Will we see the GREEN MAN?

[templar7]

Suddenly Balthamel jerked in the Green Man's grasp. The Forsaken's hands tried to push him away instead of clutching him. One gloved hand flung wide ... and a tiny creeper burst through the black leather. A fungus, such as rings trees in the deep shadows of the forest, ringed his arm, sprang from nowhere to full-grown, swelling to cover the length of it. Balthamel thrashed, and a shoot of stinkweed ripped open his carapace, lichens dug in their roots and split tiny cracks across the leather of his face, nettles broke the eyes of his mask, deathshead mushrooms tore open the mouth. The Green Man threw the Forsaken down. Balthamel twisted and jerked as all the things that grew in the dark places, all the things with spores, all the things that loved the dank, swelled and grew, tore cloth and leather and flesh — Was it flesh, seen in that brief moment of verdant rage? — to tattered shreds and covered him until only a mound remained, indistinguishable from many in the shaded depths of the green forest, and the mound moved no more than they.

 

I really hope we get to see this!

[Elder_Haman]

It is a great scene. No doubt. 

But Someshta requires so much exposition just to set up and his scene(s) will be really expensive. And then he's just .... gone. And we never see him or any of his kin again in the series. 

 

I just can't see them thinking the payoff is worth the investment in this case.

[thehumantrashcan]

48 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

It is a great scene. No doubt. 

But Someshta requires so much exposition just to set up and his scene(s) will be really expensive. And then he's just .... gone. And we never see him or any of his kin again in the series. 

 

I just can't see them thinking the payoff is worth the investment in this case.

You may be right.  I have accepted that this may be the case but hope to be pleasantly surprised.  I find myself say the same thing about a lot of things.

[DojoToad]

I too think it will be a Tom Bombadil moment.  Would like to see it, but am fine without it.

[lt;(^-^)gt;]

It stands out as a thing that could be cut without impacting the larger narrative or the main character arcs. Looking at it from that perspective, I'm sure the writers had to think about cutting the Green Man.

 

My gut instinct (so take that for what it's worth, which is basically nothing lol) tells me that the sequence of events at the Eye will be altered significantly. There was a question posed to Rafe Judkins if there will be Forsaken in Season 1. He said it depends how much you know about the Forsaken, which heavily implies that Balthamel and Aginor will not show up at the Eye (unless the Eye is moved to Season 2).

[Agitel]

I have to wonder if the EotW will.be present at all. I know that's heresy, but Jordan never really explains its implications in any way, a first time reader might come away thinking it's just a macguffin.

 

Then again, they could offer more exposition in the show than they did in the books.

Spoiler

It being a place of pure saidin specifically to train and prepare the Dragon Reborn so he doesn't go mad. The fact that it was lost hurting the Light's chance of having a sane DR make it to the LB (and part of the DO's plot to turn the Dragon). The fact that it is possible to purify saidin, even in a finite supply sense.

 

Edit: Hmmm... When Rand made saidin pure he had to put the taint somewhere. Where did the Aes Sedai who made the Eye put the taint they filtered it off? Did that expand/create the beginning of the Blight? Sorry, random speculation there.

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by Agitel

[Zyxthior]

I could see them cutting out the Green Man and the Eye of the World completely....I mean other than the Eye itself being a finale to the first book....it just doesn't play a part in the rest of the novels (yes, it's a 'trigger' for a particular individual) but that, after Book 1, it plays no role in the story (same this with the Green Man).  We've not casting news for the Green Man or the 3 forsaken....and we have to be realistic and not expect this show to run for 14 seasons (if it makes it, I'd expect 8 seasons) so there's going to be a lot of condensing of material...  The seen with the Waygate doesn't even appear to have Loial in it...he's been cast...but perhaps that will be reduced role too (if you're not going to have the Green Man, then why bring Loial along...his interactions with the GM was a highlight of the end of Book 1 for me...)

[Elgee]

I would love to see the Green Man, but yes I would quite understand it if that whole arc was cut or significantly changed. Many of the things in particularly the first book and also a bit in the 2nd were, I think, written before Jordan had really settled into his story. Some things don't really "jell" with how things work later on in the series.

[TheTuna450]

I kinda think he gets cut, because introducing this random magical race which never shows up again will confuse the heck outta more casual show-only viewers. I don't think he really adds anything to the TV show, & can thus safely be cut.

[Elder_Haman]

I'm very interested on how they handle the events that happen at the Eye. Strictly speaking, I think the only thing that happens there that is absolutely essential to the plot of the story is finding the Horn and the Dragon Banner.

 

Where it comes to Rand, the critical thing that happens at the Eye is that he is able to channel Power that is free from the taint. It's that experience (IMO) that gives him the ability to conceptualize the Cleansing.

 

And while Tarwin's Gap is not essential to the story at all, Rafe has said it's one of his favorite parts of the books and strongly hinted that it's part of the show.

 

I would not be at all surprised if they move the finding of the Horn/Banner to the beginning of S2. And since untainted saidin doesn't have to come in the form of a strange teleporting pool, I wouldn't be surprised if Tarwin's Gap remains in the show.

 

So here's a working theory... after reuniting post Shadar Logoth, our heroes travel the Ways to Fal Dara where we find the Borderlanders reacting to reports of huge numbers of Trollocs gathering on the other side of the Gap. 

 

It's the worst thing they've seen in generations and people are worried, especially with news that the Dragon (Logain) was captured and gentled. How are the forces of the Light to prevail?

 

Meanwhile, Rand meets Min (we know she's likely to be introduced in Fal Dara) and she has a vision of him with *McGuffin that takes the place of the Eye* floating over his head? What is it? She doesn't know. (But in reality it's a sacred Borderlander McGuffin that's been held for the Last Battle.)

 

There's a hunt for the McGuffin and at the same time a sneak attack on Fal Dara itself. The Trollocs have the upper hand until Rand discovers the McGuffin and then goes ham on everyone - including the Trollocs at the Gap. Fain! (we'd almost forgotten him) turns up on the battlefield and is captured, setting up S2 which can begin with them contriving a reason to journey into the Blight where they find the Horn/Banner.

[thehumantrashcan]

@Elder_HamanNot bad, I like it.  That could work and would help save on budget for all the CGI that would be required for the GM and the blight.

 

@AgitelLove that speculation, never thought of that before.

 

@ZyxthiorI think one of the riders at the Waygate is Loial.  There is a rider that is clearly larger than all the others waiting at the gate, however, there is also a large gap between this larger rider and what appears to be Egwene and we know it's pretty easy to remove someone from a trailer like Mavel has done multiple times.

[JakobPassionate]

I agree that it would make sense to remove the GM from the TV show. And even that there may be good reasons to do it (less confusing to the casual TV viewer). Anyway, it could be used as a basis for some background knowledge drop about the age of legends. Moiraine could explain about the green man and how these creatures were used in the Age of Legends (along other knowledge). The GM would also serve as a nod to all the nerdy readers (we get "something special that only we truly understand"). I guess a relatively short sequence with the GM wouldn't be that expensive CGI wise?

 

A side note on the Forsaken: I think we'll see some hint of the Forsaken in S1. Maybe it won't be clear to the viewer that a certain figure is a Forsaken (maybe the nerd readers will figure out that it is a Forsaken). Before Sean Connery died, a had a fantasy about him being cast as Aginor or Belthamel: a very brief appearance (not required for the next - hopefully many - seasons). I think he would have liked playing the villain to the chok of the audience. Wow, that could've been a major scoop. Unfortunately, not going to happen, I guess.

 

Last thing about the Forsaken in S1: in the trailer, we see a pair of black boots. Immediately after, we see Moiraine removing a hood. So we're inclined to think the boots belong to her. Everytime I watch the boots, something in me says: those boots belong to Ishamael (likely just a wild theory, but there it is) :-)

[DojoToad]

Sean Connery being dead would have been a problem.  His having quit acting many years ago would have kept him out of WoT regardless...

[Guest redgiant]

4 hours ago, JakobPassionate said:

Last thing about the Forsaken in S1: in the trailer, we see a pair of black boots. Immediately after, we see Moiraine removing a hood. So we're inclined to think the boots belong to her. Everytime I watch the boots, something in me says: those boots belong to Ishamael (likely just a wild theory, but there it is) ?

 

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

 

There you go. I hope.

[Guest redgiant]

On 9/8/2021 at 12:29 PM, TheTuna450 said:

I kinda think he gets cut, because introducing this random magical race which never shows up again will confuse the heck outta more casual show-only viewers. I don't think he really adds anything to the TV show, & can thus safely be cut.

 

Um, one of Jordan's strengths is tying all sorts of seemingly innocuous plot points and people/places/things together later ... often MUCH later like across books.

 

Rhuidean...forward and back...AoL...the sequence showing a young Someshta, the banner, the horn, alluding to the remaining younger less tainted male channelers going off to do something (create the untainted pool of Saidin).

 

So now, is all of that reference trashed? God I get mad just thinking about the snowball effect on some of the coolest harkings in the story when things are needlessly omitted or changed like the GM sequence. Because later things will likewise have to be dropped or made utterly moot since their back references are no longer in the story. WoT is full of cases such as this. This is precisely why I loved the books so much, all the webs of relationships not readily apparent until later or you put the pieces together.

 

Btw, what was the budget of this show again? I am tired of hearing about "too expensive" with the money this show has to spend.

 

The way this is going, they'll just have Wile E. Coyote step out of the closet with a sign printed with the name of Asmodean's killer. Why make us poor put-upon audience of 2-year olds have to think, right?

Edited September 10, 2021 by redgiant

[Elder_Haman]

8 minutes ago, redgiant said:

Um, one of Jordan's strengths is tying all sorts of seemingly innocuous plot points and people/places/things together later ... often MUCH later like across books.

Indeed, that was one of Jordan's strengths. And it is something that works amazingly well on paper, but is much harder to pull off on screen.

 

9 minutes ago, redgiant said:

the sequence showing a young Someshta, the banner, the horn, alluding to the remaining younger less tainted male channelers going off to do something (create the untainted pool of Saidin).

Yes, this probably gets cut from the show because there's nothing to tie it back to. But so what? What does that do to the plot? How does it detract from the characters or meaningfully alter their arc?

 

11 minutes ago, redgiant said:

This is precisely why I loved the books so much, all the webs of relationships not readily apparent until later or you put the pieces together.

And you'll still have the books. And people who get invested in the show can pick up the books and read them and realize that what is depicted on screen is only a drop in the bucket compared to what Jordan wrote.

 

12 minutes ago, redgiant said:

The way this is going, they'll just have Wile E. Coyote step out of the closet with a sign printed with the name of Asmodean's killer. Why make us poor put-upon audience of 2-year olds have to think, right?

I don't see how this follows from the rest. Why does removing the Green Man suddenly make us an "audience of 2-year olds"? 

 

The show is not the books. The books are not the show. They tell the same story in different ways. And people can find things they like and dislike in both media.

[Guest redgiant]

17 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Indeed, that was one of Jordan's strengths. And it is something that works amazingly well on paper, but is much harder to pull off on screen.

 

I don't see that. The same mental gymnastics and cognition when reading and associating these disparate scenes and tying them together, is the same thing you do when seeing them visually and associating them. In both cases it is just your mind cross-referencing and discerning relationships. Which makes the whole story richer and more of a web then a simple linear tale.

 

17 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Yes, this probably gets cut from the show because there's nothing to tie it back to. But so what? What does that do to the plot? How does it detract from the characters or meaningfully alter their arc?

 

Well, okay sure. You can say that about almost anything though.

 

I'll use an analogy from the LOTR movies since I love it and know it well.

 

In The Two Towers, Theodred (KingTheoden's son) is shown wounded form an orc attack and dies from them, far detached from the other scenes of the orcs camping near the forest, and later Eomer's men men coming upon them and killing them. The same group, but you have to piece all that together yourself over time. Oh, and the same group that Merry and Pippin were captured by at the end of FOTR, dropping the Lorien leaf as a trail for Aragorn, cutting their bonds and escaping into Fangorn, Aragorn later finding their trail and eventually Gandalf the White.

 

All that seemingly disconnected and roundabout morass of scenes, and none of it essential to anything really (finding Gandalf again, Merry and Pippin meeting Treebeard, etc could be done any number of ways including simply subliming the plot to come upon them.

 

So by your definition that whole subplot is needless .. but it works and adds to "earning the story" in the audience's heads. And the three LOTR movies are full of this sort of thing, this was just one small example.

 

Could those scenes all been sequential or distilled down to next to nothing? Sure. But where they? No, thank God. And that is why I want to preserve similar levels of complexity and reference in WoT. Because if it did, it could easily rival that sort of overall fullness of story. The raw materials are all there.

[CaddySedai]

On 9/8/2021 at 12:53 PM, Zyxthior said:

....it just doesn't play a part in the rest of the novels (yes, it's a 'trigger' for a particular individual) 

 

Particular Individual? Why so coy? Are you trying not to spoil a plot point or something? Lol. 

[Harldin]

No EOTW, then why do they go to Fal Dara? Reports of huge numbers of Trollocs at Tarwins Gap, Morraine and Lan may go with the Armies to fight them but she is not going to take 3 untrained young men and 2 Girls on there way to become Novices in the White Tower into that fight.

The EOTW is central to everything that happens in Fal Dara, FD is the stepping off point for the group on there way to the EOTW, its where they return to afterwards, its where the Horn is stolen from after being found at the Eye, the victory at Tarwins Gap happens because Rand uses the untainted Saidin found at the EOTW. 

[Guire]

12 minutes ago, Harldin said:

No EOTW, then why do they go to Fal Dara? Reports of huge numbers of Trollocs at Tarwins Gap, Morraine and Lan may go with the Armies to fight them but she is not going to take 3 untrained young men and 2 Girls on there way to become Novices in the White Tower into that fight.

The EOTW is central to everything that happens in Fal Dara, FD is the stepping off point for the group on there way to the EOTW, its where they return to afterwards, its where the Horn is stolen from after being found at the Eye, the victory at Tarwins Gap happens because Rand uses the untainted Saidin found at the EOTW. 

I hope this entire storyline is kept intact.  From a visual perspective and tool to explain in story concepts I think maintaining story is probably easier than all the changes needed to account for later storyline.  Hope showrunners see it the same.

[Elder_Haman]

37 minutes ago, Harldin said:

No EOTW, then why do they go to Fal Dara? Reports of huge numbers of Trollocs at Tarwins Gap, Morraine and Lan may go with the Armies to fight them but she is not going to take 3 untrained young men and 2 Girls on there way to become Novices in the White Tower into that fight  

I get where you’re coming from. But what if there’s no choice? They could be driven there by Machin Shin while trying to use the Ways to get to Tar Valon. 

[Borderlander]

I think we will see some version of the Green Man for a few reasons:

 

1) The Tinkers are in the show, and I don't think they will just use them as 'stereotypical gypsies' who just drift around in colored wagons. Once they start talking about The Way of the Leaf, it is only about 10 additional seconds of dialogue to get to the Tinkers' search for the Song. Searching for the Song is the primary reason they roam around, after all! And you can't start talking about some mystical, long-lost Song in Season 1 unless you are going to pay it off in a satisfying way at the end of the series.

 

2) They could have cut Loial and said it was too expensive to have a big, CGI-heavy (?) travelling companion lumbering around with Rand & Co. No one (except the millions of book fans) would ever know anything was missing! They could have glossed over the Stedding and the Ogier altogether... Heck, in some ways, they did (the design of the Waygate, for example, doesn't exactly scream Unparalleled Ogier Craftsmanship.) But we are getting Ogier, and with Ogier come Steddings, and Steddings obviously tie into the endgame with the Tinker's Song.

 

So we have Tinkers (and their Song) and Ogier (and their Steddings)... but does that automatically mean we are getting the Green Man? Yes! Yes, it does! Here's why...

 

You can't have Tinkers without their Song. And you can't have Ogier without their Stedding. And you can't have a climactic, epic, AmazonBezosBillionDollarRocketMoney payoff in the end without tying the Song and the Ogier together, somehow... and that tying-together is going to be incredibly half-baked without a scene (AoL Flashback????) of the Nym and the Tuatha'an and the  Ogier all holding hands singing Kumbaya. And THAT sort of scene (be it flashback or flash-forward at the end of the show) is going to be pretty confusing and underwhelming if we have never seen a Nym before.

 

Which is why they will undoubtedly (yep, you heard it here first!) include a brief scene with Someshta in Season 1. Even if it takes a big bite out of the budget, they will never have to show him again. It will set up the ultimate payoff in the last season like few other early elements can, and if they ever want to show more Nym (again, in an AoL flashback?) they can wait several years until they are ready to spend that GoT-Dragon-style money.

[Guire]

50 minutes ago, Borderlander said:

I think we will see some version of the Green Man for a few reasons:

 

1) The Tinkers are in the show, and I don't think they will just use them as 'stereotypical gypsies' who just drift around in colored wagons. Once they start talking about The Way of the Leaf, it is only about 10 additional seconds of dialogue to get to the Tinkers' search for the Song. Searching for the Song is the primary reason they roam around, after all! And you can't start talking about some mystical, long-lost Song in Season 1 unless you are going to pay it off in a satisfying way at the end of the series.

 

2) They could have cut Loial and said it was too expensive to have a big, CGI-heavy (?) travelling companion lumbering around with Rand & Co. No one (except the millions of book fans) would ever know anything was missing! They could have glossed over the Stedding and the Ogier altogether... Heck, in some ways, they did (the design of the Waygate, for example, doesn't exactly scream Unparalleled Ogier Craftsmanship.) But we are getting Ogier, and with Ogier come Steddings, and Steddings obviously tie into the endgame with the Tinker's Song.

 

So we have Tinkers (and their Song) and Ogier (and their Steddings)... but does that automatically mean we are getting the Green Man? Yes! Yes, it does! Here's why...

 

You can't have Tinkers without their Song. And you can't have Ogier without their Stedding. And you can't have a climactic, epic, AmazonBezosBillionDollarRocketMoney payoff in the end without tying the Song and the Ogier together, somehow... and that tying-together is going to be incredibly half-baked without a scene (AoL Flashback????) of the Nym and the Tuatha'an and the  Ogier all holding hands singing Kumbaya. And THAT sort of scene (be it flashback or flash-forward at the end of the show) is going to be pretty confusing and underwhelming if we have never seen a Nym before.

 

Which is why they will undoubtedly (yep, you heard it here first!) include a brief scene with Someshta in Season 1. Even if it takes a big bite out of the budget, they will never have to show him again. It will set up the ultimate payoff in the last season like few other early elements can, and if they ever want to show more Nym (again, in an AoL flashback?) they can wait several years until they are ready to spend that GoT-Dragon-style money.

yes, yes, yes.

[Elder_Haman]

Hope you’re right!!

[Pandemonium]

Isn't this show dropping like 350 million down on the budget to develop the infrastructure of the show and bring out the first season?  If they want to develop the fanbase then they need epic climaxes to each season.  I mean even channels like CW plop down millions in their budget to bring characters like King Shark to the flash for a few seconds.

 

To me, Eye of the World and Tarwins Gap are a fantastic climax to season 1.  What's the point of having an Eye without a green man?  Plus the Green Man can also serve as a plot dump device for giving some more great narrative about Age of Legends and horn of valere.  Unless season 1 skips the eye of the world completely I definitely think Green Man should appear.  Budget cuts shouldn't apply to the most expensive fantasy show ever made (discounting lord of the rings which comes next year.)  They can reuse some of the green man CGI later on.