Legend of the Seeker: Wizard

Not all filler episodes are created equal. Some are completely superfluous, but enjoyable. Some are a complete drag, but contain a few nuggets of essential information or development. Others you can safely skip during any binge-watching session because absolutely nothing of consequence happens.

And some – like this one – are filler episodes that are perhaps better described as “reminder episodes”. Remember Shota’s prophecy from the first episode? Remember how she and Zed once had a thing together? Remember how the Keeper is using Rahl to make deals with the recently deceased?

This episode is here to remind you of all these things without doing anything permanent with them.

It’s filler, but it’s helpful filler.

Our intrepid team is following the blue glowy compass through the forest when Zed is distracted by a ripe persimmon hanging from an overhead branch. It’s the last one of the season and he ain’t sharing, but when things – even as seemingly insignificant as a juicy persimmon – are too good to be true, it’s because they usually are.

Not long after devouring his favourite fruit, he’s confusedly asking after Tarralyn, his deceased daughter. He’s also unable to recognize his travelling companions, and after panicking in the face of their own confusion, he casts magic at them and rushes off. Cara deflects his power, and in a nice touch, is clearly only concerned about Richard’s wellbeing even though both he and Kahlan were thrown backwards by the force of Zed’s power.

Someone is targeting Zed with magic and knows him well enough to realize he can’t resist a persimmon? I’m calling it now: Shota.

Zed staggers into the nearest village and follows an attractive woman (who is hilariously dressed as an old-timey Wild Western showgirl, just to broadcast what her profession is in the most obvious way possible) into a brothel, and tries to intervene in the violent beating of a man at the hands of armed soldiers. Having forgotten how to command his own magic, he fails at both saving the man and attracting the girl.

But then Cara turns up, with her trademark musical sting, and amusingly points out that whenever she’s sent to look for a man, she never has to go as far as the nearest brothel (isn’t this like, the third time she’s done this?)

Just as she gets the upper hand, some unseen force pulls Zed from the building and into a forest glade... and yup, it’s Shota. Told ya. Turns out this is all a ploy to circumvent the prophecy she’s had about Richard failing in his quest to retrieve the Stone of Tears and defeat the Keeper, and she needs Zed (or at least, a Wizard of the First Order, of which he is the last one) to name another Seeker – one that might succeed.

She’s got another candidate all lined up, so as usual, her motivations aren’t evil, she’s just going about everything in the most underhanded way possible.

Spinning Zed a story about how his memories have faded with age, Shota promises to bring him back to his full strength by casting a magic spell to restore his youth. This she does, and kudos to the casting department for finding a guy who credibly looks like Bruce Spence in his youth, from his height to his hair to his elongated facial features.

But with youth comes an unforeseen side-effect: uninhibited egotism. After following Shota’s instructions to steal the sword and compass from Richard, he decides to part ways with Shota and promptly disappears – his mind clearly on the girl in the brothel. Clearly Shota has never watched the Band Candy episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which would have informed her that de-aging responsible adults is never a good idea.

The girl’s name is Salindra, and she’s remarkably blasé about the fact that the old man who was propositioning her just a few minutes ago has returned in a younger, hotter body. They’re making out within seconds, and with just a few flourishes Zed has turned her into his princess, the other working girls into her ladies-in-waiting, and a ruined castle on a nearby hill into his palace.

All this time, Richard and Kahlan have been attempting to collect ingredients to create a memory-restoring potion, but their questions as to what the hell is going on are answered when Shota appears to them, now appealing for assistance. Or more specially, appealing to Cara for assistance.

She explains that her prophecy states Richard’s quest is doomed to fail and that Zed’s sentimentality for his grandson prevents him from naming another Seeker – but since Cara cares nothing for the Seeker and is only in this merry band of heroes for Richard’s sake, then she will certainly help Shota subdue Zed so that she can make him do what has to be done.

And since she’s the only one who can withstand Zed’s power, there’s really no other option on the table but for Cara to see the bigger picture and help Shota out.

It’s an interesting angle to take – practical for its own sake, but also one that can gauge Cara’s ongoing loyalties. As we saw earlier in the episode, Richard Rahl is her main (if not only) priority – but Cara is not without emotional intelligence, and immediately turns her agiel on Shota, knowing full-well that this is the “right” course of action when it comes to Richard’s personal sense of morality.

So Cara passed that test with flying colours, whether she believes in what Shota is saying or not. You can see it in Richard and Kahlan’s faces:

Meanwhile, Zed is holding court in the middle of his expansive RPG, and we get some exposition about Drago (a local warlord; ally to the D’harans) from the man who was being beaten up earlier, and a reminder about how the Keeper is bringing the dead back to life from another working-girl with the unlikely name of Monica.

Hilariously, Zed doesn’t bother to heal the man’s injuries despite having the power to do so, but instead turns his attention to the problem of the Keeper and the massive cracks in the ground opening to the Underworld, by naming himself the new Seeker with the Sword of Truth. Cheers all around.

It’s at this point that Drago marches into the throne room with the intent to destroy Zed, only to be promptly burnt to a cinder.

But Drago awakens in the writhing green-tinged orgy that is the Underworld, to be given the now-familiar ultimatum. Because he served Rahl well, he’s given the opportunity to return to life as a Baneling, and vows to kill Zed – the new Seeker. This is news to Rahl (so... not much in the way of communication between Rahl and the omniscient Keeper?) who nudges Drago towards a more effective way of ridding the world of Zed.

Zed and his court have approached one of the green-tinged crevices that lead into the Underworld, and while Zed is otherwise distracted by his pontificating, the undead Drago sneaks through the trees, points a crossbow at Salindra, and shoots her dead.

Now she’s the one that wakes up in the Underworld, facing a smirking Darken Rahl. He makes her a slightly altered deal: she can go back to full health and life, if she tricks Zed into entering the Underworld...

Salindra is hesitant about the idea, having nothing to complain about when it comes to the way Zed has treated her, but she’s still making her choice when Rahl threatens her with a very special afterlife of torment...

As Zed desperately tries to resurrect her dead body, Salindra revives and credits him with bringing her back. As did Shota, she spins a little story about how she rejected Rahl’s offer and was about to be thrown into the pit when Zed’s magic returned her to life. It’s clearly a load of bull, but Zed’s ego is far too inflated to even consider that possibility for a second.

From the trees, Richard, Kahlan, Shota and Cara watch Zed make yet another self-aggrandizing speech and discuss their options. Richard’s cunning plan is to – and you’ll never believe this – just go and talk to him. According to him, Zed is strong enough to find and use the Stone of Tears by himself, and he argues that it doesn’t matter who gets the credit and the glory, as long as the rift gets sealed. That’s our Richard.

Salindra plays her cards: she convincingly tells Zed that while she was in the Underworld she overheard Rahl and the Keeper celebrating the fact that Zed was the new Seeker, knowing they can wreak havoc while he’s distractedly looking for the Stone of Tears. After making him promise that he won’t do anything foolish or reckless, Salindra tells him that the one thing they’re afraid of is that Zed will delve into the Underworld with the Sword of Truth and fight the Keeper himself.

So guess what Zed has decided to do! Salindra:

Richard comes forward and introduces himself as Zed’s grandson, but Zed has already decided on Salindra’s plan and uses magic to bar Richard from coming any closer. He kisses Salindra farewell before heading into the rift, while Kahlan gets her obligatory slow-mo fight scene while trying to reach Richard. Shota frees him from the spell, and Richard heads after Zed, telling Kahlan that she can’t follow – their mission is bigger than either of them, and one must stay behind to get the Stone of Tears.

Both Zed and Richard grow into old men as they head deeper into the Underworld, and Rahl appears to mock them both... but not actually physically engage them in any way. It feels like the writer kinda ran out of ideas as to how to get them both out of this scrape, since they – get this – just turn around and walk out again. And Rahl just... watches them go. Mmkay.

Let’s wrap this up: because Salindra’s side of the bargain wasn’t met, her wound returns and she dies in Zed’s arms, confessing that she tricked him into entering the Underworld. Richard is still an old man, but Zed’s magic easily restores him to his youth. Shota looks utterly unimpressed by all of this, but Richard lets her go, no doubt thinking of what she did in the Bad Future when remarking that she can occasionally be helpful.

Our final scene has Zed reassert Richard’s destiny as the Seeker, and the two of them sharing a rather tonally jarring nudge-nudge-wink-wink about how very beautiful Salindra was... kind of an odd note to go out on considering she betrayed them before dying tragically. And for all they know, she’s suffering torments at the hands of the Keeper.

This was a rather brief summary of the episode, since – like I said – it wasn’t a particularly important one. It was the season’s requisite Zed-centric episode, though with the odd twist that Bruce Spence himself wasn’t in it much, instead ceding the spotlight for Gabriel Mann playing his younger self. Still, it gave us some insight into just how powerful Zed was in his youth, coupled with the danger of his staggering self-absorption (though he was never truly bad).

More than anything though, the episode serves to remind us of where the pieces are on the board: Cara’s trustworthiness is becoming more and more apparent, Shota is out there scheming to instate a new Seeker, and Darken Rahl is still playing gatekeeper to the Underworld.

Miscellaneous Observations:

When Cara goes off to fetch Zed at the beginning of the episode, Richard wearily tells her: “just don’t kill him.” Heh.  

Zed’s immediate and rather fixated attraction to Salindra throws up a couple of questions. Since she looked nothing like Shota, are we meant to infer that perhaps she reminded Zed of Richard’s grandmother in her youth? Or some other girl that he once loved? Or perhaps she was just super hot.

When it comes to guest-stars on this show, I usually end up browsing through their IMDB profiles just to see if I’ve seen them in anything before, and both Gabriel Mann (young Zed) and Helena Mattsson (Salindra) have pretty respectable resumes. Most recently Mann has been in the CW’s Batwoman as the villain Hush, while Mattsson has been in The Rookie, American Horror Story, Fargo, Nikita and Desperate Housewives.

This episode gives us our first look at a Shadrin, and turns out they’re essentially just minotaurs.

My favourite detail in Zed’s make-believe palace is that he gives the ladies-in-waiting a couple of dogs to set the scene:

A nice shot was the flip between Drago’s dead corpse and him waking up in the Underworld, his flesh still intact...

Another nice (albeit creepy) detail was that Salindra still had the bloodstain on her dress when she attempts to trick Zed into entering the Underworld:

Who benefited the most from this otherwise filler episode? I’d have to say Cara, who is again given a “test” by the writers as to where her priorities lie, after setting up two important things about her within the first few minutes of the episode: first that she can deflect Zed’s magic, and that she’s more concerned about Richard when he and Kahlan are injured. It sets up Shota’s gambit later on, when she ignores the other two and appeals to Cara’s unique power set and loyalty to her Lord Rahl.

But Cara ain’t buying it. Like I said, if she believed in Shota’s story then she might have agreed with what she was doing on some level, but by this stage she knows what Richard expects of her and does it without hesitation. It’s nice little character work.