“The Road to the Spear” focuses entirely on the Aiel trials at Rhuidean, delivering a deeply emotional and revelation-packed episode. While the plot owes a lot to Dune, the amount of time spent exploring Rand and Moiraine’s visions of the past and future makes for a richer version of the rituals of enlightenment than Denis Villeneuve presented in Dune: Part Two. It also makes for the best episode of season 3 to date.
Rand has some good guy talk with Lan, musing on the simple, idyllic life his adoptive blademaster father chose for him even though he was born of bloody conflict. Lan is a steadying presence in Rand’s life, listening to his problems with patience, gently ribbing him as a “sheepherder,” and then giving him physical activity to distract him from his problems.
It’s another way, Lan truly compliments and balances Moiraine, who can’t stop worrying about what Rand will do next. Egwene responds to Moiraine’s fretting with a folksy comment about watched pots never boiling, a perfect reminder of her Emond’s Field roots. But what Moiraine is truly terrified of is Rand boiling over, and that gets to the heart of the danger of trying to help the Dragon Reborn. Yes she will still do whatever it takes to help Rand achieve his destiny, even undergoing the dangerous trial with him after it’s strongly implied that he would die without her.
The Aiel taboo about carrying swords leads Aviendha to demonstrate how much better she is at fighting than Rand by quickly knocking him to the ground. Lan is clearly excited for the chance to really show off, and the rest of the Aiel are just as happy to watch a good battle. The match is excellently choreographed, demonstrating their acrobatics and blade skills by the flickering firelight – but no blow lands harder than Avienda’s reason for picking the fight in the first place.
Like Rand, she has a destiny she doesn’t want to face: Giving up the spear to become a Wise One. Moraine, Egwene, and Rand all exchange knowing looks about how discovering you’re a channeler changes the course of your life. There’s such harsh finality in Bair breaking Aviendha’s spears, followed by the vulnerability she shows in stripping off her warrior clothes, barely holding back tears as she departs to enter Rhuidean. This mix of severity and tenderness is a powerful show of the Aiel’s priorities and worldview.
But “The Road to the Spear” is really about the complicated relationship between Moiraine and Rand. Moiraine dedicated her life to the prophecy of the Dragon, but has a hard time actually getting through to the stubborn, arrogant young man who hates the idea of being manipulated by her and the White Tower. Like Avienda, Egwene has to learn a difficult lesson that she’s already starting to accept: her path and Rand’s are no longer aligned. She might want to accompany Rand into Rhuidean, but only Moiraine can see him through that journey.
“The Road to the Spear” is really about the complicated relationship between Moiraine and Rand.
The wall of weapons left by those who did not return is a warning of the peril, but also a hilarious opportunity to demonstrate who Moiraine is: She keeps producing hidden knife after hidden knife to go with Rand’s heron-marked blade. The clouded city is beautifully ominous, filled with titanic sculpture from a lost age and the towering 3,000-year-old tree Avendesora. The story of Moiraine’s personal link to the Aiel War finally gets Rand to actually hear her out and acknowledge the ties that bind them, before he walks into the mist to begin his trial in earnest.
What follows is a trippy, layered story reminiscent not only of Dune but also Cloud Atlas, as Rand journeys further and further back in time. Seeing his biological father fight and mourn his mother gives him a clear answer to the question of how Aiel he is, but it’s the deeper flashbacks that are even more revealing. Rand digs further into just how much was lost with the Breaking of the World, with the nice touch of Josha Stradowski donning a different costume for every new role and era he inhabits.
The Aiel warriors and pacifist Tinkers seem like they couldn’t be more different, but they were once one people. The vision where that truth is revealed is so touching (despite another mediocre longhaired wig for Stradowski) because it starts with Rand and his two best friends, before the air of lighthearted charm is utterly shattered by violence – just like in the series premiere. As he goes deeper, there’s more to discover about the Aiel’s progenitors, the losses they suffered, and the origins of their wandering: a dangerous mission to find a safe new home for the Tree of Life.
Moiraine has her own strange journey, starting with quietly pocketing the powerful sa’angreal that serves as the female equivalent of the blade that Rand is destined to seize. Avienda seems to be having a truly terrible time in the rings, but Moiraine dives right into her own test, which is even weirder than Rand’s: She sees lives that might be, and the death and violence that connect most of them. We see her world literally turned upside down as the camera does flips over the heads of Rosamund Pike and her co-stars – a jarring transition between Moiraine’s visions. There’s the simple happiness of life mending fishing nets with Siuan and the grand power of being the Amyrlin Seat (with Egwene standing by as she slits Rand’s throat). She walks away from Lan and bonds Rand as her Warder. She bows down before the Dragon Reborn and sleeps with him.
But it’s Lanfear who’s the most consistent presence in these dizzying montages; she makes an impact on Rand’s flashbacks, too. The former Aes Sedai tore open the Dark One’s prison to bring power to the people, though that wasn’t her true motivation: She’s clearly driven by her own ambition and a desire to undermine her ex, Lews Therin. Lanfear leads gothed-up versions of most of the show’s heroes against Moiraine, strangles Moiraine in bed, stabs her in the White Tower, and kills her over and over again in the desert. If this trial is meant to show Moiraine what must be, her death at the hands of the Daughter of the Night is all but certain.
Despite everything he went through, including watching a would-be clan chief die, Rand makes the choice to stay for Moiraine. He carries her out of the desert into Lan’s waiting arms, once again bonding the two together with the knowledge of who they are and what must come next.
