In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past….
These words open every Wheel of Time novel and illustrate the cyclical nature of the world of Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series. Those who read deeper into the series eventually find out that the title of the series is eponymous; that the Wheel is comprised of seven Ages in total, and that the events of any one Age eventually repeat when the Wheel makes a full revolution. Jordan’s series chronicles the final years of the Third Age of this world, an age that has been defined by a millennias-long struggle against the Dark One, the literal embodiment of evil.
That struggle has come to an end in the recently published final book of the series, A Memory of Light, and we have been left to wonder how our favorite characters will progress into this new Fourth Age. While we’ve had some fun theorizing on possible futures, a larger anthropological question remains: what happens when you take away the antagonist that has motivated mankind for thousands of years?
[Read more. Spoiler ahead for A Memory of Light.]