The Wheel of Time: Hayley Mills’ Character Is More Important Than You Think

This article contains The Wheel of Time spoilers.

Actress Hayley Mills may have upended her parents’ lives in Disney’s The Parent Trap back in 1961, but her cameo in The Wheel of Time similarly showed how one Aes Sedai appearing in a flashback could influence the course of history for several of the show’s major characters. What at first glance appears to be a Dragon Reborn prophecy of which viewers were already aware becomes, upon closer inspection, a turning point not only for Rand as the subject of the vision, but also for Siuan, Moiraine, and the entire Damodred family.

Mills portrays an Aes Sedai of the Blue Ajah named Gitara Moroso, who was Keeper twenty years ago when Siuan and Moiraine were still among the Accepted in the White Tower. In The Wheel of Time, they are shown as a happy, carefree couple, who are particularly glad to announce the end of the Aiel War to their elder. However, the blind sister is struck by the clairvoyant certainty that the Dragon is being born at that exact moment, a prophecy we saw fulfilled in an action-packed season 1 flashback.

Without a doubt, Gitara’s vision is important in the sense that, without it, the Aes Sedai wouldn’t have found Rand and the others in time to save them from the Dark One’s forces. However, there’s also the overwhelming sense that Siuan and Moiraine would have perhaps formed a joyful life together had the Keeper not put them on the mission to find the Dragon Reborn and guide him. Maybe Siuan wouldn’t even have become the Amyrlin at all!

But more than that, we know that Moiraine hasn’t seen her family in decades, and it seems very possible that her mission to find the Dragon became an all-consuming quest once Gitara set her on her path. Alanna Sedai even tells Lan in an earlier The Wheel of Time episode that Moiraine became much more serious quite suddenly just before she bonded her Warder. Her estrangement from her sister might also spring from Gitara’s sudden vision and subsequent events.

Because Gitara, Moiraine, and Siuan were all in the Blue Ajah, the secret of Rand’s birth on the Dragonmount was likely known only to the three of them, and Gitara did not survive the shock of the history-changing vision. The responsibility placed on the two young Accepted became a crushing weight, far too heavy to sustain a viable romance, and we see the aftermath of that burden in the latest The Wheel of Time, particularly in the final heartbreaking moments.

Siuan clearly thinks that six months should have been enough time to prepare Rand for the coming battle, but Moiraine argues that the Amyrlin has failed to prepare the Aes Sedai to accept and support the Dragon Reborn. Siuan recalls that her predecessors planned to use the Dragon as a weapon that they controlled rather than as a general leading an army of the  Light. Perhaps if Gitara had not set them on their mission, Siuan and Moiraine would have seen eye-to-eye on the issue.

Readers of the Robert Jordan novels are likely aware that Gitara’s influence extends even further, to the point where she creates the circumstances for Rand being born in the first place, but as it stands in Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time, a cameo from a notable classic Disney star had the appropriate amount of impact for a pivotal moment in the lives of the show’s principal characters.