Wheel of Time’s Seanchan are the big bads for a big good reason

polygon.com:

After making several memorable appearances in The Wheel of Time season 2’s first four installments, the Prime Video series’ Seanchan invaders finally take center stage in episode 5, “Damane.” They make the most of it, too, showing off everything from their culture and politics to their fashion over the course of the episode’s hour run time. What’s more, “Damane” also hammers home what Wheel of Time’s second season has already made abundantly clear: The Seanchan are a major threat, and one whose motivations hit closer to home than your standard fantasy army with world conquest in its sights.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for The Wheel of Time season 2, episode 5.]

Of course, the Seanchan do want to conquer the world, and — based on the raspy proclamations of Daniel Francis’ High Lord Turak — they don’t care who knows it. So it would be easy to write them off as one more made-up military power bent on global domination. And to an extent that’s true, as producer Holger Reibiger acknowledged during Polygon’s recent Wheel of Time set visit. Reibiger describes the Seanchan as “evil” and “a new darkness,” which positions them as broadly in the same camp as the merciless minions of Mordor in another Amazon Studios production, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

However, that’s not the full story, and why the Seanchan have decided the Wheel of Time universe would be better off with them in charge is where things get more interesting — not to mention scarier. The Seanchan aren’t trying to run the show simply because they want to, but because they believe they have to. As dialogue in “Damane” hints at, just like in author Robert Jordan’s original Wheel of Timenovels, these folks grew up being told it was their