Season 3 of The Wheel of Time on Prime Video has reached its penultimate episode this week, and it’s one long-awaited by fans, Goldeneyes, written by Dave Hill. Ahead of this week’s release, WotSeries got the opportunity to interview Lord Goldeneyes himself, Marcus Rutherford. Keep reading to get a glimpse into Perrin’s journey and his battle ahead. You can read more of our interviews in our Season 3 interview archive.
Eri: Hi Marcus! This is Eri with WotSeries.
Marcus: Hey! How you doing?
Eri: I’m good! How are you?
Marcus: I’m good! I’m good! I’m not too bad. Thanks for talking to me.
Eri: No problem! Thank you for talking with me! So, episode 7 is coming up, and that’s a big one for Perrin. How much did you know about the Battle of the Two Rivers plot line before going into the season, and how did you prepare for this episode in particular?
Marcus: Yeah, I was kind of ready. I mean, from when we first got cast in like 2019, I had DM’s being like, “Oh! The Battle of Two Rivers!” or like when he meets Faile, and all this leadership. I knew it was an arc that I’ve been kind of playing towards, and been kind of restricting a level of confidence or ferocity or flirty nature — whatever he’s doing in the previous seasons, because I knew a lot of it kind of comes out in this third season. And I think I was going through The Dragon Reborn and even the first introductions of Faile and then The Shadow Rising, and I think what’s so lovely about this episode is there’s so many elements that I wanted to put in. When Faile kind of pulls on his beard or when he’s with some of the younger lads in the village and he almost can see himself when he started off being a young lad in a village. There’s moments with Loial or there’s moments with Alanna that just mirror what’s in the in the books.
And there’s the iconography that we managed to get in, and Dave has done an amazing job of getting that all in the show. There’s the Wolf Banner and him being quite self-conscious about it, there’s people calling him Lord Goldeneyes or Lord Perrin and him being very put off by that. So I think what’s so lovely for a character who had a bit of an adaptation from the book, with a kind of a different start in Season 1, it was really lovely just to see what is in Robert Jordan’s writing and what is in his words to come through the script in episode seven in particular.
Eri: And for this episode, what was the most difficult scene to film out of all of that?
Marcus: What was the most difficult to film scene? I think there were some of the battle sequences. We’ve just done a lot of night shoots back-to-back, and we kind of shot it chronologically, which is kind of good – you keep the energy up – but I think that was a few moments where, you know you’re on your second week of night shoots where…now you have to kind of charge towards Padan Fain…so, it’s just kind of keeping that energy up, really, and remembering what you’ve been building to for previous seasons. Like, that moment when you get to Padan Fain, it’s not just the context of that battle on that day. You’re playing off the conversation he has with Ingtar in Season 2 about, “When I get to that moment, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to stop myself.” And there’s so many moments like that with Ila and the tuatha’an with this season. There’s so many bits of mirroring in the show, particularly in this season, that I just think is a lot of payoff and a lot of payoff for Perrin in particular.
So yeah, I think there were some scenes where he’s the focal point. You know, if you look at Season 1, and there’s kind of “Who’s gonna go to the Eye of the World?” and stuff like that, you know Perrin is very quiet and his dialogue is very minimal in some of those group scenes. So, I think being in the Winespring Inn on the eve of battle, and he’s the one who’s orchestrating the plan and is the focal point of attention. It’s just not something the character or myself has kind of had on the show, really. So, I think there’s moments where you’re realising you’re having to carry an episode or a scene, in and amongst everyone in that storyline, but there isn’t a Rand or Moiraine – as the characters, but also them as actors – to kind of bounce off. So, yeah, it was a real kind of new kind of experience to have Perrin kind of isolated in that way.
Eri: And Perrin has definitely grown over the course of the seasons. How have you grown as an actor filming The Wheel of Time and Season 3 in particular?
Marcus: Yeah, it’s been like — you know I always worry I might sound a bit “actor-y” when I’m like: “You know, I feel like it mirrors my own journey” or something – but, yeah, there was something, I don’t know. A person who works in the costume department, when we were filming the battle, she just came up to me and showed me a picture of me stood in exactly in the same place in 2019, and it almost racked me, man, because I just remember loads of different things: where the show was and that everything was quite new and it was quite daunting, and you didn’t really know what the character was gonna look like yet, and I thought that they were trying to figure that out. I feel like there was a change in the adaptation from the books, and I was a bit wary of how that was going to develop, and I think to come back and be there in 2023 when we filmed it and to kind of feel like the character has this kind of final look that Davina did an exceptional job bringing in to Season 2 and Season 3, to kind of feel like what is on the page with you know Faile and the Two Rivers and Cenn Buie and Daise Congar and all these characters.
And so I think there’s just been a weird kind of parallel of his development as a character and also my journey on the show. It kind of feels finite and complete and I feel like we’ve got to a point where we’re really meeting Perrin, you know. I know that’s kind of weird to say on the third season, but there’s something about him that I just feel, like we’ve really met him this season in a way that I don’t think we’ve had a chance to in previous seasons. So there’s something really beautiful about Dave’s script, in particular in episode seven. But, yeah, I just think his confidence is probably kind of been on the same kind of trajectory as my own with the show, and also with the writers and the costume and make-up department with how we’ve transformed this character.
Eri: Well, we love your work, and we love everybody’s work, and we can’t see wait to see the reactions to episode 7! Thank you so much for your time!
The third season of The Wheel of Time, based on Robert Jordan’s fantasy book series, premiered on Prime Video on March 13, 2025. All episodes of the first two seasons of The Wheel of Time are now available on Prime Video. The series is co-produced by Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios.
Editorial note: For clarity and readability, we’ve made minor edits to this interview, such as removing filler words and repetitions. The responses remain true to the original recorded conversation.
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