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This story contains spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series, until the very end of A Memory of Light. Please proceed with caution if you haven’t finished the book!

Brandon Sanderson and Harriet McDougal hold copies of A Memory of Light in January 2013. 

It has been ten years since A Memory of Light, the final volume of The Wheel of Time was released. Since then fans have read and reread the books. New fans have found their way to the books, and have finished the series. Most of the mysteries from the series are tied up, but not all of them.

For ten years, author Brandon Sanderson has been holding onto one final secret, which he revealed during a recent interview with Matt Hatch on The Dusty Wheel YouTube channel.  

Brandon talked with Team Jordan, and the plan was to always reveal this final secret after ten years. Matt and Brandon also discussed other secrets that have been haunting fans for the last ten years. They divided the conversation into three parts, the first, are secrets that are perhaps resolved, and have been discussed before. The middle is the big new reveal, and the final section is a Q&A from fans.

There are number of existing fan theories from the end of A Memory of Light that Brandon and Matt covered during their conversation.

• First is “the pipe”. Rand lights a pipe in the Epilogue, and Brandon confirms it is one of the last mysteries of the series. We will forever be able to debate and theorize about it because Robert Jordan left no answers. Brandon believes that Rand was close to the pattern, and therefore able to affect objects In the real world. Harriet believes it’s Jordan’s way of showing us that the 4th age will be as different from the 3rd as the 3rd was from the 2nd. Matt Hatch said his favorite theory is his friend Mary’s - it’s a ter’angreal.
• The next mystery is the identity of Nakomi, the aiel woman who visits first Aviendha and then Rand at the end of the books. Robert Jordan included a woman at the bore after Rand had walked out of Shayol Ghul, but left no details and no one from Team Jordan knew who she was. Brandon added the scene with Aviendha to foreshadow this mystery woman. He said it’s canon that Aviendha is asleep, but the details of Nakomi’s identity is Brandon’s theory more than anything.  All the details about Nakomi are revealed in Origins of the Wheel of Time by Michael Livingston.
• Brandon and Matt also discussed the body swap theory from the end of the books. There was a thread on reddit in 2019 where someone correctly outlined how the body swap worked, with the two men being linked by balefire streams crossing. Brandon confirmed this theory, and confirmed the answer comes from Robert Jordan via Harriet.

  Quote

  The soul that wanted to live found the body that wanted to live, and the soul that wanted to die didn't go to the effort."

  Brandon sees this as a chance for Rand to lay down the weight and go live a life. 

Then we come to the big “final” secret. 

• At the very end of A Memory of Light, the forsaken, Lanfear, is alive. She faked her death!
• Matt and Brandon give some background on this from way back when Matt was a beta reader. Matt found the foreshadowing too obvious in A Memory of Light, but time has proven Brandon correct that sometimes foreshadowing needs to be a little bit more heavy handed - not many people picked up on the subtle game Lanfear played with Perrin during the final book. Brandon frames the thought process this way - Lanfear was in a no-win situation where no solution would work. She needed a credible witness to confirm her death so the good guys wouldn’t come after her, and she needed the good guys to win so the dark one wouldn’t punish her in the end. She helps Perrin and manipulates Perrin into thinking he cannot be affected by compulsion. And in the end, she lives with everyone believing she is dead.
• Brandon confirms that this is canon, Lanfear is alive at the end of a Memory of Light. The discussion of the Lanfear Lives secret begins here: https://youtu.be/nTifdnXH4lg?t=1217

The rest of the interview involve a few other points about the ending of the books, including Egwene’s story line, and who decided her fate (Team Jordan), whether Rand would raise his children (yes!), and that we will see the Bridal Wreath scene (eventually, someday). The final section of the interview are some fun and interesting Q&A from fans. Brandon reveals some fun tidbits: like Harriet wrote most of the chapter titles for Robert Jordan and for Brandon; Brandon would remove some the spanking scenes in hindsight; and he’d have his team help with the timelines now knowing there are three books. Brandon would add more Padan Fain, but keep the ending with Mat. Brandon had many calls from fans for a Narg cameo, but in the end, he didn’t include a talking trolloc.

The release of A Memory of Light was the end of the book series, and yet in the 10 years since then we’ve continued to have some new material, in the companion book, in Origins of the Wheel of Time, and from interviews with Brandon, Harriet and Team Jordan. And now, it seems, we know everything that we ever will know. The rest is speculation and theorizing.

There are no endings to the Wheel of Time, but it was an ending.

When did you read A Memory of Light for the first time? Was it January 2013, or more recently? Let us know in the comments below!

Back in 2012, Jason Denzel, founder of Dragonmount, wrote a letter to Robert Jordan in response to reading A Memory of Light. Read it here.