REVIEW: ‘The Wheel Of Time’ Season 3 Episode 4 — “The Road Of The Spear”

In theory, The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4 should be the most explosive installment of the series to date. From the expansive lore explorations and consequences wrought by time to the rippling effects that will stem from the actions of Morraine (Rosamund Pike) and Rand (Josha Stradowski) in the ongoing story, it’s a monumental and significant chapter for the story. And, to its utmost credit, the series mostly achieves capturing that epic scale essence.

Unfortunately, it needed one crucial element to make it strike with the potent efficiency that it lacks. It needed a stronger actor at the center who could deliver the complexities and versatility the episode requires. Stradowski, while improved, doesn’t quite live up.

The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4 deals with a pivotal moment from the original fantasy series by author Robert Jordan. With Morraine in tow, Rand will follow Aviendha’s (Ayoola Smart) lead into the ‘city of clouds,’ Rhuidean, to walk the glass columns in a vital trial for Rand. If he is to complete these trials alive, he will learn if he is the true Car’a’carn, the chief who will lead the Aiel.

The Aiel and their tethers to the Dragon Reborn offer some of the richest world-building for the series because they are deeply rooted in the figure’s history. We learn so in pieces. First, when Rand discovers that the Car’a’carn shares the markings of Aiel Chiefs who make it through the trials, however, instead of a golden marking of a dragon on his left forearm, he’ll have it on both.

But that world-building expands further when he and Morraine enter the city of clouds, where Rand will confront the past while Morraine explores the future. That is where their paths will momentarily split. Rand will walk the glass columns where each step forward will take him into the past through his bloodline be it twelve years or hundreds. To lead is to know where he can come from. Meanwhile, Morraine will step into one of the three rings where she’ll see different possible futures.

The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4 demonstrates its crucial set design, locations, and costuming to aid us in going back in time with Rand as he explores his lineage and how the passage of time has tethered him to the wheel, making him Ta’veren (people that the Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern with all surrounding life-threads).

The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4 plunges Rand into the past.

Not all moments in time work with the same emotional potency or precision as others, but the ambition and scale are formidable. We see the origin of the oathbreakers—tree killers—as well as the birth of the tree of life, which are important pieces of the Aeil legacy. In these explorations, we learn that the Aiel used to serve the Aes Sedai, compared to the present day when they pointedly separate their teachings and prophecies.

But perhaps the most interesting snapshot in Rand’s journey is when we move the farthest away from the present day and, ironically, to the most futuristic portion of his trip. One of the best, more unusual aspects of The Wheel of Time is its setting.

Like series such as Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, it would be easy to assume, based on the look and general atmosphere, that the story takes place in some nondescript past. Instead, the books very often, through subtext, suggested that the story took place in a post-apocalyptic world, in a futuristic setting where the modern world broke and we succumbed to time, born anew of all things old.

It’s what makes this particular scene in The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4 so thrilling for fans of the books. Like consummating the hinted but never textual relationship between Elayne and Avidendha in Episode 1, “The Road of the Spear” brings those futuristic leanings to fruition.

We watch in yet another past life as this iteration of Rand toils in the field, his companions buried and bundled under hats of a faraway fashion. From above, Lanfear (Natasha O’Keeffe)—here known as Mierin—watches on from an orb-like ship, a floating university-sphere called the Collam Daan, that sits in the sky. She and Rand speak before all hell breaks loose.

In one of the most visually engaging moments of the series, we watch what it means when the characters reference the ‘breaking of the world.’ Though it is not the official breaking, that happens much later. Instead, we see how the pieces fall away. Mierin blights the world with her ambition to seek a power that would allow anyone beyond the Aes Sedai to channel. In seeking the True Power, she creates a hole into the Dark One’s prison, creating the collapse of the world.

A chilling journey highlights catastrophe. 

It’s a chilling sequence because so much of it is suggested as we watch from ground level as the world ripples and ruptures as pure evil sinks its claws into the most significant power source. The literal fabric of the world crumbles away, and so do the visages as Rand reaches the end of the journey, the dragons on both forearms signaling the truth of the Aiel prophecy and his place in it.

He reaches Aviendha there, too, admitting to her that he knows enough to “know I’ll never fully understand.” It’s a decisive moment between the two despite needing more time and depth to their characters and performances.

Despite the perilous journey he goes on, we still don’t fully understand Rand enough to make us fully commit to him as our hero. Strawdowski remains too stiff and stifled by seeming self-consciousness. This is more apparent in the flashbacks as he dons different characters, and none seem too different from Rand. It’s a shame because while Rand is, admittedly, deliberately written as aloof in the novels, we’re at least drawn to his plight.

The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4 soars with enormous set pieces regardless, especially in a pivotal sequence with Morraine as she takes the opposing route and seeks out the future. The sequence where she and Aviendha spin the three rings is gorgeously shot, even if it errs on the side of music video aesthetics (it’s all just so sleek). But the scene is striking, and Pike is delightfully committed to pulling the worst faces to convey her characters’ distress, not an ounce of self-consciousness in sight.

Her story works both against and alongside Rand’s. In the future, she sees that she either kills Rand or dies. From the Two Rivers group turning to the dark to getting in bed with Lanfear or Rand and dying as a consequence or bringing Rand to the White Tower for stilling, there seems to be no future where they both survive. It makes the ending, where Rand carries her back to camp where Lan and Egwene wait, make sense as she’s lived a thousand deaths.

The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4 delivers gorgeous imagery and a grandiosity in storytelling that should be the envy of many other contemporary fantasy series. The show rightfully sets its sights on boundless possibilities rather than limiting itself to a specific style. However, that ambition is momentarily hindered by a leading performance that can’t quite live up to the limitless possibilities the series sees for itself.

The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4 is now on Prime Video.

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