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After making a number of memorable appearances in The Wheel of Time season 2’s first 4 installments, the Prime Video sequence’ Seanchan invaders lastly take middle stage in episode 5, “Damane.” They benefit from it, too, exhibiting off every part from their tradition and politics to their trend over the course of the episode’s hour run time. What’s extra, “Damane” additionally hammers house what Wheel of Time’s second season has already made abundantly clear: The Seanchan are a significant menace, and one whose motivations hit nearer to house than your customary fantasy military with world conquest in its sights.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for The Wheel of Time season 2, episode 5.]
In fact, the Seanchan do wish to conquer the world, and — primarily based on the raspy proclamations of Daniel Francis’ Excessive Lord Turak — they don’t care who is aware of it. So it will be simple to put in writing them off as yet another made-up army energy bent on world domination. And to an extent that’s true, as producer Holger Reibiger acknowledged throughout Polygon’s latest Wheel of Time set go to. Reibiger describes the Seanchan as “evil” and “a brand new darkness,” which positions them as broadly in the identical camp because the cruel minions of Mordor in one other Amazon Studios manufacturing, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy.
Nonetheless, that’s not the total story, and why the Seanchan have determined the Wheel of Time universe can be higher off with them in cost is the place issues get extra fascinating — to not point out scarier. The Seanchan aren’t attempting to run the present just because they wish to, however as a result of they consider they must. As dialogue in “Damane” hints at, identical to in creator Robert Jordan’s authentic Wheel of Time novels, these of us grew up being instructed it was their manifest future to rule the lands throughout the ocean. Armed with this ruthless, confident conviction, they embody the very worst elements of colonialism and exceptionalism, and that makes them simply as harmful because the Darkish One’s Trolloc hordes.
Photograph: Jan Thijs/Prime Video
This studying is backed up by one in all The Wheel of Time season 2’s administrators, Sanaa Hamri, who attracts direct parallels between the fictional Seanchan and varied empires all through historical past. “At the start, we’re in a world that could be very particular in Wheel of Time, the place the ladies wield the facility. […] The Seanchan come and invade like colonial powers and take that energy away,” she says. “And I feel that’s the massive image of themes we’ve handled as people on Earth in addition to within the present.”
Hamri wasn’t the one member of the crew eager to lean into the Seanchan-as-colonizers take, both. Showrunner Rafe Judkins was additionally eager to play up this affiliation, in line with costume designer Sharon Gilham. “One of many issues Rafe mentioned [when discussing the Seanchan] is, it’s like when the primary settlers got here to the New World, and it’s that form of [reaction] like, What’s that factor I’ve by no means seen earlier than?” Gilham added that she herself needed to incorporate visible cues to a different of the Seanchan’s colonialist crimson flags — the slavery rampant of their empire — within the design of subjugated feminine channelers the damane.
“The damane have these gold mouth stoppers; that’s not within the books,” she says. “However once I was doing my analysis, one of many issues I got here throughout in pre-Aztec analysis data was an precise picture of an enormous gold stopper, and I assumed that was actually cool. And it additionally means that the damane have been silenced and they’re the slaves.”
The ethical surety with which the Seanchan gag and collar Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden) and different ladies who can wield the One Energy is only one means their exceptionalism presents itself. In spite of everything, you don’t power somebody to put on a leash and parade them round in public for those who take into account them an equal. Others are subtler, however no much less insidious.
Picture: Prime Video
Take the supposed omens that steered the Seanchan invasion talked about in The Wheel of Time season 2’s fifth episode — what’s that if not their model of being guided (and endorsed by) the divine? Then there’s the construction of Seanchan society itself, which is presided over by the Blood. Distinguished by their shaved heads and scandalously lengthy fingernails, the Blood are for essentially the most half these instantly associated to the empire’s founder, Luthair Paendrag Mondwin, and his authentic armies — however they do often elevate commoners to their degree. In apply, this implies the Seanchan lifestyle is constructed upon the concept that the nearer you’re to being thought-about OG Seanchan, the extra entitled you’re to exert affect over these round you (and by extension, the world at giant).
(By the way, the outsized fingernails Turak and Karima McAdams’ Girl Suroth rock in Wheel of Time season 2 had been as a lot of a logistical headache as you’d count on the place choreographing sword fights was involved: “We did plenty of apply,” admits stunt coordinator Jan Petrina, with a smile.)
So, what does all this speak of Seanchan colonialism and exceptionalism imply for The Wheel of Time season 2’s three remaining episodes? Effectively, episode 5 seemingly removes any doubt that this season is headed towards a showdown between the Seanchan forces and sequence protagonist Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) and his allies, as described in Jordan’s second guide, The Nice Hunt. As such, viewers ought to count on the Seanchan to reply to the primary actual problem to their dogmatic empire-expansion plans with gusto.
And irrespective of whether or not the Seanchan emerge as winners or losers, historical past (and Jordan’s canon) means that, like all colonizers, they’re unlikely to rethink the entire “rule the world” factor in future seasons. Why would they? In spite of everything, it’s their proper.
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