‘The Wheel of Time’, Episode Six – ‘The Flame of Tar Valon’


Once again, I’ve totally missed the boat as far as this post being on time goes. Oh well, it’s (almost) Christmas and everything seems to be popping up all at once, that’s December for you I guess 😉 We’re all here now though so lets get on and I’ll tell you all about Episode Six. Which won’t take all that long as… Well, you’ll see…

Before I do though, here comes the standard warning about spoilers. I’m not going to recap the whole episode (Tor.com does it far better than I ever could) but it has been a few days since ‘The Flame of Tar Valon’ aired so I’m going to be a bit spoilery and that’s all there is to it. If you want to go and watch ‘The Flame of Tar Valon’ first then I’m cool with that, this post will still be here when you get back 😉 If you want to hang around, even better 😊 Let’s go…

Like I said, I’m not recapping the entire episode but this paragraph is where I’d normally say something about the plot, even if it was just a sentence. Not today though because, well… Nothing happens. Okay, that’s not entirely true… There’s a lot of politicking and Aes Sedai grassing each other up like little school kids (seriously… ‘well Moraine did this…’). There’s also some sweet moments too. Lan totally has Moraine’s back and I really liked how the show is willing to give Moraine and Siuan the relationship they deserve but that the book seemed reluctant to allow. I mean, ‘pillow friends’… We all knew what that meant so why be so coy about it? No, it’s good that it’s out and it adds another layer to what’s going on in the Tower. And Logain trying to bait the Amyrlin Seat… I love that he still has some fight left in him. 

The impression I got though was that ‘The Flame of Tar Valon’ was all about setting up things to come in the last two episodes of this Season. And when that’s the case, the payoff is always that you’re going to get an episode where not much seems to happen in the meantime. So while I still enjoyed watching the whole ‘you grass me up and I’ll grass you right up…’ thing play out (and I did), there was still a sense of the episode marking time as it were. It didn’t quite drag but it felt like it wouldn’t take too much for it to do just that. And just when I thought it was going to go too far in that direction… what happened to Mat? Give it a few days and I’ll find out.

‘The Flame of Tar Valon’ didn’t hit the heights of previous episodes but given what I think it was trying to do, that’s understandable and I’ll give it a pass. Lets see where next week takes us…

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