The Wheel of Time season 3 just boldly flipped the script with its depiction of female power

As the most powerful Aes Sedai in the world gather, Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood) is questioned by Siuan about being Black Ajah. She quickly stops denying it and orders her sisters to join her, leading to about half of the Aes Sedai in attendance revealing that they too are Darkfriends and turning on Siuan.

What ensues is one of the most bloody, brutal, and violent battles we've seen to date in The Wheel of Time - as showrunner Rafe Judkins put it, "a bunch of women in their 40s and 50s shredding each other".

First of all, it's rare, even in today's TV and film landscape, to see an on-screen battle scene purely involving women, especially in the sci-fi and fantasy genre.

From TV and film franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek to Lord of the Rings and The Avengers, sure, women may well form an important part of a battle sequence but they rarely don't involve men at all.

In recent years, Avengers: Endgame was applauded for its "girl power" moment involving the female Avengers uniting to fight Thanos together - but that was only after the men had their moment. The Wheel of Time season 3's opening sequence is a far cry from that, and it's refreshing to see.

In fact, the show goes one step further with a scene that shows the male warders literally locked outside, powerless to do anything other than pound on the door asking to be let in, which is perhaps the clearest and most explicit depiction so far of how The Wheel of Time subverts gender power dynamics.

The sequence also isn't a gimmick, or a pandering way to show female power - it completely makes sense within the story, with the Aes Sedai, by nature of the tale, being the most powerful people in that world.

It services the story immensely, quickly throwing us into the story of season 3 and telling us a lot about the characters we've been reacquainted with - for instance, seeing Siuan, the Amyrlin Seat, in a vulnerable position when she learns just how many of her sisters are actually Black Ajah, to seeing Nynaeve (Zoe Robins) struggling to channel, to that telling look Liandrin gives Siuan before she and her sisters flee the White Tower.

Showrunner Judkins recently articulated this, telling RadioTimes.com: "One of the things I love most about the show is we have so many different female characters in power that we get to show a huge breadth of how these different women approach the power that they have.

"I think it's one of the best things about our world, is the pressure of being what it is to be a woman in power is not present on our show, because almost all of the people in power are women, and so we get to see actually, much more clearly, who they are as a character, in the way that they exert their power in our world."

The battle sequence also subverts various different tropes. Of course, the Aes Sedai are, at their core, witches - but with this scene, the show rejects the trope of the sexy or seductive witch, going all guns blazing into the grotesque, the gory, and the violent.

One of the Aes Sedai has a particularly gruesome and unfortunate demise as she's sliced in half in the midst of the battle. Another has her head repeatedly smashed in as the camera stays steadfastly trained on her.

Liandrin certainly doesn't get away scot-free, as Siuan forces her to choke on and throw up her blood, and she exits the White Tower with a Joker-style smear of blood across her mouth.

It's weirdly refreshing to see The Wheel of Time embrace such a brutal show of violence for the Aes Sedai and glorious to see them all able to unleash the full extent of their powers in the very place where they were trained.

With this bold, subversive and memorable opening sequence, The Wheel of Time season 3 has kicked off in impressive style. Here's hoping it's a sign of things to come.

The Wheel of Time season 3 will begin on 13th March on Prime Video.

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