The Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 3 “What Might Be” pushes Nynaeve al’Meara (Zöe Robins) past her limit. The powerful channeler is given the chance to take her Accepted test earlier than most Novices at the White Tower would be. The test, which consists of Nynaeve traveling through three mystical arches known as ter’angreals, forces its subjects to confront their worst memories, greatest shames, and most emotionally crippling fears. If a Novice passes the test, she becomes an Accepted, the next step on her journey to becoming one of the Aes Sedai. If she fails, she is expelled from the White Tower or, worse, dies in the process. Prime Video‘s adaptation of The Wheel of Time essentially follows Nynaeve’s test from the books…with a wild and devastating twist.
**Spoilers for The Wheel of Time Season 2 Episode 3 “What May Be,” now streaming on Prime Video.**
After reliving the murders of her parents and being forced to turn her back on sick loved ones in the Two Rivers, Nynaeve is shown a version of her future where she walks away from the Aes Sedai. Instead of becoming a great channeler, she leaves the White Tower and marries her love, Lan (Daniel Henney). Nynaeve rejects the real call back to reality, meaning the Aes Sedai believe she has chosen death. Within the final ter’angreal, Nynaeve lives a whole life with Lan and their daughter. She also witnesses the collapse of her happily ever after when Trollocs come to kill her loved ones in the Two Rivers. Nynaeve ultimately manages to return to reality — with the help of a determined Egwene (Madeleine Madden) and new friend Elayne (Ceara Coveney).
It wasn’t just Nynaeve who was put through through her paces. Wheel of Time star Zöe Robins told Decider that shooting this episode was “such a challenge,” but it was also “such a gift” when we spoke to her before the SAG-AFTRA strike.
“Prep looked a lot like just reading the script over and over and over. It was pretty essential to know exactly where Nynaeve was emotionally. Obviously, with the way we shoot, everything’s kind of shot out of chronological order so there was a lot of stuff that essentially was backwards. So I really needed to know where I was, where I was going, where I had just been,” Robins said. “I think the most challenging was the future aspect.”
Daniel Henney got to join Robins in the scenes set in the future and joked that he struggled with Lan’s new hairstyle. “My hair is down which it took me a while to get used to that,” Henney said in another interview held before the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Henney added that there was initially some “concern” about the scene where Lan meets Nynaeve on horseback, but that it “played out really beautifully.”
“The horses were like a hundred yards apart, and they called, ‘Action,’ and we just just sprinted, cantered in on the horse and jumped off. And it was just great energy,” Henney said. “I loved that sequence. Just, you know, kissing her with that sort of longing that they have for each other.”
While Nynaeve gets to experience a version of her future where her dreams come true, her best friend and protege Egwene has to deal with the nightmare of losing Nynaeve. Madeleine Madden told Decider during the same pre-strike press day that what really stung for Egwene was the knowledge that “the grounds and the terms that Nynaeve and Egwene left each other on weren’t good ones, you know? They weren’t really talking. There was this animosity there. There was distrust and resentment, which is just an awful way to end things, particularly if you’re losing someone.”
Of course, Egwene being Egwene, she refuses to lose Nynaeve without a fight. She and Elayne go to the arches alone and Egwene attempts what has never been done before: to call someone back from the ter’angreal.
“It feels like she’s the only one who hasn’t given up on Nynaeve,” Madden said. “That’s something that has been instilled within the Two Rivers group, but also something that Nynaeve has done for all of them all throughout Season 1. It feels Nynaeve has always rallied for them. Has always said, ‘I will bring you back together.’ Mat, Egwene, Perrin, and Rand are like Nynaeve’s little ducklings. She just wants to protect everyone.”
“I think that’s what’s beautiful about this relationship is the way that the dynamics change. We see that Egwene is trying to be there for Nynaeve in the way that she was there for Egwene throughout Season 1, throughout her whole life, throughout grieving Rand.”
Robins told Decider that the scene in which Nynaeve and Egwene are reunited affected both actresses emotionally. “It was just such a great scene that I think really shows how much love and care there is with one another. The fact that Nynaeve can exert that type of emotion and Egwene is nothing but there for her.”
Obviously Egwene helped pull Nynaeve back to the White Tower, but what inspired Nynaeve to choose to return knowing it would mean giving up her child with Lan?
“I think hope, to be honest. I think hope that there is a world in which it can work out,” Robins said. “Which is pretty heartbreaking.”
Of course, the Accepted test isn’t the only way the Aes Sedai torture Nynaeve in The Wheel of Time Season 2. In the first episode of the new season, Nynaeve defiantly drinks a glass of garbage water to stick it to Alanna (Priyanka Bose), who is attempting to help Nynaeve get over her “block.” Good news: Robins told Decider she actually didn’t have to drink excrement for that scene.
“Oh, I’m gonna spill some secrets,” Robins said. “I think it was iced tea. So it’s actually quite sweet.”
“It’s kind of like a classic Nynaeve moment where she’s just completely challenging authority, and anyone telling her what she must do. So yeah, that was a lot of fun to film.”