This will be our full spoiler review and episode breakdown for The Wheel of Time, Season 3, episode y. When we say “full spoilers,” we’re including the entire book series, as we will be discussing changes from the books and potential ramifications for the future. If you don’t want plot points from the books that may show up in future episodes and seasons of The Wheel of Time spoiled for you, please read our spoiler-free review of the season instead.

Introduction

It’s here, the Battle of the Two Rivers. Gird your loins, grab your tissues, and get ready for a ride!

Summary of Episode 307 – Goldeneyes (written by Dave Hill)

The Two Rivers is preparing to defend themselves against the incoming Trollocs: a defensive barrier has been built around the town, the villagers are learning to use weapons, Alanna (Priyanka Bose) is teaching Mat’s sisters (Lilibet Biutanaseva, Litiana Biutanaseva) to embrace the source, and Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) oversees from the forge. The al’Seen boys (Iman Marson and Ian Atwiine) tease Perrin a bit, calling him “Lord Perrin” and “Lord Goldeneyes,” which chafes at Perrin.

A warning bell sounds, and the villagers prepare to defend themselves, but it’s not Trollocs, it’s Tuatha’an refugees, including two familiar faces: Aram (Daryl McCormack) and Ila (Maria Doyle Kennedy). Sadly, Raen was killed by Trollocs the night before. With how close to the village the tuatha’an were attacked, Perrin believes the Trolloc attack is imminent. There’s tension between Ila and Aram, with Aram becoming disillusioned with the Way of the Leaf, and Ila still being a staunch follower. Perrin tries his hand at some diplomacy between the two, impressing Ila and Faile (Isabella Bucceri). 

Alanna is working with Mat’s sisters again, but the girls would rather learn to throw fireballs and lightning than learn how to embrace the Source. Alanna notices Daise Congar (Mandi Symonds) watching them and correctly guesses that Daise can also channel. Maksim (Taylor Napier) is teaching villagers how to use poisoned spears, but Cenn Buie (Gregory Gudgeon) complains that a Two Rivers long bow would be much more effective than spears.

A wolf head banner is raised in the village, and though Perrin hates it, Faile explains to him that the banner gives the people something to rally around, just like following Perrin gives the people hope. Faile then reports a message was sent to Lord Luc (Michael Lindall) and he will meet them at the pass. Dain Bornhald (Jay Duffy) and Lord Luc meet with Perrin and Faile, where Perrin implores the Whitecloaks to help fight against the Trollocs. Perrin tries several tactics to convince Dain, including promising he will turn himself in after the battle if the Whitecloaks help, but is not successful. 

Chiad (Maja Simonsen) asks Loial (Hammed Animashaun) about a name in the book he’s writing: Aemon al Caar al Thorin, the last king of Manetheren. Bain (Ragga Ragnars) notes the similarity to Rand’s last name: al’Thor. Loial suddenly becomes serious and tells the Maidens that he will agree to a game of Maiden’s Kiss. During the ensuing game, Loial refuses kisses, which means the Maidens could kill him if they continue playing. They stop the game, claiming that they forgot to ask the Roof Mistress permission to play, and Loial says that by doing so, they’ve saved his life and have repaid their toh. Chiad is upset, but Bain points out that by trying to send them away, he was attempting to save their lives. Thus, Bain now has toh toward Loial. 

Maksim teases Alanna with a fig, but the teasing becomes passionate kissing. The two learn to create something special, just the two of them, as they enjoy what might be their last night together. 

Perrin confides in Faile that he’s afraid of letting everyone down and leading them to their deaths. He tries to convince Faile to leave, but she angrily refuses because she feels that Perrin is disrespecting her choice to fight. 

Mat’s sisters are discouraged at their lack of progress at channeling. To cheer them up, Perrin shows them the drawing of Mat (Dónal Finn) holding the Horn of Valere. The girls make some playful jabs at their brother and at the appearance of the Horn, but the mood is spoiled by the ringing of the alarm. Trollocs have been spotted coming down from the mountains.

Alanna has destroyed the bridges, leaving the mountain pass as the only way to the village, and the plan is to hold the Trollocs off for as long as possible and hope that they turn away. Perrin asks Ila to have the Tuatha’an flee with the children if the battle looks lost. Loial tells Perrin that none of the defenses will hold if Trollocs can keep coming through the Waygate, and says he must close it permanently. Perrin agrees to let Loial go with the Maidens, but tells him to go back to a stedding afterward instead of returning to the Two Rivers. The two friends bid each other farewell. 

Perrin and the others head to the front lines. He offers some of the villagers some encouragement, but the rest still look to him to say something. In lieu of words, Perrin starts to sing the Song of Manetheren. The villagers join in, but they’re interrupted by the appearance of Trollocs and Darkfriends. The villagers are able to fend off the attack while displaying their longbow skills. Perrin finally tells Maksim to give a signal to Alanna through the bond. Alanna links with Bode, Eldrin, and Daise and summons deadly ice shards to fall onto the attacking force, decimating their numbers and causing them to flee. The villagers celebrate, but Perrin and Faile are suspicious about why the attacks have paused. Maksim tells Perrin to check on the village. 

Perrin and Faile check on Alanna, who claims the Trollocs made a tactical retreat.  Perrin knows that’s not how Trollocs operate and suspects that someone might be controlling them. His suspicions cause him to warn Alanna, but it’s too late. She’s struck through the chest with a giant crossbow bolt. The girls get Alanna to shelter while Daise shields them, but Perrin is unable to help the Wisdom before she’s killed. 

Maksim reels from Alanna’s pain, and he tells the villagers with him at the pass that Alanna is down. They start to panic, but Maksim rallies them together with a rousing speech. 

At the waygate, Loial, Bain, and Chiad spy on the small number of Trollocs and Darkfriends guarding the gate. They witness a Darkfriend call for reinforcements and determine that they need to take out the waygate before the reinforcements arrive. The three of them attack and defeat the guards. Loial tells the Maidens that he needs to go inside to close it for good and asks them to defend his back. 

Maksim and the others are forced to retreat into the village, and they all know they won’t be able to hold the Trollocs off without an Aes Sedai. The girls try to heal Alanna, but can’t quite manage. Whitecloaks enter the village with Lord Luc. Perrin asks how they got past the Trollocs on the mountain pass, and Dain says that there were no Trollocs, just as Padan Fain (Johann Myers) saunters in with his blood-soaked followers. Perrin tries to order the gates closed on them, but Fain and his Darkfriends attack. More Trollocs descend upon the village, and the villagers resume their desperate fight for survival. Marin al’Vere tells Ila to flee with the children. 

Aram leads the children through the escape tunnels with a baby strapped to him. The Tuatha’an have made it into the woods, but a Trolloc is in pursuit and Aram finds himself cornered.  Knocked to the ground, desperate, Aram reaches for a fallen blade and uses it to defend himself and his precious passenger. Ila witnesses this and recoils in horror. 

Inside the Ways, Loial attempts to break the waygate from the inside, but his attempts are repelled. While Bain and Chiad defend against more Trollocs on the outside, Loial spots the Trolloc reinforcements getting closer.

Perrin is back in the forge, with Faile at his side, but he’s despairing that everyone will die because of his failure. Faile calls on Perrin to show the people that he would give everything to protect them, and Perrin responds by grabbing his hammer from the wall, telling Faile to watch his back, and fighting his way back to the square where he again rallies the village. Everyone fights ferociously, including Dain and the Women’s Circle. 

Eamon Valda (Abdul Salis), who has been slicing his way through the imposter Whitecloaks, searching for something, finds it – Alanna, injured and helpless. He orders the Cauthon sisters to step aside, but they stand their ground, hand in hand, and Valda realizes too late that they were the channelers all along. The girls avenge the death of their mother by setting Valda ablaze. 

It’s absolute chaos as the fighting continues in the village. Perrin makes a beeline for Fain, knocking him to the ground. Faile implores Perrin to kill Fain, but Perrin hesitates. Instead, he chooses to take Ingtar’s advice from Season 2 and asks Fain why he did all of this. Fain tells Perrin that it’s not out of hate, but because the Dark One wants to wipe out the Two Rivers to send a message to the Dragon Reborn. He tells Perrin that killing him won’t matter as thousands of Trollocs are going to be joining him from the Waygate. 

Within the Ways, the Trollocs are nearly on top of Loial as he tries unsuccessfully to hammer away at the Waygate. Loial hums the Song of Manetheren before changing his tactic and hammering at the stones beneath his feet. Bellowing in defiance, Loial manages to collapse the Waygate down into the endless abyss before the Trollocs arrive. Sadly, our brave Ogier also falls, sacrificing himself for the sake of the Two Rivers.

Outside, the Waygate explodes with brilliant light that can be seen from the village. Fain realizes his reinforcements are lost, and in a panic, tries to offer Perrin a deal, but Perrin instead offers one of his own: call off the Trollocs and never come back, or die. Fain calls off his army, and the villagers celebrate as the Darkfriends retreat. 

The next day, everyone is already working on rebuilding. Bode and Eldrin approach a now-healed Alanna and ask if she’s going to take them to the Tower. Alanna declines, saying that the Pattern has bigger plans. Aram sits alone, watching a mourning Ila, and Marin invites him to stay in the village to help mend pots and pans.

In the Winespring, Perrin, Faile, Bain, and Chiad approach Loial’s book. Perrin opens the book and reads Loial’s words about the battle of the Two Rivers.

Outside, the Whitecloaks enter the village, and Dain asks Perrin if he’s going to honor their deal. Faile and the villagers protest, but Perrin asks them to respect his decision. Though he leaves with the Whitecloaks, shackled, the cries of “Lord Perrin!” ring out through the village. 

The Women's Circle defends the Winespring with shields and spears.

Review of Episode 307 – Goldeneyes

Likes

First and foremost, this episode showcased Ciaran Donnelly’s directing skills. We’re shown exactly where the important events are happening, including plenty of wide shots that establish a sense of scale. We see the villagers training, building fortifications, and crafting weapons and armor, and all these shots are purposeful and directly linked to later appearances during the battle – Randland’s Molotov cocktails, for instance. Sufficient time devoted to the pre-battle scenes means that by the time we reach actual combat, it feels earned, rather than the common media pitfall of flashy-but-substanceless action sequences. Finally, the battle itself also contained a blend of close-ups, point-of-view shots, and overhead and wide shots, providing a holistic view of the combat. No overreliance on shaky-cam to be seen. 

As with most episodes this season, 307 was packed with quality character moments, from comedic to emotional. Bain and Chiad have really come into their own this season, and we’ll miss their rapport with Loial. After a shaky season of navigating their grief in different directions, Alanna and Maksim are finally back in sync with their goals aligned. In a touching scene, Maksim literally and figuratively brushes away the last vestiges of Alanna’s mourning process as they embrace each other with renewed love. Even the light-hearted ribbing from Mat’s sisters, comparing the Horn to a sheep’s bladder, was a fun nod to viewers who might have had a similar reaction when the Horn’s design deviated from their mental image. 

Speaking of grief, that theme is brought up again with Perrin and Dain. Violence doesn’t end the grieving, it just begins the grief process again for someone else. It only ends when someone chooses to stop. The reappearance of the Tuatha’an to highlight Perirn’s struggle between peace and violence was beautifully done, and knowing the history of the Aiel provides a new perspective and layers of meaning to their culture and beliefs. 

Faile has done a commendable job this season of helping Perrin understand leadership and how to respect the autonomy of the people following him, even if it means accepting that some of those people might die. This offers him yet another perspective on grief, which all culminates with Perrin’s choice at the forge, to pick up his blacksmith hammer alongside the axe, and tells Faile to get behind him – not to protect her, but so she can guard his back. It’s a testament to how far his character has come on his journey, and we the viewers are rewarded with an epic sequence of the Two Rivers’ newest power couple laying waste on the battlefield. 

The music of The Wheel of Time show has always been a stand out. Lorne Balfe’s score particularly shone in this episode, with new songs from this season as well as old themes making a return. The Song of Manetheren (aka: Weep for Manetheren, composed by David Buckley) was an instant favorite when it was first sung in Season 1. The return of the song at two poignant moments – the villagers before their first combat, and Loial before his heroic sacrifice – was unexpected and powerful. And speaking of musical cues, Loial’s final moments are set against the same motif that played for Mat and the Heroes of the Horn, a beautiful reminder of Loial’s heroism. 

While it’s a change from the books, we suspect few readers will take much issue with the early demise of Eamon Valda. Being burned alive was poetic justice for a character who was first introduced while he burned an innocent woman at the stake. Despite that, we will miss Abdul Salis’s iconic portrayal of this villain we loved to hate. 

Dislikes

We’ve pointed out before that the level of damage some of our characters can survive is distracting, but it was particularly egregious this episode with Alanna. We already saw her cheat death last episode, so having the same thing happen with a Trolloc-scale projectile – especially when the same bolts almost instantly downed Daise Congar a few moments later – strains credulity. While we had absolutely no desire to see our favorite Green Aes Sedai taken out of the story early, we do wish they would have established tension in other ways, such as her being too exhausted to channel further. 

This isn’t necessarily a gripe specific to this episode, but more so the season, as we would have liked more time with Perrin earning the trust of the villagers and convincing them they needed to fight. This episode was the shortest episode of the season so it felt the script could have devoted at least a few extra minutes to this. We also missed characters like Tam al’Thor, who plays a significant leadership role in the book battle. The show attempted to explain this earlier by mentioning Bran, Tam, and Abell got Perrin’s family to safety, but it doesn’t explain why they never come back to help defend their village. This may have been a result of scheduling conflicts, or it may have been a deliberate choice to help force Perrin into that leadership role, but we do miss the characters.

Lord Luc’s role in the story was confusing and he felt more like a vehicle to facilitate other storylines versus a character in his own right. We last saw him in the Winespring in episode 303, boasting that he knows how to deal with Whitecloaks, but when we meet him again this episode, he’s oddly with the Whitecloaks. We suspect there were Lord Luc scenes left on the cutting room floor that might have filled in the gaps.

While Faile’s role in the battle was different in the books, we did miss the scene where she returns with reinforcements to turn the tide of the battle and ultimately win. The Two Rivers’ victory in the show felt slightly flat in comparison. Granted, Fain wouldn’t have called off his army without Loial’s sacrifice and Perrin’s threats, but we would have liked to see a more rousing defeat. 

Finally, we wished the Shadow’s army would have been almost entirely Trollocs rather than having so many Darkfriends. Presumably this was a logistical and budgetary choice, as it’s clearly much easier to outfit a bunch of extras versus suiting up stuntpeople as Trollocs. Still, this dampened some of the impact of what could have been a truly horrific army of monsters. 

Loial, Bain, Chiad running through the woods

Book to Screen Changes and Comparisons

Battle

While the overall concept of the battle is the same, there are many differences in how it plays out onscreen. There are several skirmishes and battles in the book, over the course of several days; in the show, this has been condensed into only two main attacks in less than a day. Perrin doesn’t send Faile away, so she never leaves and returns with reinforcements that turn the tide and win the battle. Instead, it’s Loial’s sacrifice at the Waygate that convinces Fain it’s not worth it, leading him to call off the remnants of his army after some convincing from Perrin. Speaking of Fain, he isn’t directly involved in the battle in the books, and it’s Lord Luc / Slayer who leads the Trolloc army. With the way the battle played out in the show, Fain is being set up as a long term adversary for Perrin, while Luc being of any importance for the future is a mystery. The Whitecloaks also don’t participate in the fighting, and are driven out of the village after the battle when they see the town is rallying around Perrin. 

Perrin

Perrin gives himself up to the Whitecloaks to honor his end of the bargain for their assistance against the Trollocs, rather than remaining in the Two Rivers to rebuild and serve as their newly minted Lord Goldeneyes. This is one we didn’t see coming, but it’s possible the show is moving Perrin’s Whitecloak trial plot forward from much later in the series. Perrin’s story infamously flounders in the middle of the book series, so we expected some significant changes to it. We’re very curious where his storyline will go in future seasons.

Loial

Book readers will be especially shocked by this change, as Loial not only survives through the end of the series, but also completes his in-world magnum opus, the story of the Dragon Reborn and his friends. It seemed inevitable that someone would have to die in this battle, but killing off a beloved book character is always going to be controversial. His death in the show, although heartwrenching, was a legendary ending worthy of an Ogier hero. Lorne Balfe’s “Horn of Valere” playing during Loial’s sacrifice was especially poignant, and a callback to Loial imploring our characters to start acting like heroes back in the Season 2 finale.

 

“Losing our storyteller before his book was finished is a beautiful tribute to RJ in my opinion,” Sarah Bennett shared in a discord conversation about the episode and we agree.

Other Deaths

In addition to Loial, the deaths of Daise Congar and Eamon Valda in this episode were unexpected. We adore Mandi Symons as Daise, but she is a background character in the books, so her loss is not expected to make significant ripples. On the other hand, there was much more to Valda’s story. With him meeting a fitting end in the television series, we wonder if most if not all of Valda’s other storylines will be cut.

Aram

In a slight change from the books, Aram takes up a sword to defend himself and a baby in a life or death situation instead of as a result of his mother being killed by Trollocs. This echoes Rand’s Rhuidean vision of Lewin killing to defend another and being disowned as a result. Aram also doesn’t participate in the battle. The end of the episode suggests Aram will stay in the Two Rivers, where he could easily be a part of Perrin’s storyline going forward.

Final Thoughts

This episode finally brought the long awaited Battle of the Two Rivers to life, pushing Perrin to the forefront and giving us our first true glimpse of the leader the Pattern seems determined to make him. Focusing solely on this story thread for this episode allowed it the proper room to breathe. This is the biggest battle seen in the show since the very first episode, arguably, and Ciaran Donnelly does an excellent job directing it. While there were numerous changes from book to screen in this episode, which readers may have varying reactions to, episode 307 was undeniably a fantastically directed, written, and shot episode of television. 

We believe that this will prove to be one episode that viewers will find themselves rewatching again and again. 

Loial, you will be missed.

Ratings

(Due to the bar being raised so high this season, we found it difficult to rate episodes with only half or full ratings to choose from. As a result, we have decided to add quarter ratings this season. Ratings are best compared to other episodes of the same season, versus across seasons.)

Episode 7 – Goldeneyes (Overall: 4.4/5)

4.4 out of 5 episode rating for 307

Lane: 4.75/5, Sara: 4.25/5, Eri: 4/5, Omar: 4.5/5, Cait: 4.5/5

Eri Profile Photo (as Chibi)
eri@wotseries.com |  + posts

Lover of fantasy and other geeky goodness.

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I'm a longtime SFF fan but Wheel of Time will always be my first love. I want to call myself Green Ajah, but--let's be real--I'm probably a Brown. In my spare time I enjoy cooking, writing, and getting lost in the wilderness.