The Wheel of Time season three is coming close to its end already. Time flies when you’re having (chaotic) fun! Episode six focuses heavily on what’s happening in Tanchico through Liandrin’s sad backstory and what she’s up to with the Black Ajah. It gives us deeper context into one of the most misunderstood and deeply disliked Aes Sedai as she goes on a quest for ultimate power.
The beginning of the episode starts 95 years prior with a teenage Liandrin. We previously learned that she was a child bride who gave birth to a son while in Tanchico. Liandrin sits in a dark and cold cell with her new baby crying. She frantically tries to calm her child, not wanting to incite the wrath of her husband. He comes in along with a guard and says that the baby “has her horse face,” before instructing his guard to drown it. Liandrin goes into protection mode and uses her powers to kill both of them and escape.
She’s trying to get out of the bustling and dangerous city, but no one will help her. Liandrin eventually sits down with her baby and falls asleep, entering the World of Dreams and encountering Ishamael the Forsaken. He takes her hand and offers to help her. This scene alone explains a lot about why Liandrin sides with the Forsaken and how her past shaped her persona. It’s a dark journey that actress Kate Fleetwood believes turned Liandrin into someone who isn’t afraid to put herself first and do things her own way.
“I think she’s a sort of isolationist,” Fleetwood told Nerdist. “She’s a bit of an island and the way she’s survived is to just do everything her own way, whether that’s leaving as a child and going to the White Tower… She takes things into her own hands, and that’s partly because of her background. She feels that she is not cared for, so who’s going to care for her? She’ll do it herself. She can’t trust anybody.”
In fact, Kate Fleetwood was able to infuse a Wheel of Time Easter egg into Liandrin’s backstory and connect it to her own Liverpool roots. She began reading The Wheel of Time books a while ago and wanted to find a way to draw an additional parallel to that source material. And, she said Liverpool’s docks reminded her of Tanchico in terms of being a transient area that’s edgy and allows people to perhaps be someone else.
“… [In an] early meeting with the writers before we started shooting season three, they said that we’re going to take Liandrin home and set it in Tanchico, which is by the docks,” Fleetwood revealed. “And I remembered in the books that when she’s under stress and under pressure, her accent becomes rougher. I’d always wanted to sort of drop that Easter egg in for the readers earlier in the seasons, but I didn’t have the chance and I thought, ‘we can do it now.’ My mom and dad are from Liverpool, and my grandfather was a docker, like a longshoreman. And I said to the writers, ‘Could she come from Liverpool and use a Liverpudlian accent?’ And we went with it!”
In the present day, Liandrin has taken over at the palace where she was once imprisoned. However, while she appears to the Black Ajah as fearless and powerful, she certainly bows to Lanfear. It’s clear in their conversation that Lanfear views Liandrin as inferior and Liadrin is under Lanfear’s thumb. It was Lanfear’s request that Liandrin stayed in the White Tower in the first place. Lanfear warns Liandrin that she better not try to pit the Forsaken against each other. She instructs Liandrin to kill whomever is in cahoots with Rahvin or she will kill her. Welp.
Liandrin goes to Nyomi, who can create a weave in the mind to help people forget things. She asks if she can do something similar but more intricate. However, she’s really there to use that weave herself and discover where the collar is. Liandrin knew that Nyomi was hiding this key information from her. Liandrin says she will find it in Panarch Palace without the help of the Chosen because she will be one. She kills Nyomi, proving that the Black Ajah are just a means to an end for her.
Liandrin will stop at nothing to be a Forsaken and tap into infinite power. That quest doesn’t bode well for the Dragon Reborn nor anyone else around her. What happens when she discovers that her fellow Red Ajah Elaida is also out to do the same thing? We will see how Liandrin’s ultimate goal continues a path of destruction in The Wheel of Time.
Content shared from nerdist.com.