There’s a Monty Python bit from Holy Grail — and forgive my presumptuousness, but there once was a time where if you were a person familiar with The Wheel of Time, the chances were good that you knew your Monty Python — where a sparkling-clean King Arthur trots past the heavily soiled peasantry.

“Who’s that then?” asks one man.

“I dunno,” responds a collector of dead bodies. “Must be a king.”

“Why?”

“He hasn’t got shit all over him.”

The premiere episode of The Wheel of Time isn’t quite this direct in terms of its visual signifiers. From background extras to leading ladies, everyone gets their hands dirty in this thing. But still, there’s a definite sense that the episode, titled “Leavetaking,” exists primarily to let the main characters know they are, in fact, the main characters. By the end of the hour, written by showrunner Rafe Judkins (who wrote for Agents of SHIELD) and directed by Uta Briesewitz (one of The Wire’s ace cinematographers back in the day), four lowly peasants have been told by a powerful sorceress that one of them is a messianic figure and that they must accompany her on a journey away from home as she tries to figure out which one it is. In essence, the protagonists of the show, adapted from Robert Jordan’s eponymous series of fantasy novels, are also the protagonists of the world it depicts. King Arthur, eat your heart out.

I’ll be covering The Wheel of Time for Vulture, starting with my review of the series premiere.