Season two of The Wheel of Time is well underway, and Moiraine and Lan continue to be in a challenging place. When Ishamael cut Moiraine off from the One Power at the Eye of the World in the season one finale, it severed her bond to Lan. An Aes Sedai’s bond with her Warder closely connects them, to the point a Warder knows his Aes Sedai’s moods. It suddenly disappearing affects both Aes Sedai and Warder deeply. Season two began with Moiraine investigating broken cuendillar and keeping Lan in the dark. The split between them has grown wider with each passing episode, and now Moiraine is Cairhien after leaving Lan with Alanna.
While visiting Alanna’s family, Lan seemed to relax. He let his hair down, though it’s shorter than it was in Nynaeve’s possible future, and wore more comfortable-looking clothing. The hair, at least, is symbolic of Lan and Moiraine’s lack of relationship. The Wheel of Time’s hair and makeup designer Davina Lamont told Nerdist it was about representing that change in his character.
“It was about how Moiraine and Lan had gone to another place,” Lamont said. “Moiraine was kicked out of the White Tower, and so we had a more of a relaxed look for both of them for the first episode. Then they wanted to see Lan in an even more relaxed mode as well. So, for that it was taking his hair down. It was great to play with the length and the style for him and what that would look like. So yeah, I was glad that he got a new hairstyle. He [Daniel Henney] loves his long hair.”
Lamont joked that Henney wanted to wear the long hair all the time.
Director Thomas Napper told Nerdist more about Moiraine and Lan’s struggle. The pair is in crisis, complicated by Moiraine shutting Lan out. He said, “Their relationship is in a strange, broken place where they were almost like twins, to a point. It’s so interesting to explore these other aspects of the characters, that I felt coming into the show fresh for series two, that that was a really new aspect to the show, is to see the vulnerability and to see, I guess, the darker sides.”
New episodes of The Wheel of Time premiere on Fridays on Prime Video.
