We’re a little over a week away from the return of Prime Video’s epic series The Wheel of Time and we’re so excited for the world to see what’s in store for the characters we’ve grown to love.
Source: Courtesy / Prime Video
Based on the best-selling Robert Jordan fantasy series The Wheel of Time, Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) learns he is The Dragon Reborn—a dangerous figure from history destined to save the world … or break it. Desperate to protect him from the Dark One, an army of powerful women must reckon with his burgeoning power and encroaching madness. The Wheel of Time turns, and the Last Battle approaches. Though Rand thought he destroyed the Dark One, evil is not gone from the world. In Season Two, threats new and very old seek out the young friends from the Two Rivers, now scattered over the world. The woman who found and guided them is now powerless to help, and so they must find other sources of strength. In each other, or themselves. In the Light … or the Dark.
Check out the trailer for Season 2 of Wheel of Time below:
We’re definitely shook! What are your predictions for the season ahead?
Earlier this month Prime Video announced that the first scene from Season Two of The Wheel of Time is now available to view at the end of the Season One finale episode (Episode 108) as a special surprise bonus for fans.
This sneak peek of the new season reflects the structure of the Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time book series where at the end of each novel, Jordan would add the first chapter of the next book as a preview.
In an additional homage to the show’s inspiration, the scene which has been made available—the opening from Episode 201—is an adaptation of the fan favorite “Darkfriend Social” prologue of the second novel of Jordan’s series, The Great Hunt, upon which Season Two is largely based.
Season Two of The Wheel of Time is also based on some elements of Jordan’s third novel, The Dragon Reborn, and will premiere exclusively on Prime Video on September 1 in more than 240 countries and territories around the world. The series was filmed in the Czech Republic, Morocco, and Italy, and also stars Rosamund Pike as Moiraine Damodred, Daniel Henney as Lan Mandragoran, Zoë Robins as Nynaeve al’Meara, Madeleine Madden as Egwene al’Vere, Marcus Rutherford as Perrin Aybara, Dónal Finn as Mat Cauthon, and Ceara Coveney as Elayne Trakand.
We were fortunate to chat with Rand himself, Josha Stradowski ahead of the new season about Rand’s solo journey in the new season and moving separately from Egwene and the others.
“The biggest thing for me is his arc,” Stradowski told Global Grind. “It seems like he’s just a boy from the Two Rivers, he’s really just a shepherd and at first the only thing he wants is just to stay with his girlfriend. Then we go from that to someone who becomes the most powerful channeler in the world and is supposed to save or destroy the world and eventually face The Dark One in the last battle.The tininess in contrast to the epicness — to what he has to face eventually and how you get to that place — that for me is the most most exciting thing. I feel like if you want to beat The Dark One, the darkness. you have to you have to get to the place where you completely understand the darkness. You have to know it. You have to face it. You have to enter it, because otherwise, you’ll always be too slow, you’ll always be too dumb. That journey is something I’m very, very excited about, because it’s not clean it’s messy. raw and ugly and that’s actually the stuff that I like doing weirdly enough, probably because of the challenge. It’s like going to the gym. You don’t always like it but you do it and you feel satisfied.”
The new season of The Wheel Of Time will find Rand far from his Two Rivers friends Egwene, Perrin, Mat and Nynaeve who were such a huge part of his quest in the first season, particularly since, as Stradowski mentioned, Egwene was a major priority for Rand when viewers first met him.
Source: Jan Thijs / Prime Video
“He is cut off from his roots, he’s far away from his friends,” Stradowski told Global Grind, acknowledging the shift. “It’s very unusual to see him like that. He’s completely on his own and isolated because of who he is. He has some secrets but the biggest one is that he is the secret and that is the Dragon Reborn, a man who can channel and every time you channel you get closer to madness. To be honest I don’t feel like he’s forgotten about Egwene but he’s maybe trying to live a life without his friends and also trying to live a life without love. But I feel like that’s not really possible. I don’t think it’s in him to be that way. No it’s always about giving hope and love, at least for Rand.”
We’re excited to wait and see what happens. In the meantime, Stradowski conceded that his onscreen encounters have started to bleed into his subconscious at least to some extent. He revealed that he’s had at least one dream where The Dragon has made an appearance, despite normally being so exhausted from long shoot dates.
“Some of the days we have are so challenging physically and we have a lot of night shoots in Prague in the summer,” Stradowski told Global Grind in regards to the show’s production shoots in the Czech Republic. “It’s amazing but it’s a big contrast to what it is in the winter where it gets really, really cold and we don’t have a lot of light during the day, so I feel like the days are long enough to be able to sleep. But weirdly enough sometimes I have dreams about Rand. I had one dream where I was on a mountain and I had the Dragon on my arms and I took off my shirt and said, ‘I’m the Dragon!’ I woke up and I was like, ‘Oh my God this is too much. I need to go to somewhere else during the weekend to just step out of this fantasy world.’”
Hopefully he won’t step too far because we’re eagerly awaiting more from Rand and his friends. Make sure to tune in to The Wheel Of Time Season 2 on Prime Video September 1st.
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