This article contains spoilers for The Wheel of Time season 3 finale, “He Who Comes with the Dawn.”

From multiple deaths to darkening skies to massive betrayals, The Wheel of Time season 3 finale had us gasping for breath like Nynaeve at the bottom of that sea.

To recap, episode 8 saw Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) and Rand (Josha Stradowski) face the destinies that the Rhuidean showed to them earlier in the season, while Egwene (Madeleine Madden) finally confronted the threat of the Forsaken (and even her not-so-beloved Rand). Speaking of the Forsaken, we got some Forsaken-on-Forsaken violence when Moghedien (Laia Costa) savagely murdered Sammael (Cameron Jack) after he was taken prisoner by Moiraine, thus thwarting her plan to get him to teach Rand.

Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood) fully succumbed to the darkness within by trying to kill Nynaeve (who, in the process of saving herself, finally overcame her block and was able to channel again), and later teamed up with Moghedien in an effort to literally become one of the Forsaken — yikes. Meanwhile, in Tanchico, Nynaeve (Zoë Robins), Elayne (Ceara Coveney), Mat (Dónal Finn) and Min (Kae Alexander) finally faced off with the Black Ajah. And, in Tar Valon, Elaida’s season-long quest to betray Siuan (Sophie Okonedo) came to pass, and she killed her and took over the Amyrlin Seat — throwing the White Tower into a dark new era.

At the end, Egwene seemed frightened by Rand, who darkened the sky across the world as he declared himself the Car’a’carn and the Aiel kneeled around him. Moiraine’s voice told us, “For the land is one with the Dragon Reborn, and he is one with the land. Soul of fire, heart of stone, in pride he conquers, forcing the proud to yield. He calls upon the mountains to kneel and the seas to give way and the very skies to bow, pray that the heart of stone remembers tears, and the soul of fire, love.” Egwene told him to “let go,” and he stared at her ominously as the camera faded to black.

Nukâka Coster-Waldau, Rosamund Pike, Josha Stradowski, and Salome Gunnarsdottir in ‘The Wheel of Time’ season 3. Ilze Kitshoff/Prime

Ahead, Entertainment Weekly caught up with showrunner and series creator Rafe Judkins to dissect the finale’s biggest deaths and moments and what it all could mean for a potential season 4. Plus, where things stand on that front.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We got so much more time with the Forsaken this season, and even some Forsaken killing other Forsaken in the finale. How did you guys determine how much you wanted to show of them and how to expand their stories moving forward?

RAFE JUDKINS: Yeah, I mean that’s a big piece of what we wanted to do with them this season. I love the Forsaken in the books. Their scenes and just the whole idea of them is so exciting and fascinating to me. They’re sort of like the Avengers of bad guys and they each have their own philosophy of the world. They each have their own evil approach to the end game. I wanted to really see that and set the stakes for the audience that the Forsaken are after each other just as much as they’re after our heroes. They talk about it a lot in the books, and we do have a Forsaken killing another Forsaken in the books, and so we wanted to see it on screen so that the audience could really grasp the stakes of when these characters are together, it really feels like they might kill each other at any moment. And so we wanted to actually pull the trigger on that so that as we move forward, we’ve now laid the table for how f—ing amazing Forsaken are and how interesting their story will be moving forward. We have such great stuff with the Forsaken this season, but it really is a table setting for what is to come and how the Forsaken are going to function in the story moving forward.

Something else that the story has been building to, which felt so inevitable to me as an audience member, was Liandrin fully breaking bad and making moves to becoming one of the Forsaken.

It’s interesting because it’s actually not something that was in the books, but we felt like Liandrin’s story just kind of drifted off in the books and we wanted to do something more specific and forward moving with her. In the show, we’ve put a lot of time and energy into that character, and so we want her, if she’s moving forward, to have something strong she’s moving forward with, and if she’s leaving us, that she’s leaving with a bang. And so we felt like seeing this is a great way to also set up the stakes for our current world of do our other villain characters who are not Forsaken, could they eventually become them? There’s a lot more Forsaken in the books than there are in the show, and this is our little nod to book readers that they might be seeing the storylines of some of those people represented by characters that we’ve already invested a lot of our time and emotion in the show.

We have to talk about the other major death, probably the biggest death on the show to date — that of Siuan. What was it like filming her last moments and how does this affect the show going forward?

Yeah, it really was an important story for us to tell because it’s the changing and the upsetting of the world order. There’s hopefully in our audience this kind of feeling, especially through this season, that, “Well, Siuan’s the Amyrlin Seat and what will she decide to do and how does the Tower work?” And this moment that Elaida comes in in the books and turns all of that on its head, suddenly it raises the stakes of the world that things can happen that we hadn’t processed or seen coming. And one of the biggest, most surprising moments in the books is Elaida’s coup.

And so we really wanted to deliver that kind of emotional punch in the show as well, that the Tower now being under the control of someone who’s not friendly to our characters is extremely dangerous. And so Sophie [Okonedo] as well is such an incredible actress and has brought so much to the show that it’s emotional for us to lose her, too. She’s an incredible woman, Siuan, who does things that are sometimes good and sometimes bad, and sometimes for our characters and sometimes against our characters, but you trust in her and believe in her.

And so when she’s taken out from this position as the most powerful person in the world, it leaves us with this vacuum moving into season 4 of who’s going to step in and fill that place. And can anyone, or is our world just in turmoil now?

Ceara Coveney, Madeleine Madden, and Zoë Robins in season 3 of ‘The Wheel of Time’. Julie Vrabelova/Prime

And, to that end, what can you tell me about season 4 and what that would cover?

I can say that we’ve put a lot of pieces in place at the end of season 3 to tell some of the most iconic stories from book six, which is a really important book in the series, and some of the biggest moments from book five as well. So we’re in the area of the books right now that is some of the most exciting. One of the great things about Wheel of Time the book series is that it is sort of a reverse Game of Thrones. It gets better as it goes on. And so that’s what television is always about, is getting better as you go. And I think modern television sort of runs the risk of shows coming in with a big poppy movie-ish idea at the beginning and then petering out a little bit as they go through the seasons. But the great shows of television past really hit their stride in season 3 and 4, and I think that’s what this show in this series has the potential to do and just keep getting better from here. So we’re all very eager to continue this story and finish it.

But no official word yet on a renewal that you can share?

You call Jeff Bezos and then he’ll give you the word. [Laughs.]

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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