The Wheel of Time: Who is Padan Fain The Enemy Of The First Season? Character Explained!

We are only one episode of The Wheel of Time away from meeting the enemy of the first season. The protagonists have traveled to the Eye of the World to face the Dark One, or one of the eight Forsaken that we saw in a detail of Episode 5, but it is not about any of them but of Padan Fain, the mysterious peddler from Dos Ríos who has made different cameos at all key moments of the season.

Who is Padan Fain The Enemy Of The First Season?

We met him in the first episode in the town of Campo de Emond and when Mat told him “You’re a bastard” neither he nor the audience imagined how right he could be. The character disappeared, presumably killed in the attack by the Trollocs and other Shadowpawn, but we found him again keeping an eye on Mat and Rand in Tar Valon. He was also seen again very briefly within the Shortcuts, which we know is how the Trollocs got to Two Rivers without being seen, and it seems that he has survived Machin Shin without problems because he has reappeared in Fal Dara. With her golden eyes, Perrinhe is the only one who thinks he saw it there (or rather smelled it), but Nynaeve assures him that it is impossible: Padan Fain should have been killed by the Trollocs. Or not?

Two Rivers, Tar Valon, the Shortcuts and Fal Dara. Padan Fain has been in all the key moments of the series without the presence of Trollocs, the Machin Shin or the Aes Sedai game of thrones having caused him any problem. Wherever there are difficulties, he appears. Who really is Padan Fain?

Played by Johann Myers and with a grim look and a sharp chin, we know that Padan Fain is a street vendor from Dos Ríos, an expert in the region and the main source of information for its inhabitants with the rest of the world. From the beginning he is closely linked to Mat Cauthon, whom he considers his “best and poorest client”. He has a somewhat murky morals and a terrible influence on Mat, or he would not have accepted the bracelet that he stole from Danya as payment for some lanterns for his sisters. He even pressures you to drop it off at a ridiculous price. But if Fain were not more than that, he would not have survived so many dangers and he would not have followed the protagonists around half the world.

The story of Padan Fain in The Wheel of Time is quite complex, so the series will have to present considerable differences from the books. He is a sinister friend who served as an informer to the Shadow of what was happening in Dos Ríos, but whom the persecution of the protagonists leads him to become something different. When the Dark One began to search for the Dragon Reborn in Two Rivers, Fain was taken to Shayol Ghul (the particular Dark Tower of the saga, focus of the Dark One’s power and deep within the Wound). There he was tortured and perverted, his judgment being upset and implanted with the obsession to track down and kill the new Dragon regardless of the price.

However, Fain was transformed into a different being from the rest of the Dark One’s servants when his pursuit led him to Shadar Logoth, the cursed city, from which Mat took the ruby-hilt dagger. There he met an evil spirit, faced with both light and shadow, named Mordeth and – somehow – the souls of both merged into a different being, more evil and powerful than the sum of the two or even that a Renegade. Tainted by two different kinds of evil, Fain continued his pursuit to Fal Dara, which is where we meet.

Since in the series Mordeth has not appeared in Shadar Logoth it is possible that the germ of the character changes remarkably, but there Moiraine told the protagonists the past of the cursed city which gives the necessary context to understand the transformation of Fain. We will most likely leave doubts in the last episode of the series, where according to the novels Fain could be captured by the soldiers of Fal Dará and interrogated by Egwene. Then we will discover how Fain is the dark glue of all the events of this first season.

It was he who secretly guided the Trollocs to Dos Ríos, producing the massacre that begins this story; It could be he who is the mystery man from Liandrin who is influencing the intrigues of Tar Valon; and it was he who has been following his heels in the Shortcuts and in Fal Dara. And the obsessive hunt for Fain has only just begun.

In addition to the implanted desire to hunt down and destroy Rand al’Thor once his secret is known, in the Wheel of Time books Fain and Mat become obsessed with each other through their bond with Shadar Logoth when Fain steals the prized dagger and becomes becomes a being feared by the Myddraals themselves. From then on he calls himself Ordeith, “wormwood” in the Old Tongue for the “poisonous tongue” of the one who will be the advisor of ambitious princes (another reference to The Lord of the Rings, no doubt). Padan Fain Ordeith will even infiltrate the Children of Light to destroy all that Mat, Rand, Perrin, Egwene, and Nynaeve love.