The Wheel of Time - Seeds of Shadow / The Road to the Spear
Rand al’Thor's (Josha Stradowski) journey continues across the Ariel Waste with their new guides who lead them to the city of Rhuidean. While he and Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike) are permitted entry where they will face challenges to prove their worth. While Rand walks through a the past, living through generations of his timeline and learning about his parents, the creation of the city of the clouds, and the oath sworn long ago and how it was broken, Moiraine has visions of many possible futures. While we spend the bulk of time with Rand, we only see flashes of Moiraine's visions which include a possible romance with Rand and several timelines which end at the hands of Lanfear (Natasha O’Keeffe) who we notably also see in Rand's past vision as well. Aviendha (Ayoola Smart), who has avoided her true path for too long, also takes a similar journey through the rings as Moiraine (although we are not privy to her visions).
Both journeys rely on the actors already introduced with Sradowski playing those of his timeline which is a bit awkward but also makes sense with him living those moments of their lives. With the characters now spread out, the rest of the storylines advance marginally (if at all). Most of these take place "Seeds of Shadow" while "The Road to Spear" allows for far more focus on the Dragon Reborn and the stronger episode of the pair.
We see Moghedien (Laia Costa) spying on both the Forsaken and on Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood) whose time whose location and purpose Elayne (Ceara Coveney) and Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) have also uncovered as they head to stop the Black Ajah in Tanchico along with Mat (Dónal Finn) who tags along after proving himself against Elayne's brothers and Min (Kae Alexander) who follows them after having a disturbing vision of Mat's untimely end. Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) time in the Two Rivers continues where he finds a leadership role he wasn't seeking, and we see the machinations of Elaida (Shohreh Aghdashloo) working her way to more power and allies inside the White Tower who, like she, want to see the caging of the Dragon Reborn.
