Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike) is Aes Sedai, tasked with finding the newborn dragon before darkness finds it.
He goes with Lan Mondragoran (Daniel Heni), his right-hand man, to find him.
After seeing Aes Sedai’s rival Leandrin Guirale (Kate Fleetwood) kill a man who might be a dragon, he senses it isn’t. he and Lan would go to the two rivers to find him. Next to a boulder above a raging river, Nynaeve al’Mira (Zoe Robbins) introduces young Egwene Al’Ver (Madeline Madden) to an influential group of women; must push part of the initiation into the roaring water. If he believed in the river, he should be able to survive.
Perrin’s old friends Aybara (Marcus Rutherford) at a local pub, Matt Couton (Barney Harris). And Rand author (Joshua Stradowski) discuss mercenary activities in the south but then turn to Egwene. Who returns triumphantly from his inauguration. When Moiraine and Lan came to the inn looking for a place to stay. Everyone’s curiosity was piqued, but not in a positive way.
Nynaeve, the youngest wisdom (she spoke to the wind) the region had ever had, did not believe in Moiraine’s presence; Aes Sedai rejected her mother because of her youth and poverty, and that’s how she saw the group. He also wants Egwene to be his disciple, a lonely life that Rand, related to Egwene, thinks is not true.
Lan sees the massacre in the forest and tells Moiraine. That The Fade will attack the village with hundreds of ruthless trolls like their army. But he couldn’t leave because he knew that one of the five young people was a newborn dragon.
He just didn’t know which.
Rafe Judkins (Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.) takes on the daring challenge of adapting Jordan’s great novels for television, and it’s a challenging task. Since the final story is about Moiraine taking Nynaeve, Egwene, Mat, Perrin, and Rand on a journey to escape the darkness and her servants while she tries to figure out which dragon it is. Judkins must have a lot of character. Presented in the first episode. And he needs time for that. But what is left is the story that floats and is difficult to follow.
We found that our attention wandered for many scenes. To the point that trolls attacking the village felt like a surprise attack to us. But survey told us that Lan knew they were coming and warned Moiraine that they had to leave. But his belief that one of the villagers was a dragon kept him in place.
This is a case where you may become too focused on identifying the characters before the story’s true nature begins. This may be because no setting identifies these characters other than ordinary villagers in fantasy shows. The mystique of wisdom and things like Matt and Egwene and Egwene and Nynaeve are not well explained, making beginners like us itch.
When the trolls attack, the fight takes up most of the last third of the episode:
We don’t know who we are supporting to survive and why. For example, we forgot the earlier scene between Perrin and someone she worked with at the foundry. So if an accident happened during a Trolloc raid, we don’t know how it would affect him. And when Moiraine uses her magic during an attack. We wonder why she can’t seem to protect the people she’s protecting.
Look, this could be a case where the story will drag on as this group continues their journey. But said a lot in the first episode, but not much in the compelling story. Which means we probably won’t be going on this journey.
“The Wheel of Time” definitely fell apart on the show, at least in the beginning. It throws up a lot of characters straight at us, but somehow all the time it takes to build them. Who doesn’t give us a clue about them more than it did at the beginning of the episode.