No Forsaken in Season 1 ?

[nsmallw]

So excited for season 1 of The Wheel of Time TV Show. I just had a thought this morning that I'm sure many others have had well before my shower epiphany lol.

 

Am I correct in thinking that there aren't any Forsaken in Season 1 ? I havn't seen any actors cast to play Ishamael, Aginor and Bathemel. 

If anyone has any different information on this please let me know and also I wonder how the Forsaken will be intertwined in the show. 

Let me know what you folks think. 

 

Thanks!

[Elder_Haman]

You are correct that there have been no confirmed castings for any of those roles. I don't think that necessarily means that you won't see any Forsaken in Season 1. It certainly could. But there are several other possibilities. Ba'alzamon/Ishy could appear only as a voice and/or CGI apparition in dreams. And it's always possible that an actor was cast, but not identified yet by internet sleuths.

 

IMO, it makes sense to eliminate the Aginor/Balthamel from Season 1 - maybe demoting them into a single Fade or powerful Darkfriend. I would keep the DO as just sort of a concept at this point and just do a lot of creepy visuals for the dreams. (My goal here would be to tie together the development of Ishy's manipulation, the effect of saidin, and LTT's voices so we - as an audience - aren't entirely sure what's happening in Rand's head.)

[mistborn82]

Personally, I think we have seen Forsaken cast because they cast actual good actors, apparently, for the Grinwells. I don't think they needed to cast anyone for essentially a cameo so I think either one or both of them, possibly all three are forsaken, either all along or killed and replaced after Rand and Mat visit.

[king of nowhere]

there is no indication either way.

aginor and baltamel had minor roles, so it is fully possible they did not hire anyone important enough for the part. As for ishi, all bets are open. but if they want him to be the main antagonist, they may want to push back his first appearances. i wouldn't bet either way

[lt;(^-^)gt;]

I really like the idea that they snuck some casting decisions past us with false announcements. If the people cast as the "Grinwell family" are actually Forsaken I'd be a little surprised but it's definitely possible they pulled a fast one on us. If you're right it's a nice catch!

[Whittle]

The Grinwells are Ishy and Lanfear.

[mistborn82]

I'm just going on the fact, like I said, that they cast people for the whole family and from what I gather accomplished actors too. Now they could just be who they appear but why pay actors and not just extras. Also there is that weird Lanfear/Els crossover that never really went anywhere.

[JJLXL]

As others have said, they have either hidden the actors in plain sight(using minor roles), or they are saving them as a surprise.  It would be quite a departure from the books if they didn't include Forsaken in season one.

[johnnysd]

Adinor and Balthamel don't really need to need to be even announced because they are such small parts essentially a portion of an episode. They are not even expensive to have in the show.

 

There is wide conjecture that Ishamael is not in Season 1 because Rafe said there is one major character that everyone has sort of figured out (Elayne) and one that will shock which would be him.

 

Of course there is Steve who is obviously not Steve so he could be a forsaken but I suspect he is Somestha.

 

But there are clearly other castings that have not been announced yet so they may be keeping a lid on the forsaken until it airs. The story doesn't work as well without Forsaken in Season 1 so there should be at least some element of them

[mistborn82]

I thought Steve was a code name for Narg.

[Elder_Haman]

On 8/6/2021 at 2:44 PM, johnnysd said:

Of course there is Steve who is obviously not Steve so he could be a forsaken but I suspect he is Somestha

I’ll bet you a shiny new quarter that Someshta is cut. 

[johnnysd]

On 8/8/2021 at 9:41 AM, Elder_Haman said:

I’ll bet you a shiny new quarter that Someshta is cut. 

 

You are pretty adamant about it. I still don't see them cutting the part of the story that the entire book is named after and the entire reason they use the ways go to Fal Dara etc...

[Beidomon]

You can’t do Season 1 without Baz. At least, you shouldn’t do S1 without Baz. He’ll be there. 

[flinn]

 Rafe Judkins was asked if we would see any forsaken in season 1. His reply was...

 

 

"It depends on how much you know about the Forsaken" (Judkins ended it with a geek emoji)

 

 

I think it will be Ishmael pretending to be the DO. Readers will know it is not the DO, but watchers will not.

[Zyxthior]

I'm hoping with the changes made to the show we don't end up with a "Logain = Ba'alzamon" change from the books...as they're making Logain look a bit more nefarious in the trailer.  (Then again the capture of Logain was 'off screen' in the books).

[Darren T.]

The forsaken are a good portiom of what draws me into the Wheel of Time story.  The fact that the show creators are being so cagey about when or if they will appear is very disconcerting and makes me less likely to want to watch.

[DaddyFinn]

15 minutes ago, Darren T. said:

The forsaken are a good portiom of what draws me into the Wheel of Time story.  The fact that the show creators are being so cagey about when or if they will appear is very disconcerting and makes me less likely to want to watch.

Check the 360 trailer. There's flamy eyes in the saidin background.

[Agitel]

18 minutes ago, Darren T. said:

The forsaken are a good portiom of what draws me into the Wheel of Time story.  The fact that the show creators are being so cagey about when or if they will appear is very disconcerting and makes me less likely to want to watch.

 

This is Season One of a very big show in which two Forsaken show up for two seconds at the end before dying and no previous appearance and one other harassed them under the guise of the Dark One in a very confusing manner for people (assuming you only read EotW). There's plenty of time to bring them in. I do think we'll see Baalzamon. Hidden "behind" the 3D trailer a face with burning eyes makes an appearance.

[Agitel]

2 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Check the 360 trailer. There's flamy eyes in the saidin background.

 

Beaten to it.

[Wassup]

On 9/3/2021 at 9:45 PM, flinn said:

 Rafe Judkins was asked if we would see any forsaken in season 1. His reply was...

 

 

"It depends on how much you know about the Forsaken" (Judkins ended it with a geek emoji)

 

 

I think it will be Ishmael pretending to be the DO. Readers will know it is not the DO, but watchers will not.

This is what I think he meant, too.  I am excited to see how they do the dream sequences.  If it stands up to what they have shown about the rest of it, it should look good.

[Pandemonium]

On 9/3/2021 at 9:10 PM, Zyxthior said:

I'm hoping with the changes made to the show we don't end up with a "Logain = Ba'alzamon" change from the books...as they're making Logain look a bit more nefarious in the trailer.  (Then again the capture of Logain was 'off screen' in the books).

Logan will be a villain role at first.  then he will get gentled and healed with new loyalty towards the aes sedai

[Tim]

In my view, the endings for Ba'athalmal and Aginor in TEOTW were by turns underwhelming and confusing:

 

1. why does Ba'athamal not just balefire Someshta or something? I mean I guess he's just a fairly unimpressive Forsaken in general, but in that case why bother having him?

 

2. it appears that Aginor burns himself out on the saidin contained in the eye, but the books don't really explicate this (and in any event, it's before we have a clear sense of the risks of drawing too much of the OP which really comes through in book 2). All we know is that one minute Aginor is using the eye to restore himself and the next he is on fire. Rand leaves him to burn and is suddenly at Tarwin's Gap where the real contest begins. (Aginor, of course, is perhaps even less impressive than Ba'athamel, genetic skills aside - Dashiva being a case in point).

 

In any event, this leaves a bunch of unanswered questions: was the eye always too much saidin for Aginor to safely draw? Why did he need the eye to restore himself at all? Was the plan to use the eye to blast open the bore, or something else? These don't seem like mysteries that RJ deliberately left dangling so much as matters he felt didn't need to be addressed because, at that stage, we're seeing everything from Rand's uninformed POV.

 

None of this is to say that they definitely should be dispensed with, but if they are kept then the show writers would have needed to make a fair number of changes in order to lend a semblance of narrative coherence to their roles (in particular Aginor's) anyway. 

Edited October 28, 2021 by Tim
fixing a grammatical error

[DojoToad]

8 hours ago, Pandemonium said:

Logan will be a villain role at first.  then he will get gentled and healed with new loyalty towards the aes sedai

Loyalty toward Aes Sedai?  Stockholm syndrome?

[Canukistani]

We are the Forsaken ones!  It was us all along!

i think the fellow surrounded by what looked like flame tipped swords(?) was either Logain or one of the Chosen.
 

Edited October 29, 2021 by Canukistani

[DaddyFinn]

27 minutes ago, Canukistani said:

We are the Forsaken ones!  It was us all along!

i think the fellow surrounded by what looked like flame tipped swords(?) was either Logain or one of the Chosen.
 

It's Logain melting his cage with saidin