‘The Wheel of Time’ Recap: ‘A Place of Safety’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode Three of ‘The Wheel of Time’.
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When we last left our ragtag group of unexpected heroes in the Amazon Prime series, The Wheel of Time, the situation was quite grim. For the vacant city of Shadar Logoth nearly consumed them all, forcing a hasty escape from the city’s giant walls… one that saw everyone be separated and to top it all off, it seemed as though Lan was in great trouble. Since a rightfully angry and confused (and shockingly alive) Nynaeve had him at sword point. If anything, all of these elements left us wondering if this group of heroes were going to find any safety following their escape from doom or if more trouble awaited them and thankfully, this series wasted no time in informing us, that semi-good times were ahead for the Two Rivers group.

For ‘A Place of Safety’ provided the majority of the characters with a place to catch their breath. For instance, shortly after escaping a pack of seemingly hungry and dangerous wolves, Egwene and Perrin finally ran into a group of potentially kind people known as the Tinkers. Who roamed from place to place and claimed to offer comfort and shelter to anyone in need and boy did these two need it. For they were cold and starving and unsure if they could trust anyone in the slightest. But thankfully, these were indeed good people through and through and that gave this duo everything they needed from a peace perspective and truly, they are the ones that had it the easiest in this tale, since their friends found a touch of trouble to go with their respective safety. 
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Mat and Rand for instance, found a mining village on their way toward the White Tower and decided it was a fine place to stop and breathe and plan their next moves and well, it didn’t take long for Mat to decide… that this was a foolish quest through and through. For he would rather be with his family and help them back home and that motivated him to try and collect as much money as possible to get back there. Meanwhile Rand, found himself in quite the predicament. For the kindness of an innkeeper turned out to be nothing more than a horrific ruse. Since she revealed herself to be aligned with the Dark One and promised Mat and Rand to that monster, ruining their sense of safety and putting them back on the road again after a kind gleeman saved them from her clutches.

As for Moiraine and Lan… well… all they could do in this tale was remain exposed outside and do their best to survive and thankfully, after much posturing and battling, Nynaeve and Lan came to an agreement. The kind where she would do her best to heal Moiraine so that everyone could start the search for the remaining survivors and really, this particular sequence in the story was both subtle and tense. Subtle, simply because silence was used to drive just about everything here, which means that it was up the actors to sell decisions and moments with their eyes and their body language and this was tense, courtesy of the fact that there was no safety to be found in the open. Especially with the possibility that evil could appear at any moment. But eventually this tense alliance paid off, since Moiraine regained consciousness and moved on to begin the hunt… only to encounter quite the surprise.

In that one of her sisters, apparently found the Dragon Reborn and was moving him to a secure location, leaving one to wonder if she got it all wrong. But while we wait to see if that is the case and what will become of our heroes, we can bask in one solid tale. One that quite frankly, gave the audience a little time to breathe after sitting through pure madness and it was nice to catch our breath our spend a little quality time with these good people and learn a little more about them. Plus, a round of applause to the story for using so much silence to build trust between two characters and well, in the end… all this episode does is leave us filled with questions. Because we simply have to know if this random guy is indeed the Dragon Reborn and if he isn’t… why lie about such a thing? And let’s be honest, it probably isn’t him, when one considers how Rand jacked up that door and well… all this curiosity is going to leave each and every one of us counting down the minutes until next Friday’s entry. Until next time.

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