drape and fluidity and shape, it could very well pass for an Elf. So we do design these things with that in mind, and if you think about it, Sauron’s “fair form” is the same color as Galadriel’s armor, right?

LS: There’s been some speculation online over the similar silhouette and color palette of Sauron’s “fair form” costume and the costume of Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband, in The Lord Of The Rings films – was there any intent behind that?

LM: Not at all, that is not something that we had in mind or that we intended to reference.

Benjamin Walker as Gil-galad and Robert Aramayo as Elrond, standing side-by-side, surrounded by Orcs. Gil-galad has long dark brown hair and wears a burnished gold breastplate emblazoned with the intertwining gold and silver branches of the Two Trees of Valinor over a long-sleeved pale yellow tunic with large pauldrons and vambraces. Elrond has short, tousled dark brown hair and wears a very similar suit of armor but in silver. He has a deep wound in his right cheek, and blood is running down his face.
Gil-galad and Elrond | Amazon MGM Studios
Credit: Ben Rothstein / Prime Video

LS: Is foreshadowing something that you try to incorporate into the costuming? A lot of characters die this season – Celebrimbor, Adar, King Durin – are there any signals to their eventual fates that you incorporate into the costume?

LM: I try to, as much as possible, because us costume designers are psychologists and we try to give hints but sometimes like in the case of the death of Celebrimbor, it’s in the lore and is a known fact, the audience knows in advance. Celebrimbor’s look was one of the big tasks that I was met with when I landed in New Zealand. The Studio wanted a dignified, elegant and elevated Celebrimbor. And again, tapping back into my heritage of history and art, I thought that the best reference for Celebrimbor would have been Dante. Next time you see images of Dante or Dante with Beatrice, note how that kind of fluid gown is kind of translated into Celebrimbor’s costume. This kind of artistic “concept” is very seductive for the audience, for the director, for the actor or the producer. That was another successful translation of cultural elements from my particular background into modern filmmaking.

LS: Do you have a favorite group to design for; Elves, Dwarves, Númenóreans?

LM: You’re basically asking me as a parent to choose his favorite child – that’s impossible! So without telling you what was my favorite or my least-favorite – I can tell you that honestly I did not have a least-favorite, because every world and culture of Rings Of Power was so creatively enjoyable to design and I could go from looking at a bloodied Orc to seeing a celestial Elf during the same costume fitting session and the mental and creative stimulation of going from from Dwarves to Númenóreans or from Orcs to Elves was so satisfying. I particularly loved Númenor. Númenor is to me like ancient Rome at the peak – but at that last day of the peak, when after that the fall of the empire happened. It was at the peak of luxury and decadence and refinement with beautiful fabrics, shiny jewel-tones or primary colors. The Elves were elegant and the Orcs were so creative and designing for the Dwarves was so incredible, but Númenor was a feast of colors, of luxury, of embroidery, it was phenomenal.

LS: When designing armor, what is the process behind that, and especially for the Elves, how do you balance the beauty and aesthetics with practicality and durability?

LM: The first armor that I was tasked to design was for the elven army of Eregion. We looked at brass statues that were becoming tarnished with the verdigris of oxidation. And in my understanding of Eregion – and that’s why I used so much green in it, green and colors of foliage – in Eregion they were master builders and their city was incredible but they never prevented nature from coming indoors. So moss, lichen and creeping ivy were not trimmed but they were invited in and they were part of the environment. So the oxidation concept came up and I applied green “verdigris” to the armor.

How do we make them durable? Durability is a big problem, because much of the armor, just because of the nature of it, goes through battles with a lot of action and gets damaged. But the armor also needs to be made out of materials that are light and safe enough for the actor to wear. Can you only imagine if there were a sharp metal edge and I sent the actor out in it and they fell and got cut and injured? So the choice of materials is very important and is part of a long process. When I pass on the final sketch to the armorer who asks me: “are you sure?”, the little voice inside me says “No, I’m not! I will never be sure, give me another day, give me another week, give me another month”. But we have to move on and to commit to a specific design and to give it to a sculptor who first makes it in clay and also to a metalworker who makes a prototype out of real metal. At that stage I have to pull the trigger and say “this is it” and there’s no going back. For Gil-galad or Elrond the armor was slightly different and personalized, it was similar to the rest of the soldiers yet with slight differences and touches that made it unique to them.

LS: Where do the costumes currently reside?

LM: They’re all back in London at the Studios. As you could see there were a lot of costumes from season one in season two, and costumes from both seasons will also be carried over into the next seasons.

Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor in The Rings Of Power, seated at a small desk watching a candle burning. He has tousled brown hair streaked with soot and grime, and wears a brown leather apron over a dark green robe with holly leaves embroidered in spring green and gold around the collar. The tools and accoutrements of a jewelsmith are scattered about him.
Celebrimbor | Amazon MGM Studios
Credit: Ross Ferguson / Prime Video

LS: Lastly, a silly question. When the Lord Of The Rings films came out, there were Barbie dolls of characters like Arwen, Galadriel, Legolas. Is there any chance of a Sauron Barbie doll or a Galadriel Barbie doll for The Rings Of Power?

LM: (laughs) I don’t know, because I’m not involved with that side of marketing. What I do know is that there was a doll of John Wick in the black suit that was not made by the Studio. So these dolls might exist but I am unaware of them.

LS: We have to get on Amazon’s case to make the official versions.

LM: I will definitely make a request and say that Leith requested Barbie dolls.

LS: Well, that is all the time we have. Thank you so much for your time.

LM:  You have to shut me up because I could continue for hours as I like to reminisce about all of this; it was a beautiful experience. Let’s hope that the costumes get – that the whole series in general, the actors and the sets and everybody – get the due recognition during awards season.

LS: Emmys all around!

LM: I’m not a big social media person so I don’t have a “thermometer” of what’s going on but I hear a lot of positive stuff so – fingers crossed!


All episodes of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power season two are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.