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PicoD

Will the real Dragon Reborn please stand up?

His name is Logain. The man in the cage, the one our heroes stumbled upon at the end of the last episode, claims to be the Dragon Reborn. The Aes Sedai call him a "false Dragon," but his powers are undoubtedly compelling. In a flashback, we see Logain (Álvaro Morte) and the army he's already amassed storming a castle and conquering its king. He calmly flaunts his connection to the One Power, conjuring black tendrils that play both offense and defense, before healing the king's wounds and inviting him to his side.

He claims to be a good guy. "Those women," he says, speaking of the Aes Sedai, "should be following me, not fighting me." He plans to bind the world, not break it.

Moraine (Rosamund Pike) doesn't believe it. Nor does Lan (Daniel Henney). Logain doesn't fit the prophecy. He's too old, for one. And why aren't the Trollocs interested in him like they are our heroes? Others aren't sure. Kerene (Clare Perkins), a green-ringed Aes Sedai, is too struck by his power to dismiss him. It takes at least two Aes Sedai to keep him shielded inside his cage, after all. "It's like holding a cat in the bath," remarks one Aes Sedai.

Kerene, the most level-headed among them, wants to shepherd Logain back to the White Tower so a trial can be held to determine if he's the real deal. But Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood) has a point when she asks if the power it takes to pacify him can sustain itself across those hundreds of miles. Her solution? "Gentle" him now. Gentling, we're told, is the process by which an Aes Sedai defangs a channeler by severing them from the One Power. (As we later learn, this not-so-gentle act can give way to suicide, as those who know the touch of the One Power can't live without it.)

As they mull their options, a chilling question lingers: What if they gentle Logain and he turns out to be the real Dragon?

At camp, Lan catches up with a few of his burly colleagues, including Kerene's warder, the ax-wielding Stepin (Peter Franzén). At long last, he gets the chance to loosen up a little, allowing Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) to see a different, more playful side of the frequently grim warrior. She also gets a deeper look into the odd, close-knit bond that exists between an Aes Sedai and her warder, which appears to be intimate without being explicitly sexual. Shippers, proceed with caution.

If there's any sexual tension here, it's between Lan and Nynaeve, whose initial suspicion of each other has softened into something resembling trust. In one tender scene, she recalls the last time she saw her birth parents, who hid her in a cellar as a battle raged outside. They left her with a phrase in the "Old Tongue" — this world's Latin — that she cherishes, but has never translated. Lan, who prays in the Old Tongue, unpacks it: "We shall go into the land so our children can always hold us and we'll never be alone." It was, he explains, what the bygone king of Manetheren said to his wife before a battle he knew they'd lose. (Manetheren, the former name of the mountain region that gave birth to Two Rivers, was last discussed by Moraine a few episodes back.)

Elsewhere, Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) and Egwene (Madeleine Madden) learn more about the nomadic Tinkers, specifically their pacifist philosophy, the Way of the Leaf. Those who follow the Way of the Leaf condemn all forms of violence, even self-defense. "Has your life been better or worse since you picked up that ax?" Ila (Maria Doyle Kennedy) asks Perrin, whose pained gaze is answer enough.

Egwene, meanwhile, bonds with the handsome Aram (Daryl McCormack) as she drinks in the intricacies of their community, one of the many that proliferate the pages of Jordan's fantasy epic. It's true that not much actually happens with Perrin, Egwene, and the Tinkers in this episode, but the show's willingness to just sit inside these tiny worlds for a bit reflects much of what makes the books so enriching.

Rand (Josha Stradowski) and Mat (Barney Harris) are still getting used to their new traveling companion, the gleeman Thom Merrilin (Alexandre Willaume), who himself senses something off with Mat. He suspects that Mat, who's been sick and erratic of late, may have touched the One Power, explaining to Rand how any man who uses it eventually goes mad (outside of the Dragon Reborn, of course). He warns him of the "reds," a nod to Liandrin's red-ringed sect of the Aes Sedai, saying to keep Mat far from them. It's well-known, even among the Aes Sedai, how much the reds love to gentle.

That night, Rand dreams of the fire-eyed creature we've seen in previous nightmares. It turns out to be an omen, as Rand and Thom discover Mat inside the Grinwell house, where each of the family members, including the children, lay in bloody heaps. It appears at first that Mat is behind the attack, given that he's brandishing the dagger he plucked from Shadar Logoth, but it isn't long before a screeching Fade manifests in the dark at the top of the stairs. A shadow, not unlike the one that consumed Shadar Logoth, creeps down Mat's face, leaving us unsure of what hold the Dark One has on him. As Thom squares off against the Fade, Rand and Mat sprint into the darkness. What, exactly, is happening to Mat? And how does the dagger fit into it?

Danger has also arrived for the Aes Sedai. Logain's army, thousands strong, has arrived at the camp to liberate who they believe to be the Dragon Reborn. As the Aes Sedai and their warders square off against the soldiers outside, Moraine confronts Logain, who has melted the bars of his cage. "Why should I believe you?" she asks. His answer, that he hears the voices of the thousand Dragons that came before him, takes us back to the beginning of the episode. There, as he decided what to do with the king he conquered, his magic manifested in an array of distrusting voices, ones that warned him of betrayals. "They're teaching me how to do better this time," he tells Moraine.

But that's all Moraine needs to hear. "Those are the whispers of madness," she tells him, deriding his powers, strong as they are, as a mere "trickle" of the ones the real Dragon Reborn will possess. Joined by Liandrin and Kerene, Moraine works to bind him again. She succeeds, but not before Logain can fire off a final spear of magic. Kerene, sensing the attack, sacrifices herself to save Moraine and Liandrin. With Logain restrained, she dies.

It was noted in the last episode that a psychic connection exists between an Aes Sedai and her warder; when one feels pain, so does the other. It's this sensation that propels Stepin, Kerene's now-orphaned warder, to attack Logain himself. Foolishly, he rams his ax through the forcefield binding the false Dragon in such a way that allows Logain to shatter it. Shards of Stepin's ax careen through the cave, piercing the Aes Sedai and splitting open Lan's throat.

Nynaeve, shocked by the sight of a dying Lan, suddenly explodes into an all-encompassing radiance. Channeling for the first time, she essentially casts Cure All on everyone in her orbit. Moraine and Liandrin's wounds heal. Lan's throat zips back up. Even Logain can't believe what he's seen. With him distracted, Liandrin jumps into action, drawing upon the power of the other Aes Sedai to gentle Logain and sever his connection to the One Power.

As he writhes in agony, every eye in the room turns to Nynaeve.

Other Observations:

  • In a conversation with Nynaeve, Liandrin derides Moraine's blue sect of the Aes Sedai as "little spies who exaggerate their importance." The reds, meanwhile, "protect the world from people who would misuse power, even Aes Sedai." If that's the case, one has to wonder who polices the police.
  • Aram mentions a song that was lost in the Breaking, one with the power to bring harmony to the world. Clearly he's talking about "Don't Stop Believing."

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Tandra Barner

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