“The Wheel of Time” Season 3, Episode 4 finally tackled one of the most anticipated moments from the long-running fantasy adaptation: Rand’s journey through Rhuidean.
In order to prove whether Rand (Josha Stradowski) is truly the Car’a’carn – the one prophesied to lead the Aiel back over the Spine of the World for The Last Battle – he must first face the city of Rhuidean and its glass columns. All Aiel clan chiefs walk the columns and experience visions of their ancestors to understand the hidden origin of the people.
Rand travels through the city and faces six visions – some only dozens of years in the past and others hundreds of years, each step taking him further back in time all the way to the Age of Legends.
But what do these visions mean for The Dragon Reborn and the Aiel people going forward? Below, we break each vision down.
Rand’s First Vision, Explained
In Rand’s first few steps into Rhuidean’s glass columns, he’s transported back to the Aiel War, shortly after his mother gave birth to him at the base of Dragonmount and he was taken by Tam (Michael McElhatton). He sees through the perspective of Janduin, the clan chief of the Taardad Aiel and Rand’s biological father.
Janduin finds Tigraine – Rand’s mother – dead where we last saw her in Season 1. He tells her he took the life of the oathbreaker king that was the reason for the entire Aiel War to begin with using his own spear. Then he screams after accepting that his wife is dead and his child is missing.
Rand’s Second Vision, Explained
Rand’s second vision shows through the eyes of Mandein, a clan chief who lived as Rhuidean was being built. He’s told by his wife Sealdre that she spoke with the Aes Sedai in a dream that many Aiel clans are heeding the call to join him here and those who do not will be forgotten.
Mandein then embarks into the city to speak with the gathered chiefs and the Aes Sedai. The woman explains she called them there because “the last people that were truly Aiel are all dead now.” She says those last true Aiel built the city and planted the Avendesora tree at the center. She confronts the chiefs on many of the Aiel traditions – like why they don’t carry swords. The Aes Sedai says there is too much they don’t know and instructs their leaders – both chiefs and Wise Ones – to come to the city and their ancestry. The chiefs will go through the newly created glass columns and learn the true origin of the Aiel before they lead their clans. She says they must all know why the Aes Sedai call the Aiel “oathbreakers.”
Mandein volunteers to be the first clan chief to face the columns and the Aiel ancestry.
Rand’s Third Vision, Explained
The third vision of Rand’s ancestors is a big one. This long-distant family member – Lewin – strongly resembles Rand and begins with him reveling at a Chora sapling that will become the Avendesora tree. Their people have arrived by a number of covered wagons to build a city – Rhuidean – that will be one of peace.
Lewin’s mother finds him and his friends and says that bandits have taken his sister and one of her friends. Lewin wants to go rescue them, but an elderly leader refuses and says they should instead go back to work. The three friends disagree and decide to sneak to the camp and save the girls.
The rescue attempt is a botched affair from the beginning. The three get caught and a scuffle ensues as Lewin tries to rouse the girls. He is attacked by a man with a sword and, after being knocked down, he grabs a weapon – despite being told not to by his sister – and kills the man. Lewin’s friend Charlin isn’t so lucky and gets a blade of his own to the gut and dies. Lewin and Charlin’s other friend Luca grab a sword, but are told it’s a weapon with no other use for killing and is forbidden by The Way of the Leaf and that using a spear could be used for other things like hunting.
The four return home carrying Charlin’s body and are stopped just outside the camp by Lewin’s mom, the camp elder and a few others. Because the two killed – even though it was in self-defense – they are banned from living with the camp. The elder says they are no longer Aiel but “strangers and oathbreakers.” Even Lewin’s mom asks through tears why a stranger is talking to her before turning and leaving. Lewin and Luca agree that since they are already banished from the camp, they can follow at a distance and protect their loved ones before covering their faces in a shoufa and walking away.
This is a big flashback that reveals the big split. The Tuatha’an and the Aiel were one people until this point. The Aiel of the modern day follow the cultures of Lewin and Luca as oathbreakers – killing, but with spears instead of swords and hiding their faces from said killing with shoufas. The peaceful “Aiel” became the peaceful and pacifist Tuatha’an – or Tinkers – that haven’t been seen in the show since Season 1.
Rand’s Fourth Vision, Explained
The fourth vision shows a man called Jonai in the wake of a devastating attack on a wagon caravan. There are bodies and fires burning everywhere as he stumbles about. He’s told they can’t take much more, but Jonai responds with the classic Tinker phrase, “We bury our dead and go on. What else is there?”
Jonai wants to take the Aiel across the Spine of the World where they can build a city of peace, but after this attack, others would rather travel south. This represents a further splitting before Lewin and Luca get killed in the Waste. This is the split of the Da’shain Aiel and where the ones heading south also became the Tuatha’an in search of their long-forgotten Song.
Rand’s Fifth Vision, Explained
Rand’s fifth vision puts him in the eyes of a man during the Breaking of the World at the end of the Age of Legend. The man informs the Aes Sedai that 10,000 wagons have been filled with seedlings from the Chora tree and are ready to flee from the city. Then he is entrusted by the white orb Moraine found in the Avendesora Tree’s center back in present-day Rhuidean. The Aes Sedai tells the man it is the strongest sa’angreal – a magical item that can enhance Aes Sedai abilities to extremes – in the world. Its counterpart is the sword Callandor, which Moraine wants Rand to pull from the Stone of Tear as soon as possible.
The Aes Sedai entrusts the object to the man and the people that would become the Aiel and Tuatha’an. She urges them to keep moving, never staying in one place for too long (a staple of present-day Tuatha’an mentality) until they find a place of safety, which was what the construction of Rhuidean was meant to be.
Rand’s Final Vision, Explained
Rand’s final vision places him as a man named Charn firmly in the Age of Legend. Charn was the assistant to the Aes Sedai Mierin, who would eventually become the Forsaken Lanfear (Natasha O’Keeffe). The Age of Legend is a time where science and magic worked in tandem and Mierin has made a discovery that could change everything: the thinnest part of the Pattern to tap into the True Power, an undivided source of the magic in the world.
Charn is watching from the window of a floating sphere as his family and people cut wheat in a field while singing a song together. This is the Song the present-day Tuatha’an continue to search for after having been lost to time. Mierin tells Charn to go enjoy the day with his people because “tomorrow everything will be different.”
He is dismissed to cut wheat with his family. But once he arrives and joins in with the Song, his happiness is short-lived as a portion of the floating sphere he just left rips inward and keeps ripping until there is an opening in the sky itself.
This is the Bore. It’s a tear in the pattern and the Dark One’s prison that didn’t allow him to escape, but finally gave him the power to influence the world which led to the Breaking.
“The Wheel of Time” Season 3 airs Thursdays on Prime Video.
