Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time series is no stranger to making bold calls about its source material. While it more or less follows the same arc as the books, the first episodes of season 1 alone opened up the world to a totally new interpretation of prophecy and character potential. Since then, it has been introducing characters early and planting a firm flag in readings of author Robert Jordan’s book series.
Now, season 3 is starting off with yet another clear interpretation — and a reimagining of two characters’ relationship.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for an early scene in the season 3 premiere of The Wheel of Time.]
In the books, Aviendha and Elayne are drawn to Rand — by fate more so than circumstance. Both are bonded to him through the prophecy and, ultimately, fall in love with him, agreeing to share him. The situation is made harder and then easier by the fact that the two feel such devotion to each other; they eventually adopt each other as first-sisters, as is the custom in Aviendha’s culture.
Of course, many people read more into this closeness than just really good platonic friends. As Ayoola Smart, who plays Aviendha, told Polygon: “Their relationship has a very strong structure throughout the books, and is a very beautiful relationship. It’s very much there on the page, and some people read into it and some people don’t.”
That’s what makes episode 1 of season 3 so important. The pair — in their very first scene on screen together — share a drink and then kiss. The show seems to suggest it’s the first time anything clearly romantic has happened (Ceara Coveney’s Elayne lets out a relieved “finally” after they kiss). But the relationship is clearly and definitively romantic from here on out.
“We kind of agreed upon an initial immediate attraction and draw, and maybe this kind of playing coy almost, and waiting for that moment more on Elayne’s side probably to get the confidence to approach and to explore what these feelings could be,” Coveney said.
The change came from showrunner Rafe Judkins, who saw it as part of a way to explore Elayne more deeply than they got to in season 2.
“She’s one of the four POV characters that we see throughout the book series,” Judkins says of fleshing out the world around Elayne. “[In these early episodes] you start to see that Elayne is so much more than a princess in waiting. We always talk about the princess that is Elayne, and beneath that, the lion that is Elayne. And so I think you get to see that duality in her come forward more in this season.”
It’s not clear yet how this will impact the show’s arc around romance, and in particular Rand’s romance, just yet. Sure, Rand already had a tryst with the “Daughter of the Night” and a sorta ongoing thing with Egwene. But for as much as the show futzed with gender norms in its first season, Rand is still the prophetic Dragon Reborn at the end of it all. Will Aviendha and Elayne’s love story be tied up into that fated polycule with Rand?
For now, the show has other things on its mind. In fact, across the opening episodes of Wheel of Time’s season 3, the first scene is more or less the limit of what we get of Elayne and Aviendha together. Still, regardless of where it goes, both actresses see it as an important way to set their characters apart from just his story.
“I think [the writers] were keen — and we were keen — to establish the throughline of what this relationship is, independently of Rand, and [to have that] not be the focus of why they’re connected,” Smart said. “Obviously it’s an element, but to give it its own life — which is there! But to make that distinction, I think, was really nice to do.”
The first three episodes of The Wheel of Time are now streaming on Prime Video. New episodes drop every Thursday.
Content shared from www.polygon.com.