Legend of the Seeker: Torn

And with this episode, I am halfway through the season! (Though well over halfway through the year, which is an annoyance since I was hoping to get this project wrapped up before 2024).

If the last episode provided a minor character study on Richard, then this is Kahlan’s turn to step into the spotlight. This entire story is devoted to exploring the duality of her character, by using that favourite fantasy trope: splitting the individual into two halves. That is, their personality is split between two separate (and identical) bodies, which TV Tropes calls a Literal Split Personality.

You’ve seen it in early episodes of Charmed and Farscape (though there Prue and Crichton were divided into three parts) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (where it was Xander, making use of the convenient fact that actor Nicholas Brendon is a twin). I also recall a Star Trek episode where two separate people are merged into one, and then refuse to be turned back since he doesn’t want to die, a storyline that’s somewhat relevant to this episode of Legend of the Seeker.

And those examples are just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are thousands more out there.

It makes for a fairly interesting look at what makes Kahlan tick, though it’s rather on-the-nose compared to the last episode’s more veiled depiction of Richard’s fears and how they pertain to his self-image. This is essentially just knocking Kahlan’s fundamental personality out of kilter and demonstrating that the two sides of a person need to work in harmony – which is true, but true of anyone, not just Kahlan.

Our heroes are back to following the compass bearings (God, it’s been so long since I watched the beginning of this season, I can’t even remember where this thing came from or where it’s meant to be taking them) but I feel another detour coming!

Richard and Kahlan are being pretty damn insensitive when they start discussing the romantic ambiance of a famous waterfall they both want to visit in front of a woman who has just watched the man she was falling for burn to death in a blaze of magical fire right in front of her, but here’s that detour, right on schedule!

Amusingly, Cara is not impressed by the torture that’s been inflicted on their bodies (it’s not good enough, according to her) and Kahlan is perturbed by the sign hanging with them: it bears the Aydindril seal, as well as a title that she claims does not exist: High Lord Regent.

That’s our cue to cut to the very man: he’s sitting on an important-looking chair, all clad in black, and is pretty good-looking (though the acting isn’t exactly great). All three things indicate his status as a villain, and just to drive home the theme of Lawful Evil, he’s currently showing no mercy to a poor bewildered peasant who couldn’t find work to feed his family and so resorted to stealing grain.

He’s already had one hand cut off, and now he’s sentenced to death, much to the shocked gasps and mutterings of the assembled people. It’s not a particularly nuanced scene, but it gets the point across. As the struggling man is dragged away, we see the exchange has been witnessed by two grizzled old men with grave expressions. You know the kind:

Their names are Alferon and Silas, and we get some whispered exposition: the former has summoned the latter to Aydindril to witness Lord Regent Fyren’s cruelty, making mention of the fact that he commands an army surrounding the city that has rendered the people too afraid to oppose him. Silas floats the possibility of using Oloron’s Amulet, currently locked in the vault and guarded by Fyren’s men, to summon help. He’s warned about the dangers in retrieving it, but dangerous times...

Sadly, we only get to see the tail-end of Silas’s daring heist, as the next scene shows him fleeing from the vault with the amulet in his grasp, only to be shot in the back as he makes a run for it. He just manages to recite an incantation before disappearing... and reappearing right at the feet of Richard, Kahlan, Cara and Zed.

They recognize him by name as a Wizard of the Second Order, and the amulet he’s clutching as a safeguard to ensure the Mother Confessor can always be reached in an emergency. All one has to do is say the incantation and it will transport a person to wherever she is in the world, and then allow both her and the bearer of the amulet to return magically back to Aydindril.

Which means we’re looking at another team split-up: Kahlan and Zed will investigate the goings-on in Aydindril that led to Silas’s death, and Richard and Cara will continue following the compass bearing.

But Kahlan is... wait for it... TORN. Hey, that’s the name of the episode!

Her conflicted feelings over this development means that when Zed makes the incantation over the amulet, Kahlan remains with Richard and Cara on the road... but also travels with Zed to Aydindril. Obviously each group is none-the-wiser, though the fact the amulet has been broken in two – one piece with each party – is a hint that something went awry.

It's a reasonably elegant way of getting the story where it wants to be, and gives Bridget Regan a chance to pull double-duty as the two very different sides of Kahlan, which she starts slipping into almost immediately.

(As a side note, is this the first time we’ve seen Aydindril? I think it is. And if memory serves, its significance is that Kahlan was born, or at least raised and trained as a Confessor there. It’s nice to see it finally, but surely it deserved a little more fanfare than this).

At this point, the narrative divides into the arcs of the two Kahlans, so I’ll follow them both separately...

***

The Kahlan who remains with Richard, who wanted to stay with him and who represents her personal devotion, love and longing for an ordinary life, is worried about Zed – whom they have to assume arrived in Aydindril by himself. Unclear about what the situation is, they chose to forego following the compass and head to Aydindril together.

On the way, Kahlan admits she’s pleased she doesn’t have to leave Richard (and is a little uncharacteristically gushy about it) but when the group comes across soldiers harassing a pair of young lovers in the forest – there are always so many young lovers in these types of shows – Kahlan realizes mid-fight that she doesn’t have her Confessor abilities.

And you know what that means! Honestly, it’s actually kind of hilarious watching the characters/writers try to tiptoe delicately around the fact Kahlan simply wants to stand up and yell at Richard: “we can fuck now!”

Hey, at least they actually get some distance first, CARA.

And so they do, excusing themselves from Cara (who knows exactly what’s going on) and finding a comfy spot on the forest floor, under the silvery moon. Sound the trumpets, unfurl the banners, Richard and Kahlan finally get to have sex!

They wake up post-coital in some rather OTT mood lighting, and... Richard can’t get away quickly enough. Okay, he’s not rude about it or anything, but come on – he’s finally spent the night with the woman he loves, and he’s up getting dressed and talking about Cara almost immediately. It does lean into the theme of duty versus love, but is clearly also setting up for the next scene, when you can’t help but feel Richard would have lingered for a little while longer.

In any case, Kahlan pitches the dream of a house and children and domestic life, only for him to head back to Cara and start planning their journey into Aydindril. Cara pulls a leaf out of his hair and... ugh, I hate this part. Kahlan turns up just in time to see this physical interaction between them and flips her shit: she accuses Cara of trying to seduce him, decides that Richard actually loves her instead, and flounces off in tears.

Urgghhhhh. Look, I realize that all this is the split personality messing with Kahlan’s head, but one of the best parts of this show is that it never stoops to jealousy between women or silly catfights. This could have been snipped out entirely and we still could have had Kahlan’s emotional breakdown, which ends up being more about the fact that if they go to Aydindril and figure out what’s going on with her Confessor powers, she and Richard won’t be able to be together anymore.

Richard – who is probably wondering what the hell he’s gotten himself into – consoles her, and comes up with another classic line: “I want you to get your powers back because they’re a part of you.” And it’s at this point that he begins to smell a rat. Kahlan encouraging him to abandon his quest and run away isn’t something she would ever say. She hasn’t just lost her powers, but something else as well.

It's perhaps a little dodgy that he didn’t get the chance to notice this until after they’ve slept together (because it kind of throws up some consent issues if she’s not in her right mind) but I give both Richard and Zed over in the other subplot credit for figuring it out reasonably quickly.

They saddle the horses and gallop off, which brings us to the second arc...

***

Kahlan and Zed get the lowdown on what’s been happening in Aydindril from Alferon, who tells them all about Fyren and the way he’s been running the place. In a very fun little sequence, Kahlan is brought before Fyren in chains, waits for him to beckon her closer, and when he asks: “what can I do for you?” she responds: “you can get out of my chair.” Boom! He’s confessed.

Watching this for the first time, I thought straight away that this was a pretty drastic measure for Kahlan to take. I mean, the guy was clearly a power-addled fantatic, but she’s also just stripped him of his identity and autonomy. Forever. That’s our first clue that something is not quite right with Kahlan, as she’s usually a lot more careful about who she dishes this punishment out to, and the circumstances in which she does it.

It's followed up with some rather eyebrow-raising comments nestled amidst her declaration that Fyren’s edicts will be overturned... with the understanding that she’s now in indisputable charge of things.

(But honestly, it’s always so much fun to watch Kahlan turn arrogant, overbearing men into her obedient servants. As a power fantasy, it has no equal).

The next we see her, she’s on the throne and looking totally fabulous. The hair! The boots! The robes! It’s enough to make us forget that even though she cancels the execution of the thief, she also forbids Zed from magically regrowing his hand back (this is another nice bit of continuity, as he did the same for one of the Confessors who had undergone a similar punishment in the first season).

Zed is a little shocked, but lets it slide for now... though there’s a nice exchange with Alferon, who says: “she’s changed since I last saw her,” to which Zed replies: “she’s changed since this morning.” Again, top marks to the writers for having Zed immediately realize that’s something’s up... and even though Richard takes a bit longer to realize the same about his Kahlan, it’s more understandable since Emotional!Kahlan is still a kind person, and he can attribute her initial strangeness to her reacting to the loss of her Confessor abilities.

While Hardass!Kahlan is browsing through papers in a private room, Zed tests the waters by asking her about her sudden lack of mercy. She puts up a somewhat reasonable defence, stating that she’s using the old laws to establish order and can’t afford to demonstrate any inconsistency, but it’s obvious she’s dipping her toes into authoritarianism. Zed is troubled, but again decides to withdraw for the moment.

Which may not have been the best move, as the next scene shows Kahlan calling Fyren into her chambers and informing him that his strength, genealogy and leadership makes him a great candidate for a Baby-Daddy. She wants him to sire the next Confessor. No kissing, just screwing. I bet the Fyren actor remembers this role very fondly.

The following day, Zed confronts Kahlan about a rumour he heard at the local tavern: that she’s getting it on with Fyren. He’s shocked, SHOCKED I say, that such a thing could be possible, but Kahlan just shrugs and admits to it. Also, they call it “mating” which is just... ewwww. But she states she has a duty to continue the line of Confessors, at which point the Council of the Midlands of Funny Hats arrives, just in time to hear Kahlan’s declaration that they’re all fired for how ineffective they were in dealing with Fyren.

See? So funny.

Zed attempts to talk reason, realizing at this point that the amulet has something to do with her behaviour. In a private conversation with Alferon, he discusses the ways in which he can restrain her, at which point we get a nice twist: Kahlan is already two steps ahead and confessed Alferon yesterday – now he turns against Zed and magically binds him for the guards to arrest him.

***

It’s at this point the two plots converge, with Richard, Cara and Emotional!Kahlan arriving just in time to see Hardass!Kahlan sentencing Zed to death and justifying this decision to the crowd. There can now be no doubt that something went very wrong when the amulet snapped during the magical journey to Aydindril.

Richard decides to take the simple approach and simply confronts Hardass!Kahlan during one of the daily assemblies. She also plays it cool, reminding Richard that he has a quest to get one with, and that Zed has become a threat to her – and she’s always right when it comes to reading people’s intentions. I liked that Richard plays the personal stakes card by saying he’s there because he was concerned about her, and that he calls Zed “my grandfather.”

She doesn’t deny him a visit to the dungeons, and Zed exposits what’s really going on: because the amulet was connected specifically to Kahlan’s heart and because it was metaphorically torn when the spell was cast, she was literally torn into two. And since her desire was to stay, but her duty was to go, the two separate versions of her embody both these fundamental traits. Neither one is the real Kahlan, instead they’re both manifestations of these two halves: duty and desire, the heart and the head.

I really like this as an explanation, as it has a neat fairy tale logic to it that a lesser show probably wouldn’t have bothered with. To say that the amulet is connected to Kahlan’s heart makes sense (as it was designed to find the Mother Confessor and bring her back to Aydindril in times of trouble) and that her magical connection to its magic split her into the Confessor sworn to serve the Midlands and the woman in love with Richard, a development which is also symbolized in the breaking of the amulet itself, all hangs together very nicely.

But now that the mystery is solved, the question remains: how do they put her back together? She’s completely out of balance when her two halves are divided in this way, but Richard thinks that if Hardass!Kahlan is guided only by reason, then he can try and reach her with reason.

He ends up... not doing this. First of all he points out Zed’s great achievements and tries to connect this to the Code of Aydindril that Kahlan claims she’s attempting to uphold – though as she points out, his past deeds don’t cancel out his attempt to overthrow her.

Richard’s rebuttal is that the Code was laid down by the first Mother Confessor, Magda Searus, who said that justice must be tempered with mercy... but then negates the very point he’s making by revealing that she was the Confessor who decreed that all male Confessor babies be killed at birth because their powers were too dangerous.

Er, isn’t that precisely the point Kahlan is trying to make about Zed? That he’s too dangerous to live?

Whatever, Richard isn’t too great with the cause-and-effect logic, but it gets him to the big reveal he’s been leading up to this whole time: Hardass!Kahlan has no compassion, for all of it is to be found in Emotional!Kahlan, and she is therefore unfit to be the Mother Confessor.

The two Kahlans approach each other while Richard explains what happened with the amulet. Kahlan counters that her love, kindness and compassion is what kept her from her duties in Aydindril, and she’s a better leader, judge and confessor without it all.

Hardass!Kahlan is much better at this reason thing than Richard is, as he tries to argue that leaving Emotional!Kahlan without her power is fundamentally unjust, only for Hardass!Kahlan to flip the dispute around, pointing out that without her power, she and Richard can be together. And of course, Emotional!Kahlan would rather be with Richard than have her power returned to her.

It gets pretty damn weird when she suggests that Richard can have Cara too if he wants; she’s just do anything for the two of them to be together. Again, I say... urgh. Losing her reason doesn’t mean Kahlan should lose her self-respect as well, and all this duality material would have worked fine without bringing a love triangle into it.

Then Hardass!Kahlan throws down an argument that would make all the bad-faith “bringing social politics into this drama to make my opinions feel like they have moral import” fandoms applause wildly when she tells Richard: “I understand that you miss some idealized version of the Kahlan you loved. But you do not have the right to murder two distinct individuals simply to get the one that you want.”

That’s not what’s happening here, and she knows it, but it makes her sound like she’s deeply concerned about matters of consent and free will and thwarted male desires, and that’s all she needs to win this argument. It’s pretty fraught stuff, you guys.

On Hardass!Kahlan’s orders, her soldiers move to arrest Richard. Cara deflects Alferon’s power (glad they remembered she has this ability) while Richard swordfights Fyren and the guards. Emotional!Kahlan is about to help him when she’s grabbed by Hardass!Kahlan who promptly confesses her. Yikes, we’re in real Inception territory now. Also, is this the first time we’ve seen Kahlan confess another woman?

She sends Emotional!Kahlan after Richard, but Cara manages to subdue Hardass!Kahlan with her agiel, forcing a stalemate: Cara knows that getting confessed will kill her, Hardass!Kahlan knows that Richard will never let Cara kill her, and Emotional!Kahlan is frozen due to fear of her mistress’s safety. Richard bluffs and says they don’t necessarily need both Kahlans alive in order to fix her, and Hardass!Kahlan relents – though decides to keep the drama going by claiming she might be pregnant.

Not to be outdone, Emotional!Kahlan declares this too.

It’s all a bit soapy, but I do see the logic behind it: if either of them were pregnant, then what would the reemergence of their bodies to do an unborn child? Would they both die, would she be carrying twins, or would it be a Chimera-like situation where one foetus eats the other one?

Zed is released from prison and – in the episode’s funniest scene – does what can only be called a wizard pregnancy test in which he just sort of hovers his hand above each Kahlan’s uterus. His face is what cracks me up the most:

This nonsense is to be taken extremely seriously.

But neither of them are pregnant, because they’re just fragments of a magical spell gone awry. Not wanting to die, they each play their final card of emotional manipulation to Richard: “[don’t do this] if you still love me,” says one and “if you care about the Midlands” says the other, consistent to the last.

Richard isn’t moved, and Zed casts the spell, restoring the amulet and therefore the two halves of Kahlan at the same time. Alferon is unconfessed, which is rather convenient, but also suggests that Hardass!Kahlan was in fact killed, despite Zed declaring that she never should have existed in the first place.

Furthermore, the restored Kahlan has no memory of what happened to her, also convenient. In her final conversation with Richard, she admits regretting some of that memory loss, and points out that in restoring her two halves, he lost something too. Thankfully, Richard tells her that if he’d known she wasn’t her true, full self, he never would have slept with her; that he’d rather have whole and complete her, than everything else with another woman. He really is the perfect guy, isn’t he.

Kahlan appreciates the chance to set things right: not by staying (because let’s be real, these people probably don’t want her around anymore) but by reinstating the Council and sending for her sister so there’s a Confessor at Aydindril. She’ll always be torn (GET IT?) but can only be in one place at a time – and right now, that’s with Richard.

***

As is often the case in this show, the theme of this episode is whether a person should put their love for another person before the greater good. In this, Kahlan and Richard are largely opposites. Kahlan will always see the bigger picture, while I’ve lost count of the times Richard has detoured from his quest in order to help some one-shot characters – including this one, where he puts the greater-scope quest to find the Stone of Tears on hold to rescue Zed and then Kahlan. Just as Kahlan was thrown out of balance, so too are Richard and Kahlan out of balance when they’re away from each other.

In this case, Richard reminded her that as Mother Confessor, she probably should have returned home to Aydindril at the start of the season, though she believed her duty was to assist him in fight against the Keeper (though I’m sure she was pleased that her personal desires coincided with the greater good in that particular case).

Likewise, Richard here was given the chance to leave his quest and go live a quiet life with Kahlan, but refuses to do so, not just because his sense of duty forbade him from doing so, but because he knew the real Kahlan’s would as well.

These characters are always being asked to do so much, to be everywhere and to solve everything, which is one of the advantages of a long-running serialized story. You simply couldn’t explore this theme in today’s television landscape, with their eight-or-ten-episode seasons (or you could, but it would be largely telling rather than showing all these distractions, side-quests and one-shot guest stars).

Yet back in 2009, we can feel the fatigue and disillusionment our characters are experiencing, because we’re watching it unfold right in front of us. And for now at least, they’ve still got miles to go before they sleep.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Once again, Cara is unable to revive a person by using the Kiss of Life, and you can tell this particular skill-set is getting on the writers’ nerves. It was easy enough to justify the Sister of the Dark and Leo’s deaths (the former cut her own throat and the latter was burnt to a crisp) but Silas is apparently “already cold,” which... come on, we saw him get shot just a few seconds ago. The writers just needed to neatly dispose of him to get on with the story.

I kind of ruined some of the beats of this episode by going through each of Kahlan’s arcs separately – for example, there’s a deliberate contrast in the montage between Richard and Emotional!Kahlan finally consummating their relationship with Hardass!Kahlan calling Fyren into her chambers and calculatedly telling him he has the honour of siring the next Confessor.

One thing I’ve commented on before is that this show does great job with its interior sets. In these days of green-screen, it’s so nice to see actors performing in real locations or on actual sets – even if they are very small and cramped. And yet this show still manages to get across distinctive and cultural details: the beauty and colouring of Aydindril is clearly very different from the rooms of the Palace of the Prophet, or the temple Richard visited in “Fury.” I’ll take low-budget but attractive and real sets over the Volume any day of the week.

Of course, it was a great showcase for Bridget Rega, and it was obvious which of the two Kahlans she was playing at any given point. Even her voice grew softer as Emotional!Kahlan, with more demure body language, especially compared to Hardass!Kahlan who sat in that chair like a boss. Let’s see that screenshot again:

Oh yeah.

We get a little more lore in this episode, learning for the first time that the original Mother Confessor was called Magda Searus, and that it was she who decreed that male Confessor babies should not be allowed to live. Interesting. I wonder if we’ll learn more about her.

A nice touch: at the start of the episode Kahlan mentions visiting the Falls of Aldermont with her sister, subtly reminding us that she has one. As such, it doesn’t come out of the blue when she mentions sending for her in the last scene. But if memory serves, isn’t Dennee raising another woman’s child? What’s going to happen there?

On my rewatch I realized that after Zed appears in Aydindril with Kahlan, he asks her: "how do you feel?" She replies: "All in one piece." Hah.

Altogether, it’s a solid, compelling episode that explores the duality of Kahlan in a tried-and-true fantasy formula, though some of the minor elements were a little disappointing. For instance, we’ve been hearing about Aydindril since the beginning of the show, and this was a very lacklustre way of finally showcasing the place Kahlan calls home. Why is it so special, what is its connection to the Confessors, and what does it really mean to her?

More criminally, this is the episode in which Richard and Kahlan finally get the chance to consummate their love, and it’s marred by a spell. Kahlan wasn’t truly herself and doesn’t even remember it afterwards. That feels deeply unfair, and both this relationship and the visit to Aydindril should have been treated with more weight by the show itself.