(Note: this essay contains spoilers for all three seasons of Amazon Studios’s The Wheel of Time, and some mild spoilers for the book series written by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.)
The woman is too fatigued to move. Far too fatigued. She also has a painful wound in her shoulder, large enough that multiple people urge her to seek medical attention for it. But that’s the secondary problem: The primary problem is that she does not have enough energy to lift her head. Out of spoons, as a popular phrase has it. Which also means that she can’t walk. No wheelchairs or other mobility devices are available, so she is carried by humans, or held by humans on a horse.
Once she does recover, she wants to return to doing things. To her work.
And is immediately told that she’s not needed just now, that she should rest, that—
She can’t. She can’t. Too much to do. She can’t allow something like fatigue to stop her.
She’s Moiraine Damodred, an Aes Sedai of the Blue Ajah, able to wield the One Power—that is, do magic—and a major character in The Wheel of Time series penned by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I was, I thought, more or less familiar with the character, although it had been years since I’d read the books. But it was not until I saw her on Amazon Studios’s The Wheel of Time, portrayed by Rosamund Pike, that I realized what she really was: a character with a major disability—bouts of chronic, brutal fatigue, hitting whenever she overdid things, even slightly.
Which was often.
I’ve never had an easy time finding disability representation in genre television shows—let alone good disability representation. When physically disabled characters do appear, they are often depicted as aliens or monsters. Disabilities get turned into assets—as with blind Geordi La Forge, whose VISOR, meant to replace non-functioning eyes, allows him to accurately read energy signatures and human vital signs without the need for additional equipment, effectively turning his disability into a superpower. If that can’t be done, the disabilities are often cured, either through magic or “science,” after only a few episodes. Think both of John Locke of Lost, able to walk again after crash landing on a strange island in the first episode, or Felicity Smoak of Arrow, whose “permanent spinal injury” is successfully cured with a spinal implant about five episodes later. Or disabilities only appear under certain circumstances, or in specific settings: for instance, the Belters of The Expanse, unable to walk in Earth’s gravity, but able-bodied up in space.
(At least that last one sorta had some realistic science behind it.)
Oh, yes, I can find exceptions here and there—Tyrion Lannister of Game of Thrones, defined by himself and others as a dwarf first, a major player in that game decidedly second; Bran Stark, also of Game of Thrones, called Bran the Broken, instead of Bran the Weird Guy with Lots of Psychic Powers Who Can Probably Find That Lost Dragon So That More of Westeros Can Get Burned Down. Ok, ok, now that I’ve typed that out, I can sorta understand why the show decided to go with “Bran the Broken” instead. But it was still kinda painful to hear—even leaving aside that Bran is yet another character who gains superpowers after becoming disabled—and of course these are psychic powers.
Of course.
(Still kinda cool that the wheelchair user got to win the game of thrones, though, not going to lie.)
And that’s just with the obvious physical disabilities. Aside from the occasional nod to asthma or diabetes here and there, invisible disabilities and chronic illnesses are generally ignored. Mental disabilities are often treated as inherently evil, when not outright mocked. Occasionally—occasionally—a show will acknowledge PTSD and almost—almost—handle it well, but given everything that happens in genre television, PTSD is something that probably should be a lot more prevalent, and yet. It isn’t.
Nor were my memories of The Wheel of Time books all that reassuring. (Yes, I read all fourteen, right through to the end.) Sure, one major character starts suffering from chronic pain and mental illness in book three, and later loses a hand; another major character deals with an addiction and eventually loses an eye; a third gets strange looks after his eyes change color; a fourth gets seasick. A lot. But in exchange, all four of these characters gain superpowers, and find themselves transformed from ordinary farmers and village people into powerful royalty. It turns these disabilities into the prices they pay for the power and happy endings they gain. It doesn’t help that most of these disabilities except for—arguably—the seasickness, never end up being particularly disabling, or causing any hindrances or even minor inconveniencies. It’s a stark contrast to the way so many disabilities function in real life.
Most of the other characters in the books have no physical disabilities at all.
Which is not to say that The Wheel of Time books avoid depicting disability completely—it’s just that the focus is on mental and emotional disabilities, not physical ones—and not necessarily in a good way. Most of the mental illnesses in the books are the result of an evil magical power, or as the books call it, the taint on saidin. That is, the old and not entirely discarded idea that insanity must come from malevolent supernatural forces, an idea that has led to the deaths and imprisonment of countless people. Since in the books this type of insanity inevitably leads to destruction and mass murder, the men—and they are all men—who suffer from this are required to go through a non-consensual procedure that does remove the cause of the mental illness—but leaves the men clinically depressed or even suicidal. Not, I suppose, all that far off from some of the results of lobotomies in real life. And although the requirement for this procedure is eliminated more or less midway through the books, the mistrust and suspicion of these men remain.
A somewhat different mental illness comes from a neutral source—gaining the ability to talk to wolves. When this happens to men—again, these are always men—they have to learn to control this illness on their own, or leave human society to run with the wolves.
All of this does make sense from both an in-universe and out-universe perspective. In-universe, the world of The Wheel of Time is filled with people who have the ability to heal physical injuries and illnesses if they reach their patients in time, so of course few people sport visible physical disabilities, or suffer from post-viral symptoms and complications. And if they do—well, one character, with very good reasons to avoid those healers, does develop a limp after a battle with a monster. The text later directly informs us that he would not have developed that limp had he sought out the magical healing that again, he had very good reasons to avoid, in a delightful example of victim blaming. But it at least explains the comparative lack of crutches and canes.
Out of universe, Robert Jordan, a Vietnam War veteran, was acutely aware of the lingering mental wounds caused by trauma, and equally aware of the reactions of non-veterans to that trauma. The books reflect that awareness. But they also contain a scene where two characters quietly agree that a man suffering from significant mental illness can no longer live among humans. It’s a beautifully written, poignant scene that centers the mentally ill as people who do not function, and cannot belong.
Which is to say, going into the television series, my expectations for even halfway decent disability representation were low indeed. But I had survived the Arrowverse and other, even worse depictions. Also, I already had Amazon Prime and didn’t want to pay for another streaming service just to see if maybe, possibly, one of those shows might possibly maybe maybe not ok, probably not have decent disability representation.
I plunged ahead.
And there, right in the first season, was Moiraine Sedai, a character who is fine one moment, and not fine the next, in a way that directly mirrored my own experiences with various chronic illnesses. Other characters reacted to these collapses, and her explanation of the One Power, with skepticism and incredulity—something else I could easily identify with. And the way that she found it easier to deal with painful—but treatable—shoulder wounds than with the massive fatigue, her frustration with the way her fatigue could only be managed through rest, when she absolutely, positively could not rest because she had a job, and deadlines, and—
Comparing this to real life chronic illnesses might seem like a stretch, but for me, it was all painfully relatable.
Other characters casually mention treatments for common chronic conditions like insomnia and migraines. Healers are shown trying to discover cures for painful, deadly illnesses, and seemed to have some sort of awareness of post-viral conditions. (Ironically enough, those scenes were apparently among the last to be filmed before the COVID-19 lockdowns—but I digress.) A character with an eyepatch shows up in the last couple of episodes and swears a lot. And a subplot original to the show focuses on clinical depression and suicide—without suggesting that either condition was caused by evil supernatural forces.
Almost all of this was faithful to the lore of the books but treated with an understanding and respect original to the show. Plus—although this is a subject for a different essay—the show also featured queer people.
So despite a less than great season finale, I was hooked, and ready to go on.
At the start of season two, the disability metaphors turned sharper and more obvious, after Moiraine, from a combination of Plot Reasons and, as the showrunners revealed much later, COVID-19 Filming Issues, unexpectedly loses her powers. Not only does this fail to completely end those periods of massive fatigue, this loss is, for Moiraine, a major disability, and a loss she mourns. She worries just how much she can or should tell loved ones and family members; she often strikes out at those loved ones and family members, barely taming her own anger. (It does not help that one of these loved ones is also, technically, her boss.) She tries to distract herself—with limited success—with other interests; she tries to use the power from time to time, forgetting she cannot. Many amputees experience something similar. She works to live within her new limitations, while hating those limitations.
Again, relatable, right up until the moment when Moiraine finds out that she hasn’t lost her powers; she simply can’t access them. One magical healing later and Moiraine Sedai was restored—with little time to collapse again before the end of the season.
But that was just one of the many disability plots in season two, which also showcased a number of minor characters suffering from PTSD, kept in a mental institution; major character Mat Cauthon struggling with an ongoing addiction; major character Min Farshaw trying—desperately—to get rid of uncontrollable visions, a condition she finds disabling, and failing to do so; several people running around with arrows sticking out of their bodies, which we’ll get to later, and oh, yes, Nyomi Sedai of the Brown Ajah, a jovial, charming librarian with a fondness for excellent wine, performed by actress Rachel Denning, who has achondroplasia.
The second Nyomi appeared on screen, I braced myself for the inevitable short jokes, or insults, or at least a comment or two about high shelves. Something. Something that would further mark her as different, as other, as a character shaped by her disability and her height.
Never happened.
Indeed, as far as I could tell, this was a part written for an able-bodied actress, performed by a disabled actress.
I was not going to get my hopes up. I was not.
And sure enough, during the opening scenes of season three, friendly, fun Nyomi Sedai, so eager to help the side of the Light, suddenly attacks two of her fellow Aes Sedai, knocking one to the floor and severely injuring the other—incidentally leading to the presence of yet another disabled character on the show, but I digress. Nyomi then steals a number of ter’angreal—that is, various magical objects—and takes off with a group of other evil Aes Sedai, doing some casual killing and destruction along the way.
Ok, so, Disabled Person Turns Out to Be Evil All Along—that is, yet another depressingly common disability trope. And yet. Nyomi is not Evil because she’s disabled; she’s an Evil Person who happens to be disabled, defined far more by her scheming for power, her research skills, her ability to remove memories with or without consent (look, she’s evil), and her willingness to hurt and kill former friends than by any of her physical limitations. It’s a subtle difference—but I think a critical one. No one—no one—mentions her disability, not even the truly creepy, emotional abuser who would seem to be into that sort of thing. Perhaps, I thought, I’d been right: This wasn’t a role written for a disabled person. It was a role getting performed by a disabled person. Something still highly unusual in almost every television show.
And did I mention that she’s a librarian? An evil, murderous, sadistic librarian, sure, but a librarian.
Other characters in season three struggle with severe PTSD (Egwene and others). Some are told that magical cures for their condition did not exist (Mat and others). Major character Rand al’Thor begins to display the first signs of mental illness—that evil supernatural sort I’d mentioned earlier—which in turn leads to multiple characters keeping him under wary, distrustful supervision. If an evil, insanity-causing supernatural force was and is not quite part of my personal experience, that distrust and wariness of the mentally ill? Oh, yes. I knew about that. With her powers restored, Moiraine finds herself struggling with fatigue and something new—a near addiction to the rush she experienced when working with a significant amount of that power. It was not too much of a stretch to relate this to drug addictions. She is not alone; another character develops a rather disturbing addiction to the rush she felt while—well. I said it was disturbing.
That is, a cast filled with disabled characters of one kind or another.
And yet.
I need to pause here to make some pointed comments about those arrows. Questionable enough in the second season, this became close to a running joke in the third season as more and more characters continued to walk, run, fight, and even flirt after getting pierced with multiple arrows. True, I know little—ok, nothing—about arrows or archery, but I still feel that arrows should be, I dunno, at least somewhat immobilizing, not just inconvenient. And one scene of a character almost dying from this right before being—you guessed it—magically cured was just not enough to counter all of the other arrow nonsense. I grant that this is a Hollywood staple, and The Wheel of Time is hardly the worst offender out there, but I also probably shouldn’t be laughing at all of the arrow stuff, and yet there I was, laughing. Can this be slightly handwaved by those magical cures? Sure. But. Magical cures. Grr.
Not that those cures always work.
Which brings us to Aludran, a show-original character.
Aludran is somewhere in his 90s, or perhaps even older. He is confined to a bed, barely able to move; he also appears to be suffering from ongoing, chronic pain. Although he does make the occasional sound here and here, he never says a word.
His mother is the much younger-looking Liandrin Sedai—those who use the One Power age more slowly than those who don’t. She would, it seems, do anything—anything—to keep him alive. This unfortunately includes giving him—with the best of intentions—medications that worsen his pain. (Something again all too familiar to chronically ill patients.) When she realizes what she has done to him, she is devastated. She apologizes, genuinely and profusely, and vows to continue to do everything she can for him.
I forgot to mention that she’s evil.
As is Lanfear, Liandrin’s self-appointed new boss, who efficiently murders Aludran just a few episodes later. Lanfear has a number of reasons for this particular murder. For one, murdering people is kinda her thing. Her body count is, to put it mildly, impressive, if you are impressed by this sort of thing. She also wants to ensure that Liandrin can focus on other things besides taking care of Aludran, stating—with some justification—that this care is holding Liandrin back from her full potential.
And, Lanfear argues, keeping Aludran alive is the wrong choice, the unethical choice, the selfish choice, because a severely disabled life is not a life worth living. And since Liandrin hasn’t had the strength to do the right thing, Lanfear will.
No one, I should note, bothers to ask for Aludran’s opinion here, though he is able to move his head, and presumably could nod or shake his head no.
He never gets that chance.
Liandrin is devastated.
Lanfear’s actress, Natasha O’Keeffe, is so compelling, so charismatic here that she almost—almost—convinced me.
And I use a wheelchair.
I didn’t cry. My house just has a lot of dust.
At least the person making that argument was on Team Evil.
The Wheel of Time could have continued with this occasionally good, occasionally bad, occasionally ambiguous depiction of disabled (and queer!) characters. Alas, just a few weeks after I pitched this essay to Uncanny, Amazon Studios canceled The Wheel of Time.
They did not cite a reason, but fans and critics speculated that the show was simply too expensive, a plausible theory seemingly confirmed when other streaming services refused to pick up the show.
It’s plausible, certainly. I’d even say that it’s likely. But I can’t help wondering if this presentation of complex disabled characters, all with their own agendas and biographies, along with the equally complex queer characters and alternative family structures, helped to doom the show. I hope not.
But I’ll keep wondering.
© 2025 Mari Ness
