Whoops!) Fain takes some time to gloat in front of our guy Perrin before exiting stage right as if getting into the throne room of a previously impregnable city were the easiest thing in the world.Īnd back at the Eye of the World, Rand matches wits with the Dark One, who abandons his fire-eyed guise and takes the form of a handsome sophisticate, played by actor Fares Fares.

(Moiraine helpfully tells us that this is the First Battle. Meanwhile, the previously very minor character Padan Fain leads a pair of Fades to sack the city’s palace, killing its guardians and stealing a chest containing a magical horn meant to be blown by the Dragon Reborn on the occasion of the Last Battle. (No one’s going to be comparing this episode’s battle favorably to the similar conflicts of, say, Blackwater in Game of Thrones or Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings anytime soon.) In turn, they are blown to gooey smithereens by Fal Dara’s phalanx of five female channelers in a matter of seconds, even though it costs most of those channelers their lives. Meanwhile, the Dark One’s army of Trollocs defeats the guardians of Fal Dara in fairly short order. Lan, Moiraine’s severed Warder, catches up with her seemingly only minutes after the confrontation to which the entire season has built. It takes only a brisk day’s walk for Rand al’Thor - the Dragon Reborn - and his Aes Sedai mentor Moiraine to walk from the besieged city of Fal Dara through the impenetrable and dangerous Blight to the Eye of the World, where the Dark One is imprisoned.

Game of thrones s1e8 summary