Old faces in unexpected places: The Wheel of Time season 3 rolls on

Summary

Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV series. Now we're back in the saddle for season 3—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory. These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you. New episodes of The Wheel of Time season 3 will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers episode six, "The Shadow in the Night," which was released on April 3. Lee: Welcome to Tanchico! In Tanchico, everyone wears veils almost all of the time, except when they’re flirting in bars. Mat gets the most fabulous veil of all because he’s Mat and he deserves it. Even Nynaeve has a good time! And I guess now we know all about the hills of Tanchico. Like… alllllllllllllllllll about them. Andrew: Credit to Robert Jordan for mostly resisting one of the bizarre tics of post-Tolkien fantasy fiction: I'm not going to say the books never take a break to give us the full text of an in-universe song. But it does so pretty sparingly, if memory serves. But there are plenty of songs referenced, often with a strong implication that they are too lewd or horny to reprint in full. Not so in the show! Where Elayne sings a song about "The Hills of Tanchico," bringing the house down for what appears to be... several hours (they're breasts, the hills are breasts). I don't mind this scene, actually, but it does go on. But more important than the song is who is accompanying Elayne, a book character who has been gone so long that we weren...