Legend of the Seeker: Vengeance

Back to it! I’ll admit I’ve been a little distracted by my Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch over on Tumblr, but I always planned to return to Legend of the Seeker, especially since we’re so close to the finish line.

We open on a monastery situated in the mountains, surrounded by snow and ice. Inside, a dying monk is being comforted by one of his brothers, though he’s afraid he’ll give away this hiding place once he’s face-to-face with Darken Rahl, who is waiting for them all in the underworld.

Sure enough, in the moments after his death he “wakes up” to find himself naked in the weird never-ending orgy that seems to constitute the afterlife, surrounded by green fire and writhing bodies. Darken Rahl appears and reveals this man was the servant of his father, Panis Rahl, who is nowhere among the dead. That means he was somehow revived after his supposed death at his son’s hands – and now he wants to know where he’s been hiding all these years.

Sidenote: this is actually a terrifying depiction of death. I’ve always been of the opinion that oblivion is the most awful thing it could encompass, but lying on your deathbed and knowing that eternal rest will be denied to you is a whole new level of existential horror. Not even death is an escape. That’s an appalling prospect.

We’re left to presume that Darken Rahl successfully extorted the information he needed from the monk, for the next thing we know, he’s appearing to Thaddicus Zorander, offering to tell him the whereabouts of his father’s killer: Panis Rahl.

(Just to untangle this web of intrigue: Thaddicus is Zed’s brother, and their father Caracticus was apparently killed by Panis Rahl, who in his turn was assassinated by his son Darken, but resurrected at some point in order to father Richard and Jennsen before going into hiding. For all these years, he’s evaded the Zorander brothers and their vengeance. Hey, that’s the name of the episode!)

First of all, I’m a little surprised to see Thaddicus again – I’m not sure why, but for some reason I assumed he was a once-per-season guest star. Secondly, I’m glad that he’s highly skeptical about Rahl’s intentions in making this proposition. There’s always an ulterior motive with this guy. He’s even self-aware enough to realize that Rahl has come to him instead of Zed because he’s easier to manipulate. Rahl doesn’t even bother trying to deny this.

Again, the scene cuts out prematurely and leaves us to presume.

We cut to our gang of heroes, who are back to following the compass to the Stone of Tears. What was the point of this thing again? Whatever it was, Cara is voicing the very reasonable concern that even if they lay hands on this artefact, they have no idea what to do with it once it’s in their possession. Zed makes an appeal to “having faith,” which is always pretty weaksauce.

It’s at this moment that Thaddicus appears, and I was about to call foul on how the heck he managed to find them in the middle of the wilderness when he explains he was using one of the magical maps created by snakeoil salesman Sebastian, in whose company Thaddicus was last seen. That’s a solid explanation, so well done show. Of course, how he managed to catch up to them is another question entirely.

The brothers are soon squabbling about whether or not to use Thaddicus’s intel to track down Panis, especially when Thaddicus admits it came from Darken Rahl. He reminds Zed of the oath they took, and that they’re running out of time to avenge their father (though in a show where death casts such a massive shadow over the plot, it seems like a fairly pointless endeavour to go hunting for an old man. Just give it some time, boys, and the situation will take care of itself).

We cut to a flashback of the brothers as young men, and kudos to the casting agent for reusing Gabriel Mann, who played the de-aged Zed way back in “Wizard.” He arrives home to find his brother mourning their father’s death, having witnessed Panis stabbing him while in the guise of Zed himself. (We actually get to see this, a flashback within the flashback). The two of them swear on a dagger that they’ll avenge his death.

Now present-day Zed is faced with that very same dagger and the promise he made upon it. He concedes to go alone to kill Panis Rahl, but Thaddicus insists he’s coming too, to atone for not having taken immediate action when the murder took place. What neither brother is saying, even though it’s hanging pretty heavily in the air, is that the man they’re planning to kill is Richard’s own father.

Naturally they can’t tell him what they’re up to, and so Zed quickly magics himself out of a conversation he doesn’t want to have.

We’re treated to another flashback, and let’s all take a moment to chuckle at the fact that young Panis Rahl looks exactly like a Targaryen, from the white-blonde hair to the red-and-black robes. Truly you could plonk this guy into the current season of House of the Dragon and no one would blink an eye.

We’re in the royal court, with various lords and ladies milling around, and a young Zed surrounded by several attractive women. His lady-killer tendencies have been firmly established in preceding episodes, so this tracks. Panis presents his infant son Darken to those assembled, and asks Zed to be his son’s tutor, just as Caracticus was his.

But what’s this? Zed is enjoying the company of his entourage when everyone in the room, barring Zed himself, suddenly immobilizes. His father appears, and the two argue about some of Zed’s life decisions – namely that he’s chosen to teach Panis the art of magic. Caracticus believes that no man should possess “both earthly and magical powers,” though Zed responds that the magic is already in his bloodline – so he’s teaching him to use it wisely.

But Caracticus seems to have some sort of prescience about what’s going to happen to D’Hara as a result of Panis Rahl’s power – he’s just going to be annoyingly vague about it. He then unfreezes the room, and only stays long enough to warn Panis that he’s onto him before disappearing.

Back in the present, Zed bitterly admits that his father was right about the Rahl dynasty. Through the use of another flashback, he tells Thaddicus that on receiving a letter from his father asking for a reconciliation, Zed was about to return to their home when Panis convinced him into staying with news of “Arianna’s” arrival at the palace. Zed wasn’t present when Panis killed their father because he was bedding a visiting princess.

It's a pretty neat bit of manipulation – Zed’s proclivity for women has been well-seeded, and it would appear Darken Rahl learned from the master when it comes to exploiting the weaknesses of others. In this context, it’s easy to see why Zed wanted to stay at court – he was no doubt getting a daily dose of praise and validation from Panis, not to mention an array of beautiful woman to sleep with. Power is indeed intoxicating.

As the Zorander brothers continue their trek up the mountainside, the rest of the gang chance upon none other than John Rhys Davies, who of course has a guest appearance in a show like this. They find him desperately trying to collect pages that have come loose from the satchel he’s carrying, and while Richard and Kahlan scramble around trying to collect them, Cara nonchalantly grabs them from the air as they fall.

The man introduces himself as Horace Gildermayer, a scholar and antiquarian, who recognizes the Sword of Truth and offers his services to Richard’s quest. According to him, he’s discovered the location of a scroll that will instruct the Seeker on how to use the Stone of Tears to seal the rifts throughout the underworld (ah, so THAT’S what it’s meant to do!) There’s one snag: only he knows the complicated secret code that will open the niche in “the Winding Wall of Valdia” where the information is hidden, and he doesn’t have time to teach it to Richard. Convenient!

Still, there’s a cute moment when he turns to make a portentous comment about what’s at stake... only for a stray page to blow into his face.

Cara, who is on a roll this episode, voices her skepticism about the fact that just as they were questioning how to use the Stone after they acquired it, a man appears out of nowhere with the very solution to their problem. Richard chalks it down to fate, which is very naïve of him, though I suppose (knowing what I do about Horace’s true identity) it seems that he did just come upon the company by happenstance – or rather, the Creator’s will.

It's a relief that Cara is being smart about this though.

Zed and Thaddicus reach the monastery in the mountains and proceed to slaughter the entire company of monks found therein. Um... okay. Why are they under the impression that these men are deserving of such a fate? (Okay, Zed says they’ve “been protecting the evil tyrant all these years” but they can’t really know that for sure, right?)

Ah well, they fight their way into the monastery, where Zed spots a familiar face: we know him as the bald monk from the start of the episode who was comforting his dying brother, but Zed recognizes him as an aged Panis and stabs him accordingly. Victory is short-lived however, as Zed removes the glamour from the dead man’s face to reveal yet another monk, one who was clearly willing to take his master’s place.

It's only a matter of time before Rahl appears to the brothers, and on being questioned as to why he led them on a wild goose chase, comes up with a good excuse: his intel comes from the recently deceased – he can only ever know what they know. The first dead monk to give him the location of the monastery didn’t realize that Panis was about to vacate the premises. But Zed and Thaddicus have just massacred a new batch of informants, and Rahl has already tortured one into revealing Panis’s whereabouts. The logic surrounding the use of magic on this show is always watertight.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Panis Rahl is traveling in the guise of a kindly scholar called Horace Gildermayer, and I give the show kudos for not dragging out this very obvious reveal. Much like Cara, Rahl has stated what any genre-savvy viewer has already discerned, and getting to the point early means that we can enjoy the next scene in its proper context.

That is, Richard and Panis sitting by the fire together, with the latter very carefully putting out feelers to get a sense of the son he’s never met before. And damn, John Rhys Davies is good. It’s fairly generic dialogue he’s been given, but the way in which he says it, the regret that infuses his voice, the pregnant pauses that he takes – this is how you elevate a scene, kids. I like to think Craig Horner was taking notes.  

The next morning, Zed and Thaddicus return to the campsite (for some reason they’re now on horseback – why couldn’t Zed just magically teleport them back the way he teleported them away?) and immediately attack Panis. In a quick scene that’s rife with interesting implications, Richard tells the women to protect “Horace,” and they unquestioningly do as he says – Kahlan disarms Thaddicus, and Cara stands before Horace to deflect Zed’s magic.

Zed identifies him as Panis Rahl, and he admits the truth of this, saying that he’s been honest about everything except his name. He’s spent the last twenty-five years in a monastery, studying and atoning for his sins, and legitimately wants to help his second son find the scroll to save the world.

So it’s Meet Daddy time for Richard, but he barely has time to process this information before Panis comes out with a new revelation. He has a secret that he’s kept from Zed for all these years: that while Darken Rahl was still an infant, he was stricken with a strange malady. The midwife identified it as a magical curse, and so Panis went in the guise of Zed to confront Caracticus, who he deemed responsible.

Caracticus told him that he acted because he was approached by powerful witch called Shota who prophesied that Darken Rahl would grow up to be a brutal tyrant.

Whew, let’s unpack that a little. First of all, SHOTA is behind all this? I guess I’m not surprised, but wow. She has a lot to answer for, even if she was acting in good faith. But second of all, what made Caracticus believe her so thoroughly that he was willing to assassinate an infant on her word that he’d grow up to be a monster?

And thirdly, we’re once again grappling with the moral conundrum of whether it’s acceptable to pre-emptively kill someone before they commit heinous crimes; the old “would you kill Hitler as a baby?” question. I’ve discussed it at length before, since this show in particular is a fan of the trope, but ultimately it’s a moot argument. Because in the real world, no one can ever know for certain how a person is going to pan out. It can only ever be a hypothetical thought exercise.

Yet within the context of the show, we’re apparently meant to believe that Caracticus was right to order a hit on an infant because a witch told him to. It harkens back to the episode in which the Confessors attempted to kill Kahlan’s nephew because he was a boy (and therefore a dangerous threat), a development we never really get a definite answer on.

When Caracticus tries to convince who he thinks is Zed to sneak back into the palace and assassinate Rahl Junior, Panis snaps and promptly stabs him to death. Back in the present day, Panis sadly admits that Caracticus was correct – he should have killed his son (yikes) and that he attempted to atone for his negligence by having another one in order to defeat him. Poor Jennsen doesn’t get a mention.

As proof of his claims, he tells Zed that in all those years he never once made an attempt on his life – because he loved him.

I mean... it’s hard to know what to do with all this, but I suppose I can understand why Darken Rahl wants to kill his dad. So much in fact, that he approaches a posse of Sisters of the Dark and gives them instructions to intercept Richard’s gang as they retrieve the scroll from the Winding Wall of Valdia. They’re ordered to steal the scroll and keep it safe – and if an aged scholar happens to be travelling with the Seeker, he’s to be killed.  

We get a very nice visual on this “winding wall” and the retrieval of the scroll from its magical hiding place proves to be a very simple affair. Panis hands it to his son with reverence, and offers the brothers his life. Thaddicus doesn’t waste time raising his dagger, but Zed stops him from the killing blow, stating: “if either of us had listened to father, none of this evil would have come to pass.”

Yes, if only they had killed that baby when they had the chance!

Thaddicus relents, but any further reconciliation is cut short at the sound of howling and screaming. Everyone looks around bewildered – and this is really quite funny – to see the Sisters of the Dark hurtling up over a nearby rise to attack them. Er, ladies? If you want to take advantage of the element of surprise, you shouldn’t start the war cries when you’re still fifty feet away. Just a tip.

What does this remind me of?

Oh yeah.

The fight commences. I’ve never been much good at describing fights, so all you need to know is that Kahlan and Cara save each other’s lives at various points (and in slow motion, no less) while one of the Sisters manages to run off with the scroll, and Panis is mortally wounded while taking the bullet (or dacre) for Zed.

Panis voices his regrets and bids farewell to Richard and Zed while his papers fall about him like snow. That’s actually a really lovely touch, not only a callback to when we first saw him, but I also suspect an attempt to channel the Snow Means Death trope. His last words are: “it is time for me to be with my other son.” Once dead, his body transforms back into the bald monk we saw at the start of the episode, and its with this visage that he “wakes” in the underworld, where – sure enough – Darken Rahl is waiting for him.

This reunion ends on an ambiguous note, with Panis bracing himself for pain and torture, only for Rahl to embrace him and offer his father forgiveness.

If they were both still alive, this would be the moment when Rahl stabs him in the back, but... well, they’re both dead. So I’m not entirely sure what to make of this scene, especially since I know for a fact that Panis doesn’t reappear in any of the remaining episodes. So... are father and son just gonna hang out in the orgy together? Is Rahl just messing with his dad? Is Panis scheduled for some light torture after all?

I guess I can appreciate the uneasiness and ambiguity that permeates this scene, but I’m curious to know whether this was really it for Panis Rahl, or whether the writers had plans for him in the hypothetical season three.  

And now, the wrap-up. Thaddius exits stage-right, with no hard feelings. Richard is ready to go after the scroll. And Zed has one more confession to make: that on learning Panis Rahl could not conceive a child with his wife, he used his magic to help him father the heir that turned out to be Darken Rahl. He’s responsible for all the grief and misery that accompanied his existence.

This show is going a little too Star Wars for me, what with absolutely everything and everyone being tightly connected (Rahl and Richard are half-brothers, Zed is the latter’s grandfather, Shota told his dad the prophecy that kick-started this whole mess, and now it’s revealed Zed is the one that made Rahl’s existence possible in the first place...)

It also reminds me a little of how Nimueh made Prince Arthur’s birth possible with her magic over on Merlin... and just like that show never really delved into that reveal, here Richard shrugs off the new insight into his life with a “hey, we all make mistakes!” comment. Whelp, I guess that’s their cue to just press on, and never mention any of this again.

Miscellaneous Observations:

One glaring omission (as in, OUTRAGEOUS omission) in all of this is the fact that at no point Zed brings up what Panis did to his daughter Tarralyn. I mean, come on – Panis didn’t choose Zed’s daughter to be the mother of his second son by accident, and yet Zed didn’t have a THING to say about her being raped-by-deception by his former friend. I guess raped daughters aren’t as important as dead fathers.

In fact, in a show that’s usually pretty on the ball when it comes to consent issues and the importance of its female characters, there was a staggering dearth of wives and mothers present here. Who was Darken Rahl’s mother? Who was Tarralyn’s mother/Richard’s grandmother? Heck, who was Zed and Thaddicus’s mother? We never met Richard’s foster-mother either. In an episode so interested in procreation, why was no time given to the women who were doing all the procreating?

And nobody ever mentions Jennsen either.

On a similar note, I’m still bewildered as to how the metaphysical rules of life and death work in this world. Does everyone end up in the fiery-green orgy after they die? Or are certain souls summoned there by Darken Rahl so he can extract information from them? Because death is so cheap in Legend of the Seeker, and yet still so existentially horrifying that it's rather mind-boggling. Good people end up in what looks like hell, denied even the promise of restful oblivion, and absolutely nothing is explained regarding how this whole system works. Is this a new development after the rifts opened? Can the Creator not intervene somehow? If everyone is going to end up in this hellscape after they die, why bother trying to save the world from the rifts? So many questions!

Perhaps all of these queries are explored (or at least given better context) in the books, but I have no interest whatsoever in reading them. Doorstopper fantasies are not for me, and I hear there’s something about an evil chicken that I know I won’t be able to take seriously.

While travelling with his brother, Zed remarks that Richard will be “well protected” by Kahlan and Cara. Okay, it’s small compensation, but I do like that he has absolute faith in these women to do such a thing.

It’s rather grimly amusing that for the second time in a row, Richard meets one of his biological parents and loses them in the very same episode.

Did they really have to go with the name Panis? It is so very, very close to penis. You’re all thinking it. I also couldn’t help but think of Caracticus Potts from Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang every time they said that name.

In any case, the showrunners must have high-fived themselves when they booked John Rhys Davies, as he brought so much gravitas to such a small (and rather dodgy) role. Plus, he’s right at home in this type of genre fare, having appeared – before and after Legend of the Seeker – in Robin of Sherwood, Indiana Jones, The Chronicles of Shannara, and of course, The Lord of the Rings.

And as mentioned, I was chuffed to see Gabriel Mann reappear as the young Zed. Casting continuity: it’s a precious gift.

Loved this shot of the women, watchfully standing by as Zed and Richard have their conversation:

I feel this episode also gave more insight into the Zorander brothers and their fraught relationship with each other: Thaddicus doesn’t have any magic, and you can tell this has made him somewhat resentful of his powerful older brother, who is out there making history and establishing dynasties – and who also took after their father in terms of their magical gifts. It’s easy to see why he’d feel so insignificant among so many movers and shakers.

As for Zed, the show has done a pretty good job of demonstrating how easily Zed is swayed by the promise of beautiful women and exercising power to shape the course of history, and yet even amidst the arrogance of his youth and the thrill of his ambition, you can tell he’s also moved by genuine altruism.

It’s clear that after Panis was rejected by Caracticus, he moved onto his son in order to learn magic, and Zed makes his motivations clear in his desire to school him: there’s an enjoyment of power and influence there, but also a desire to make things better for a country that’s apparently heading towards war. Parents always want us to pull back, to be more cautious. Youthful idealism always wants to change things for the better, but often ends up making everything worse.

For that reason, the moral of this episode is a little dodgy. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but that always seems to be the moral of stories that have the wielding of power as a major theme. According to Caracticus (and the general wisdom of the ages) it’s more important to curb power than to channel it, and if you have to kill a baby to ensure that, then so be it!

Zed’s notion of allying himself with House Rahl in order to stabilize the realm and protect its people is regarded as a naïve pipedream. But is power always corruptible? Is that an incontrovertible fact of life? Is it truly not possible to use power responsibly instead of always having to keep it in check? Apparently so, which is a rather sad conclusion for the episode to draw.

But then I suppose, if everyone acted in everyone else’s best interests, there would be no story.

It’s still a rather simplistic argument to make, so I was relieved that the whole thing ends on a more intriguing conceptual wrinkle. As Zed looks back on his father’s lessons and all the decisions he’s made across his lifetime, he tells Richard: “The first lesson my father ever taught me was that a Wizard commits his greatest crime not when he attempts to do the work of the Keeper. The greatest sin of all, is when a Wizard attempts to do the work of the Creator.”

This is the lead-in to the flashback in which we see Zed use a spell to magically make Panis fertile – the decision that brought forth Darken Rahl into the world and all the misery that he sowed... but also Richard, who is working diligently to set things right. It’s a final note of ambiguity: that evil can come from good and good from evil, wrapped up in the mythological framework of the Keeper and the Creator, that gives us food for thought.