That also puts Josha Stradowski, the actor who plays Rand on Prime Video’s Wheel of Time show, in a unique position: In a show full of women channelers, Rand is the only male channeler with any real longevity on the series. Season 3 marks a big change for him, traveling with Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) and more eager to accept his role as the Dragon Reborn — and, with it, the burden of learning channeling.
But as the third episode shows, the truth is — for as much as she is willing to guide him — Moiraine could never have the same relationship with channeling that Rand does. While she says she understands the “thirst” he feels, his description pushes deeper; for him it’s not just “dying of thirst” and coming upon a pond where “water tastes like life itself” — it’s gorging on a sweet poison that leaves him bitter and constantly threatens to pull him under. The fear they both feel about his metaphor seems palpable. But still she has to encourage him to find a relationship to channeling.
It’s a small scene, but an important one to both Pike and Stradowski.
“I think that was one of the scenes we wrote together with Rafe [Judkins, Wheel of Time showrunner], because this season, apart from showing the channeling in a different way, I also wanted the characters to talk about it,” Stradowski tells Polygon. “There’s so many presumptions about what it might be like, but they haven’t really spoken about it together.”
For inspiration about where Rand was at, Stradowski says he thought of Mike Tyson, and how he “didn’t like the person who he needed to become in order to do whatever he did in the ring.”
Which is, unfortunately, exactly what Moiraine is left to council Rand with. “You might not like the person you need to be, but you need to love both parts of it,” Pike says. “You need to be able to love the shepherd and the explosive power hub that you’re going to become.”
That’s not to say it’s not without its risks: As Pike says of that final episode of the week, Moiraine feels decidedly on the outside of Rand’s growth, at once fearful of him tipping closer to madness (or, possibly, already there and taking it out on Egwene), but also knowing he needs to train. For Stradowski, the physical act of performing channeling is something he’s looking forward to developing, with Rand’s style being possibly a bit more singular than that of the women around him.
“I hope we get to explore more because the channeling is so interesting,” Stradowski says. “It’s on a cellular level in the books — there’s a moment where they try to heal men that have gone mad because of channeling. And they look inside their brain and try to get the madness out.
“And they look inside of Rand’s brain and they just don’t even dare to go there because it’s so messed up. So that’s where we want to go.”
The first three episodes of The Wheel of Time are now streaming on Prime Video. New episodes come out every Thursday.
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