The Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 4 Recap and Ending, Explained

Prime Video’s fantasy drama series, ‘The Wheel of Time,’ transports the viewers into the world of magic, where the threat of a dark power looms over a world already in chaos. The second season carries the story forward with all the main characters torn apart, chasing their destiny and trying to tap into the power they’d barely discovered in the first season. The first three episodes of the season set up the pieces, but they start moving in the fourth, where some shocking revelations show us just how far the villains have come in their plan to raise the Dark One. The ending sets up a very important character in the story, whose presence will have a far-reaching impact on the protagonists’ lives. Here’s what that ending means. SPOILERS AHEAD

The Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 4 Recap

Having left behind Lan after severing her connection with him, Moiraine goes to Cairhein. Her return to her home gives us a glimpse of what her life used to be like before she left for the White Tower. We also discover that despite being away from the action, Moiraine has been keeping tabs on Rand and, in some ways, driving him towards the decisions he thought he was making of his own accord. She pays a visit to Logain, who reveals that he would have still been at the Tower if Moiraine hadn’t intervened and sent him to this place. He prefers death, but Moiraine wants him to teach Rand first. Once the purpose is served, he can kill himself.

Unaware of what Moiraine is up to, Lan spends his days with Alanna and her warders, Maksim and Ihvon. The severance of their bond has been weighing heavy on his mind, and he’s still trying to make sense of the poem in the old tongue he stole from Moiraine. Alanna suggests that he should go back to the Tower with them. She mentions that Nynaeve has passed her Acceptance and will soon need a warder of her own. However, Lan is not ready to throw himself back into something like that just yet.

At the Tower, Nynaeve is still caught up in her vision in the Arch. She wonders if it was real. Even if it wasn’t real in this world, she spent years inside the Arch and lived a full life with her daughter, who no longer exists. Liandrin tries to console her and pushes her to focus on her powers. She also tells Nynaeve about the Seanchan attack in which Perrin and Loial have been taken captive by the enemy.

Despite Liandrin’s advice not to do anything rash, Nynaeve decides to help her friends, but it leads her into something entirely unexpected. Meanwhile, Lin discovers that she has inadvertently made a deal with the devil and has put herself and Mat in danger. Around the same time, Rand also comes face to face with a terrifying reality, making him question everything and everyone around him.

The Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 4 Ending: Is Selene Lanfear?

When Rand discovered that he could channel and was the Dragon Reborn, he decided to let his friends and the rest of the world think he was dead. He receded in the shadows and tried to control his powers. In this episode, however, it turns out that his decisions weren’t entirely his own, and he was being prodded by the bad and the good guys. When Rand left, and Moiraine realized they hadn’t killed the Dark One, she tried to find him.

She knows that he is the only one who can help in this fight against the Darkness, but having lost her powers, she cannot be the one to help him. She can’t take him to the Tower either, leaving only one person who can help him. She deliberately gets Logain to Cairhein because she knows Rand will seek him out. Logain is the only one who had an insane amount of power and didn’t lose his mind. Naturally, Rand would gravitate towards him. But Moiraine is not the only one to make that assumption. It looks like the Dark One’s army has also caught up with the young Dragon.

In the second episode of this season, we find Rand in a friends-with-benefits sort of arrangement with an innkeeper, Selene. He doesn’t tell her who he is, and her friendship comforts him. However, he does wonder why she has been helping him, and she doesn’t give a direct answer. She says it’s because he reminds her of the man she loved, and being with Rand makes her feel like she is with him. At the end of the third episode, she witnesses Rand channeling but says she is not afraid of him, which builds the suspicion around her. If you haven’t already been questioning her true identity and purpose, the third episode gives you enough reason to.

It is in the fourth episode that we discover who she really is. When Ishamael was freed, he decided to free the other Forsaken, the powerful generals of the Dark One. The first one that he woke up was Lanfear, the Daughter of the Night. Considered one of the most powerful Channelers, second only to Ishamael, Lanfear is a force to reckon with. And it turns out that she has taken Selene’s form to walk about in the world.

The poem in the old tongue was part of a prophecy, which reveals that Lanfear has been brought back. When Moiraine found out about it, she knew that Rand would be in danger, which is why she was so impatient to find him. She arrives just in time for Selene to show her true form to Rand, who confesses he is in love with her, not realizing that the past lover Selene talked about was the first Dragon, whose reincarnation is Rand. Before he can find out about it, Moiraine shows up and slits Selene’s throat but admits that Selene is not dead and will heal soon enough. She and Rand run away, trying to get away as far as possible from her because once she catches up with them, they’ll be done for.

The true extent of the Dark One’s reach is revealed when Lin discovers Liandrin has set up her meeting with Ishamael. This means Liandrin is one of the Forsaken and has joined the dark side. Her intent behind keeping Mat secretly imprisoned and then having him run away with Lin was just to get him to Ishamael. This means that her intentions with Nynaeve are also similar. She wants to take Nynaeve under her wing to push the most powerful channeler she’s ever seen to join the dark side. This is why she told her to leave the Tower and find Perrin. This was the only way to get her out of the Tower and in the open, where Ishamael and the others could get to her easily. Her plans are ruined when Egwene and Elyane join Nynaeve. However, this doesn’t mean she will slow down or run away.